LotR19 Epic Immortality

Once more into the breach. Ride on! We start here...



At least we have a river. I go ahead and settle London in place. That shows corn to the SW. So I start Agriculture and a worker. My take is that a food bonus pays for itself very rapidly. You can often reach size 3 just about as fast using an improved square as you can by just growing using unimproved squares. That corn will be huge. But it makes the start really slow.

In 3960, I can already see the bottom edge of the map! We're very southernly. Barbs appear already in 3600 BC, attacking our warrior (and losing). Same warrior fought off a couple of wolves later.

Contacts:
Toku came from the east in 3520 with a scout. Saladin appeared in 2720. Cyrus (Hindu) didn't show his mug until 2440, but we can already see his borders just to our north. He's not too bad of a neighbor. I'd be friendly with him and potentially think about expanding eastward, once we hit our peaceful limit.

After Agriculture, I researched Bronze Working, as we have a lot of forests to chop. Some are no-brainers, as we have resources under the forest. 45 shields a chop is a pretty good deal. I started on Animal Husbandry, as we have sheep, cows, and pigs not too far from us -- not that I'm sure we'll be able to grab them all.

Paris cranked out one more warrior, giving us two. Another is in progress. I might do one more but then we probably need to start settlers.

I didn't explore out too far. And I didn't pop any huts. With just warriors, I feared barbs. Some barbs are around (and Paris is currently naked). So be careful out there! We should probably work at least one warrior back and possibly both.

After improving the corn, the worker did a bit of irrigating of a grassland by the river but moved to chop a forest on a spices square once BW came in. That'll be a bit, but I'd keep him chopping for a while. The tiles are reasonably OK.

We're wedged in the SW corner of the map. We have some good tiles around us -- enough for an initial push to 4-6 cities at least. But no copper. And nothing too thrilling.

A dot map should probably be made, but I'm in no mood to do so tonight. I played 40. Rest of the first round should be 20 each. Then we'll go to 10 turns each.

Here's what's around us.



Roster:
Arathorn
Kylerean -- UP NOW
Islandia -- on deck
Shillen
ThERat

Plenty of decisions to be made starting here real soon now. My thought is to befriend one neighbor (probably Cyrus to the north) and the guy two over in the other direction (two east), planning to take out the guy one east once we can.

I'd also settle north and east first, leaving the SW "background" to a bit later, as that will be harder for others to claim.

Arathorn

Yeah I'd definitely settle towards Cyrus first, because the AI almost always seems to settle right next to your capital with its 2nd city whenever you start that close to them.

I like the techs chosen. If animal husbandry reveals horses then we can settle them quickly and forego archery, building chariots instead. Otherwise we'll need archery to defend against barbs. No copper will hurt because they'll be sending axemen at us eventually.

Cyrus is a good neighbor. He isn't quick to make wars from what I've seen. He's not a religious nut either though so it may be a while before we get one. Hopefully Saladin will get an early one and spread it to us. Tokugawa might be a good AI to pick on as he's usually weak in most games and not well-liked by anyone.

We definitely should get a settler out soonish. I'd probably even do it at size 3 after this warrior, helped along via chopping. Bring one of the exploring warriors back for defense.

edit: I would leave 3-5 forests up near London, though, as health is almost always an issue on higher difficulties.

I agree with the plans laid out by Shillen. As for forest chops, I usually chop the plains since we need to farm them anyway for growth. The grass goes to cottages of course

I'd settle one tile N of the northern wine. That would give us wheat and silk in the extended radius and avoid desert tiles.

I would probably have suggested camping out near that cow and stealing Cyrus's worker right away since he is that close and his capital would be a nice addition to our empire. However, I would not want to go against group wisdom so if we are going peaceful with Cyrus the best bet would be to settle city 2 1 square northwest of the northern wine (yes this misses the coast but there is no good spot on the coast to settle). Looks like with the expansive trait we can afford to cut down all but 3 of the trees near the capital pretty early. Would probably suggest leaving the three grassland trees right around the capital. Might want a second worker before getting the settler so we can prechop the spot where city 2 goes and not waste a tree. My suggestion for city 3 would be on the plains hill to the northeast of the wheat resource as that should be sufficient to cut off our little corner of the world from Cyrus.

