Short fun game (immortal)

I agree that northern cities are better for landgrab, but, honestly, those cities will create nothing but costs for our empire. We need to dedicate units to secure those cities from barbs and they increase maintenance a lot as especially the "north-banana-city" is far away from the cap. All the resources up there are covered in jungle, thus we'd need IW to get those cities at least a bit productive. However we decided to tech COL next and thus get techs like IW in trade, which means we can't really decide when we'll get the tech. There is no food resource up there we can improve and being covered in jungle will result in so much that those cities will stay at size 1, max 2 for a loooooong time.

There is another possibility, wheat/fish-city but that city doesn't block off any AIs and would rather get surrounded by AI culture...

I repeat myself, jungle will also slow down the AIs, I think we have enough time to settle wheat/gold city first and then move on the north.

Still not convinced, Silu/bbp?


PS: shyuhe: OFC we need some sort of agreement first but I'd say we keep the game going...

Well those arguments don't convince me... With that capital and another gold in reach, the maintenance is a non-issue. Seriously, maintenance should never be a reason to not optimize landgrab if you already have Pottery and Writing, which we got ages ago because of the capital BFC gold. But as I already said I put my vote now as 0.5 south of sugar 0.5 south wheat... Though I'd still prefer the landgrab optimization grabbing the cities in the order they're likely to be taken by AIs.

Silu said:

But as I already said I put my vote now as 0.5 south of sugar 0.5 south wheat...

Click to expand...

This would constitute a slim majority. I guess I'll acquiesce.
@mysty, we'd need IW+Calendar+(probably)Currency soonish to dig ourselves out. That will take some time, but we should be ok.

@Shyuhe: go ahead without my vote, I don't have time to have a proper look at the save, but I trust the team choice.
I will have a deeper look tmr...

Ras

Ok, I'll settle the south shortly.

I am OOP 23-26 dec... Celebrating christmas with my family somewhere we have no internet... in Alsace, France

Sorry didn't have time to play yesterday, I'll try again tonight. And I'll be unable to play any over Christmas as well (although I'll be able to post).

Will have very few net as well from 23 to 2 of january... good holidays everyone

Man this quick speed thing is hard

Played a few more turns but nothing big to report. We settled the wheat site (lost a warrior to barbs). A barb city popped up to the north near the gems - we'll need IW soon I guess. The north is still wide open though, and St. P is training a settler. Moscow is currently growing a GS. I'm hoping we can get Confucianism in the new city to push Bizzy's borders back but we'll see. Gandhi has been furiously spreading Buddhism to us as well - it's probably worth adopting if Bizzy or Churchill takes it but I'd hold off until then.

One annoying event:



The barb city:



Our empire:



I'm training workers non-stop in Novgorod as we're really short on workers right now from the whole game speed thing. It'll be critical once we put cities up in the jungle. I've placed a few signs on some units as well - feel free to clean them up once the next player takes over. Sorry for the rather lackluster set but it's late and I'm tired...

No one has alphabet (yeah shocker), and no one's planted any new cities since my last report. So I'd aggressively whip settlers and other infra out of St. P.

We've finished researching PH, tentatively set to CoL. We'll want currency soon so that we can backsell techs to these (probably) backwards AI.

And the roster:

Roster:
shyuhe just played
Ras skipped
mysty - UP
Silu (on deck)
bbp

I'm gonna be away from my civ computer starting Thursday so I'll need lots of pics to provide meaningful input I know Ras is OOP for the holidays and if others need a break until January, that's fine with me too

As I said, I can't play until the 26th... I need a skip as well looks like theres a fun set ahead, too:

shyuhe said:

No one has alphabet (yeah shocker), and no one's planted any new cities since my last report. So I'd aggressively whip settlers and other infra out of St. Pete.

Click to expand...

That's exactly my wavelenght

I'm away-from-Civ from today to the 27th, nicely syncronized return dates with mr. muse

Now with that barb city there I wonder if SW of north banana and 2S of the south sugar is a viable settling pattern. Probably what I'd go for right now.

St. P can whip a settler in another turn or two (forgot) so I'd send that 2S of banana. Looks like people are mostly OOP so let's pick this up after Christmas.

shyuhe.

I'm busy for a few days, too. Reconvening after Xmas sounds good.

I am back guys (on a crappy connection but...)
Hope you all had nice Xmas day...

@Mysty: I can play before you if you want a chance to me (as discussed in IM )

Ras

Per the original roster you're up anyway, ras Yes, please, play before me, suits me better anyway RL-wise. I want to finish my christmas game anyway... I tried (but failed) to not war at all lol... but I'm going to space for a change Going good, bio and AL both in at 1400ad

I'll try to post my thoughts on the SG soonishst

PS: hope you all had a nice christmas I just somehow missed the snow... then again, I shouldn't have gone to France hehe

Had a look at the game.

