ALC Game #23: America/Lincoln

Moving the warrior 1 NW isn't going to change anyone's mind about settling in place, is it? What could you find over there that could possibly make it better than 3 clams and a plains hill to settle on? How about moving the warrior 1 S to start so we can begin exploring in a nice big circle. 1 SE is alright too, but I'd prefer to see more land than water.

And Moai Statues? Really? I guess I don't mind that decision, but unless there's stone nearby I wouldn't bother building them for a while. With 2 plains hills in the BFC this city won't be starving for anytime soon.

Settle in place on the plains hill.

madscientist said:

If you were a financial leader I would say move 1W. But since you are Philosphical and start with fishing/agricultre settle in palce to get those 3 clams and farm the floodplains. That's an instant GP farm, the pigs to the south can support a good second city.

Move the warrior 1NW

Food is no problem, techwise go mining/BW. If no accessable copper you are going to need hunting/archery for defense real fast. If you have copper beeline writing (wheel/pottery/writing)and chop out a library to get a SE up and going.

Good luck!

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Research:

while it is tempting to go for Pottery early to get some cottaged floodplains going, I think you'll find on Immortal that you will be a military-whipping maniac in the early going, especially with two extra civs on the map. Plus you'll have tons of food to regrow, making early granaries less important. You absolutely have to locate the copper, horses, and iron ASAP so you can get one of them before the AI takes them all from you. Therefore, I would tech Mining, BW, and AH. If no copper or horses, then IW.

Once you have a military resource, you need to get your happy cap raised to take advantage of all your food. Assuming you don't build the Pyramids, that means teching to Monarchy, either manually or by chopping the Oracle for it.

So ... maybe something like this:

1. Mining
2. BW
3. AH
4. IW, if no copper or horse
5. Wheel to hook up military
6. Mysticism
7. Meditation or Polytheism
8. Priesthood
9. Monarchy (from Oracle or researched manually)

Build:

The high-seafood start is tricky, because of the heavy up-front hammer investment required in multiple workboats, resulting in a lot of production time and slowing your worker and military units. That said, those clams are great for food and commerce and you want them worked ASAP. I would recommend a build order of:

1. workboat timed to finish at size 2
2. workboat until turn X
3. worker
4. finish workboat 2 (chopped)
5. workboat 3 (chopped or manual)
6. warrior
7. settler

Turn X is the time at which you could start a worker and it would finish one turn before you finish bronze working, allowing your worker to chop & mine the forested hills on the turn it arrives.

I vote settle in place, warrior SE. (I get stomped on at Noble, what do I know? )

Immortal doesn't necessarily dictate an early rush at all, even with the extra civs. He'll have to scout to see. Pottery certainly wouldn't be a terrible opening. I know it looked like I was joking but I'd probably get it early myself.

One additional point for settling in place:

This is an archipelago snaky continents map. Moving inland could actually deprive you of another good city site depending on how narrow the continent is.

You may want to give some thought to your strategic plan for this game before settling. Specifically do you intend to build GLH, Colossus or any other early game wonders?

If you do, you may want to consider settling SW of the settler's starting location. A city there would be able to work all 5 visible hills for a total of 20 /turn. The 2 clams would provide it with almost enough food to work all the hills. For a Charismatic leader the capital's early game cap is 7 before factoring in religion/resources. So you'd only need to find one additional source of to have enough to work all the mines full time, and if you can't you could still swap between a farmed FP and a mined plains hill (working the mine 75% of the time).

Settling in place limits the city to 9 /turn and settling W of the starting location gives only 12 /turn (possibly raised a bit by working grassland forests). So if you aren't able to settle a high city relatively quickly you're going to be hard-pressed to do much early wonder building.

I would start by moving the warrior S to see if settling SW would block a good site to the S. Then a decision on settling can be made.

slobberinbear said:

You absolutely have to locate the copper, horses, and iron ASAP so you can get one of them before the AI takes them all from you. Therefore, I would tech Mining, BW, and AH. If no copper or horses, then IW.