One other thing to be careful of is I've noticed in my games when you chop a tree and you have just finished production of an item (in this case the warrior), be sure you have whatever the next item is you want built queued up or those tree shields go into the void.

That's some heavy overlap if we settle either 1N or 1NW of the northern wine. It's really a waste to overlap cities in civ4. It can really hurt you in # of cities maintenance. A couple tiles is fine but I almost never overlap by 4+ tiles until later in the game when I'm trying to squeeze out every last bit of space. We'll want to settle at a rapid pace early in the game to get as many cities as possible and our science and territory will be hurting without overlapping our cities. I would settle 1NE of the wine just to reduce the overlap. It also would pick up the pig tile. It would have one worthless coastal square but not a big deal, IMO. Then we can settle the plains hill like Islandia suggested and get the other silk, assuming we can get both cities before Cyrus does.

I would probably have suggested camping out near that cow and stealing Cyrus's worker right away since he is that close and his capital would be a nice addition to our empire.

Click to expand...

And if we wind up with no iron or horses? I don't know. I'd rather not gamble that much in an SG. Single player is no big deal, you can just start the game over if it fails. But losing an SG early on kind of stinks. Have you used this trick on emperor+ difficulties? Because from my experience getting peace with them afterwards is extremely hard since they have all the bonus units. A big part of whether they will give you peace or not is based on military strength. Since we can't give up techs or money they will want one of our cities for peace, until we have a larger military than they do or we capture one of their cities.

Shillen said:

I would settle 1NE of the wine just to reduce the overlap. It also would pick up the pig tile. It would have one worthless coastal square but not a big deal, IMO. Then we can settle the plains hill like Islandia suggested and get the other silk, assuming we can get both cities before Cyrus does.

Click to expand...

I apologize I meant 1 NE not 1 NW.

As far as stealing the early worker. It wouldn't be just that - it would mean getting more warriors and really just camping them out in the woods near his capital to prevent him from linking up to any special resources (and hill woods if he has any), and then we can see whether we have horses or iron before finishing off the capital. When the computer is at war it almost never moves that worker out of its city though I have seen it move 2 archers + settler to try to set down a second city.

1 tile NE sounds good. Less overlap and little waste

Hi,

got it.

I would have been against an ultra-early war against Cyrus as well. He can be a really good friend, although him being so close by could become a problem. But I'd like to have a friend in my back once we start a war on immortal. And as Shillen said, it can be really hard to get (straight) peace on immortal - you have to hurt the AI a lot before he stops demanding cities for peace. I wouldn't risk that, not even in a single player game (restarting if it fails kind of takes the fun out of gambits...) - I'm not sure we would be able to capture the capital, and if not we would have lost too much time.

Arathorn, I would have popped the huts - you still get a lot more good things from huts than hostiles even on immortal, and our warriors will die to archers anyway. It's not uncommon to get techs, even on immortal. And it takes some time before barbs start converting on your cities anyway; they wander around aimlessly in the beginning. And I have the strong suspicion that you have a "grace period" in the beginning where you won't get hostiles from huts, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

-Kylearan

Sorry, but I decided not to backtrack our warriors. Instead, I sent them out exploring - I find it vital to make as many contacts as fast as possible for tech cost deflation, especially on this map where we might not get open borders with all to explore later. Alas, I was only able to contact Mansa Musa directly north of Cyrus, and Mansa's borders are touching Cyrus' already! It looks like Cyrus has to settle towards us.
Our other warrior went eastwards, but had to turn back as he encountered barbarian archers. Looks like we have to wait for stronger units to explore after all.

I popped one hut, and we've received a small amount of gold.

York was founded, and already survived an attack from an archer that happened to be around at the time.

We do have horses near London; they should be accessible when our borders expand. That will take 19 turns I believe, but I've decided to research the wheel nonetheless, for chariots. Going for archery would have been only marginally faster, and the wheel is a worker tech and a prerequisite for pottery anyway.

After the second settler, we need at least one more worker to improve York.

There's already a barb city near the stones. It looks like there are more barbs on this map than on the continents maps I had my first immortal experiences on.