Main discussion point is settling order. Techpath atm is clear (atm means for the next 6 turns... after that it depends on the AIs...) and builds are not too interesting to discuss (keep on spamming settlers while training enough workers to have decently improved cities, use the whip as seen fit (preferabely quite often and regrow while building infra/anti-barb units).

We should start trading resources ASAP to help diplo early. If we REX hard we're an easy target... Luckily, most AIs have picked their worst enemy, gandhi being most popular there... It's worth keeping an eye on that...

We'll get a GS in 9t (earliest). What are your thoughts on him, agree on building an academy in moscow? Another option is settling as we might run a quite low slider... I don't like that though, I'd rather build the academy already now and have the next few GPs available for bulbing. We can raise the slider with the cash we get from eventual captures of barb cities and from selling techs and resources. Currency is indeed a high-priority tech

As to dotmapping our possible future territory... I had a tentative shot:



My explanations:
I assume we want to keep the barb city should we capture it.

I would settle the blue dot up north first to block off the most land and still have a mediocre city shortterm (compared to miserable covered-in-jungle-cities) with a FP, a hill, a forest, a nice river and lots of grass tiles, all available pre-IW. I would immediately start moving the settler being trained at St. Petes up there as soon as its completed.

Next city is trickier. I personally would settle white dot as it will be a good GPFarm (though there are alternatives). Wheat and Fish are two health resources that come in handy (wheat for trading). Its a good city from the get-go and won't require lots of worker turns early.

By city #3 from now we should surely have IW and thus can settle the jungle. Monty-green dot is a good city that needs lots of workers but will likely be taken by churchill by then... however, lightblue dot should be able to defend those resources culturally from churchill and is a good alternative. I don't rate losing green dot (or a city somewhere near there) to churchill too bad, you can't get everything

We should put some effort into taking the barb city that luckily isn't on a hill. Having 2-3 units near the city is enough imo if we wait for some AIs to suicide some units and then mop up. Orange and purple dot both are filler cities that both lack food resources (well, orange dot not exactly but it still needs lots of farms to work all/most tiles...) that will profit a lot from windmills and don't hurry too much...

There are 2-3 more cities, another white dot near novgorod and 1-2 cities to the south where there's currently another barb city (near sheep/stone/deer) so we'll get plenty of cities to start serious warring soon

Your thoughts? No pressure, but I'd prefer to focus on SGOTM once it starts instead of being stuck in war in this SG So let's get this going again

At lest with no cottages, I don't like the blue dot first at all. It feels like overextending ourselves for no real profit (it blocks no land at all by itself, really). 2S of it would give access to the gem (after IW) and more hills while not sacrificing much of anything (not enough jungle to give health issues and plenty of farmable land after pop), all while completing the block of the eastern mountain range. Still, if Churchill settles south of it before us it will be disastrous, cutting off the whole north for us and stranding our new city very badly. Also your green dot kinda sucks as a city (as already pointed out by bbp), a very bad position pre-CS and huge probable culture pressure (with C settling a city north of it + London&Hastings influence).

^ That's why I'd like to stick to what I thought was becoming the consensus - 1S of the south sugar next to prevent the worst case scenario which should give enough time to settle the blue, or alternatively 2S of the Sugar and 2S of the blue. Either would work with their own pros and cons and IMO those the best EV we get here.

BTW, the white dot won't give much in resources. We already have secured Wheat and Fish, and for trades we have multiple Ivory, maybe a monopoly on Banana and Sugar after Calendar, while having multiple Gold and Gems. It's a good city, but not much of a priority now with the southern Wheat.

I'll eat my socks if we get DoWed without being a land target here, and we won't be one for a long while still. Getting a DoW is the least of my worries here.

I'm against the white dot. I think it was either south wheat or north wheat, and we made that decision already. Worst case scenario, Mao beats us there by 1t and we lose 10-15t moving a settler and moving it back to another spot. Blue dot was my original suggestion a while back, but I think we all agreed that 2S of there was better. The barb city placement makes that city less good, but it's still solid, I think. Because of that barb city, I'd now agree with Silu on sugar next. I'm not sure where... 1S would be too much overlap with the northern banana site, so maybe 2S after all. I'd also consider the purple dot one south, to get the banana. The orange dot is a crap city regardless, so we might as well get a food resource in the gem/copper/green city.

I like white dot, but not for next city (as none proposed it for next it's OK )... I wouldn't veto a city without jungle and with two food specials... Though I am like Silu, I prefer south of the southern sugar first. Also, like BBP, I prefer one city merging purple and orange Mysty's sites to grab banana/copper/gems: less overlap and a stronger city overall. So I would go sugar site -> wheat/fish -> capture barb city and keep. Backfill banana/copper/gem when possible.

I can play till COL tmr if we agree on city #5...

@Mysty: come in Grenoble mate... you'll find all the snow you can dream!

I should add probably that I usually settle as many cities as possible, with a fair amount of overlap.

If we continue spamming settlers at that pace and settle blue-white-lightblue I doubt churchill will spoil that but you don't seem to like that so sugarcity next it is. What about shyuhe though? Still busy drinking mulled wine?