Once you have a military resource, you need to get your happy cap raised to take advantage of all your food. Assuming you don't build the Pyramids, that means teching to Monarchy, either manually or by chopping the Oracle for it.

So ... maybe something like this:

1. Mining
2. BW
3. AH
4. IW, if no copper or horse
5. Wheel to hook up military
6. Mysticism
7. Meditation or Polytheism
8. Priesthood
9. Monarchy (from Oracle or researched manually)

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If you don't get lucky with copper or horses, that's an awfully long time to be stuck with just warriors vs the barbs. You'll also not get priesthood in time to build the Oracle (and also need writing for monarchy).

It's much better to get early archery unless the neighbourhood is very easy to fogbust/full of AIs and early writing. Chariots/Axes are better vs barbs than archers, but it's a gamble counting on the map generator to give you easy quick access to bronze/horse.

I'd also prioritise sailing for the simple reason that a lighthouse will give you +3 food in the capital, which is 1.5 "free" scientists; you can hire a couple and grow almost as quickly as you could before. Sailing also gets quick foreign trade if you find other AI, which is a nice passive commerce boost and hey, we're coastal and start with fishing.

Much will depend on the initial lay of the land, but a better tech order would probably be:

Mining > Bronze > (hunting > archery) > Wheel > Mysticism > Pottery > Sailing > Writing (or writing then sailing).

I'd sneak AH in before pottery if city 2 is going to grab livestock, since it grants another discount on pottery research.

patagonia said:

Mining > Bronze > (hunting > archery) > Wheel > Mysticism > Pottery > Sailing > Writing (or writing then sailing).
.

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I'll second this tech path. Sis is playing 3.17 which means Barb Spears, and Immortal means early Barbs. So if no copper (which unleashes spears AND barb spear uprisings) then chariots are very susceptible. Better safe, hunting/archery combined tech quicker than IW.

I would settle in place. 3 food + 3FP is excellent. Also means that any FPs the other side of the river are available for another city to work. Hopefully yours!

I vote for moving the warrior 1S

patagonia said:

If you don't get lucky with copper or horses, that's an awfully long time to be stuck with just warriors vs the barbs. You'll also not get priesthood in time to build the Oracle (and also need writing for monarchy).

It's much better to get early archery unless the neighbourhood is very easy to fogbust/full of AIs and early writing. Chariots/Axes are better vs barbs than archers, but it's a gamble counting on the map generator to give you easy quick access to bronze/horse.

I'd also prioritise sailing for the simple reason that a lighthouse will give you +3 food in the capital, which is 1.5 "free" scientists; you can hire a couple and grow almost as quickly as you could before. Sailing also gets quick foreign trade if you find other AI, which is a nice passive commerce boost and hey, we're coastal and start with fishing.

Much will depend on the initial lay of the land, but a better tech order would probably be:

Mining > Bronze > (hunting > archery) > Wheel > Mysticism > Pottery > Sailing > Writing (or writing then sailing).

I'd sneak AH in before pottery if city 2 is going to grab livestock, since it grants another discount on pottery research.

Click to expand...

A fair point. I was more concerned about uncovering military resources for expansion purposes. I also like your idea of sailing not just for lighthouses but for barb galley defense, which is a bigger problem in 3.17.

That is an amazing start and Slobberinbear pretty much nails it. It's the kind of start that often means the enemy is close. I would go Mining/BW and see what drops, then decide based on what the land looks like. I would build a WB while reseach goes on and then build a worker. We have to find a good spot for at least our next city, which we need asap. Who knows if we will get time and room for 2 or 3 more. The river tiles to the west look promising for a second city. I would settle in place and then move the warrior south along the coast for a few moves and then arch back up to the W/NW to explore the river after the 5 turn culture pop.

Drat, forgot this is Immortal. Settling on the plains hill sounds even better now: it will get you additional production without slowing growth, meaning you can get your units out faster to protect against the barbs. I'm not sure how the health cap is modified in comparison with Emperor, but if it's lower then the additional floodplains you'd get if moving 1W would also be a reason to settle in place.