Roster:
Arathorn
Kylearan
Islandia -- UP NOW
Shillen -- on deck
ThERat

-Kylearan

Good luck guys

Seconded!

*subscibed*

My concern with the huts was that we had a single warrior total in our empire and no others even being constructed. Popping hostiles would have probably ended the game. Just too big a risk for me to take. Maybe I should have, since I could have just restarted a new game and no one (except me) would have been the wiser. But I wanted a "pure" game. And popping a hut with our lone military unit just did not appeal to me.

While a very early war against Cyrus may have been successful, it still feels awfully gambit-y to me. With all his bonus units, Cyrus would have wanted a lot for peace. And while I do believe a human can defeat most AI opponents 1-on-1, sometimes winning that battle leads to losing the war. Pyrrhic victories aren't what I have in mind. Now, I can't speak with much authority here, having not beaten Immortal yet, but it just feels wrong, somehow. And those borders of Cyrus by the cows were from his second city, not his first. I knew that.

Can we all take Kylerean's map and do an attempt at a dot map? I'll put it on my "To do" list for today. We can compare ideas. I very much like the spot where the second city is, however.

Arathorn

Hi,

Arathorn said:

My concern with the huts was that we had a single warrior total in our empire and no others even being constructed. Popping hostiles would have probably ended the game. Just too big a risk for me to take. Maybe I should have, since I could have just restarted a new game and no one (except me) would have been the wiser. But I wanted a "pure" game.

Click to expand...

I prefer pure games as well, even in my private games. I pop huts all the time nevertheless, even on immortal.

I've never gotten hostiles from a hut in the beginning, and I'd be curious to hear from other people if they have. I think there is a period were you won't get any - maybe during the time when only animals are roaming around? Although I guess it's even longer.

But even if hostiles *would* appear, barbs seem to respect your borders for some time until they start pillaging your lands or attacking your cities.

But then I've seen a lot more barbs on this inland lake map than in my other games, so these speculations could be way off.

-Kylearan

I dunno. I'm still learning the mechanics. I know animals won't cross cultural borders. But I dunno about hut-popping. I don't get techs anyway, though. Maybe 2 or so in all my games. I do tend to get a lot of gold that way, though.

I guarantee I'd've popped it if we had a scout instead of a warrior. I just felt nervous doing it. Maybe I should have. <Shrug> Next time I'll try it and see what happens.

Arathorn

On emperor I once popped 6 barbarian warriors from a single hut before 2000BC. It's true they will not enter your borders until a certain point in the game but losing that exploring warrior was killer anyway. Ever since that time I don't pop any huts on emperor+ difficulty unless I have a scout or I have several military units around.

Kylearan said:

Sorry, but I decided not to backtrack our warriors. Instead, I sent them out exploring - I find it vital to make as many contacts as fast as possible for tech cost deflation, especially on this map where we might not get open borders with all to explore later.

Click to expand...

I remember Sulla or Sirian mentioning that tech values deflate regardless of contact in civ 4, in an attempt from keeping isolated civs from getting hopelessly behind. Wish I could remember where that was!

Here's one attempt at a dot map. After making it, I think we should move red dot one square due north, but erasing and re-drawing are outside my "Paint" expertise. Black lines indicate squares that can't be worked by any city.

The bad thing is I've planned ZERO coastal cities. Hmm....

Yellow dot would be a priority, then probably blue and green next. Help seal our borders, as well as being pretty strong cities in their own right.

Other opinions/ideas/suggestions?

Arathorn

Hi,

Snaproll said:

I remember Sulla or Sirian mentioning that tech values deflate regardless of contact in civ 4, in an attempt from keeping isolated civs from getting hopelessly behind.

Click to expand...

This seems to be wrong, according to the research Requies has done. You still have to have contact with a civ to benefit from the reduced cost for a known tech.

-Kylearan

Got it.

Don't have time right now to look at it but will get a dot map up before I make any moves.

Kylearan said:

Hi,


This seems to be wrong, according to the research Requies has done. You still have to have contact with a civ to benefit from the reduced cost for a known tech.

-Kylearan

Click to expand...

Research trumps rumor! Lemme find that reference, make sure that I remember it correctly.

edit: I can't find it. I must be delusional. Sorry to hijack the thread.