Research/Worker Consideration:

Since we are relying heavily on seafood we are going to want sailing and galleys sooner rather than later. Alternatively, skip sailing and farm the floodplains so when our workboats are pillaged we can work the improved floodplains for 1 less commerce until we get new boats out and/or research sailing and build galleys then workboats.

Validator said:

You may want to give some thought to your strategic plan for this game before settling. Specifically do you intend to build GLH, Colossus or any other early game wonders?

If you do, you may want to consider settling SW of the settler's starting location. A city there would be able to work all 5 visible hills for a total of 20 /turn. The 2 clams would provide it with almost enough food to work all the hills.

...

I would start by moving the warrior S to see if settling SW would block a good site to the S. Then a decision on settling can be made.

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Good points. Are we considering wonders? GLH and Colossus can pay off well or not at all. Too risky. Pyramids help an SE, but I'd rather capture them than build them and they're not a necessity if you're going to be bulbing most techs to liberalism. The +3/specialist is peanuts compared to the from bulbed GPs. GL would be a nice prize in your GP Farm if you can get it there, but settling SW of the settler's spot would compromise the awesome food potential of that starting location.

I'd rather have a short term whip city, long term GP farm than a wonder pump so I'd settle in place (and chop GL if/when the time for that comes)... but the potential is definitely there to make this a nice capital.

This is a link to the page that explains how power is computed.

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/demographics.php

The Sailing tech gives the same amount of power as Hunting, Mining, and AH. BW is far superior as it gives 4 times more power. A galley gives the same power as a spearman, archer or chariot. An axeman gives 50% more power.

So, while we expand, keep in mind that knowledge is power in the eyes of the ai and we wouldn't lose anything in terms of power by building a galley. Still, its map dependant based on ai position and how well we can fog bust.

Population is also power. It goes in steps of 2. So a size 2 city is 1 rank, the next rank is size 4 and so on. Keep this in mind when whipping.

@Validator

I think that we'll probably want to build the GLh if possible (for denial as well as for the more tangible benefits - on a map like this, and on this difficulty, it can be very dangerous to let the AI have it).

And I agree that the current spot is far from ideal in terms of hammers.

But wouldn't moving SW risk running into serious health problems well before all those mines could be worked?

NintendoTogepi said:

Are spoilers allowed if in tags?

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It's for Sisiutil to say, but I will point out that people end up replying in other spoiler tags, and then before you know it someone has indirectly revealed something. Like:
Albert: "hey you should attack now." (spoiler)
Bob: (spoiler)
Carl: (spoiler)

I suggest you just not go there. You can always make a separate ALC 23 Spoiler Thread if you want.

Glouglou said:

I was thinking that it was not possible to pop a tech when settling the city ... I don't remember if I read something about that in the forum ... maybe I'm just wrong but I think it is something like the city is not considered as built when the hut is popped ...
Actually I don't remember exactly about this point ... but I'm pretty sure It made me change my mind about popping hut when settling ... But I may be wrong ...

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You aren't wrong, as of the last time I looked into this. It's possible that one of the patches has changed that behavior, but I suspect that someone would have noticed.

Another very far reaching comment/suggestion regading the American UB. You already have access to 3 seafood and I will assume there is more coming considering the map. Therefore to exploit the UB's +20% gold (and you are unlikely to found/shrine your own religion although stealing one is possible) you may want to consider producing/saving a Great Merchant to found Sid's Sushi which would helpprovide ALOT of late game gold.

I bring this up early for a few reasons, the GLH/Colossus combo with Lincoln's philosphical trait would likely produce several early game GM's of which one can be saved until corporation/medicine are teched. Also consider the free GM at economics before liberalism (if you can get to either first at Immortal). If you happen to have alot of grains (Less likely) Cereal Mills would be better as teching refridgeration before medicine opens upthe UB and the CORP.

Sorry to look that far into the future but I do not want to forget this at the later time (which happens to me too much) plus this strategy has some affect on the early wonders being discussed.