RB14: Cutting Edge

Obsolete is so yesterday.

Variant Rules:
1. No obsolete units. If you have any units you can upgrade, you must run 100% wealth until they're all upgraded or removed.
2. Newer is better. When you discover a new Civic, you must switch to it and keep it until a newer, better Civic replaces it. (Ex: If you discover Slavery after Caste System, you immediately switch to Slavery & keep it until you discover a new Labor Civic, like Serfdom.)

Details:
Standard size
Inland Sea map
Monarch difficulty
American Empire
George Washington

Starting location:


Guidelines:
24 hrs to confirm, 48 hrs to play.
20 turns each on the first round, then 10 turns each after.

Slots:
Mike Lemmer
Qwack
Ucel

Round 1a: Science!

Welcome to ze Cutting Edge! My fellow technophiles, before we begin let us go over the plan again.

We are playing with the latest civics and no obsolete military. We must choose our techs with care; if we learn new units too fast or discover civics in the wrong order, we will cripple ourselves. Although our endgame civics will certainly be the bottom row, there are some earlier civics we will want to idle in as long as possible (Representation, perhaps?).

We also need a flexible economy to quickly upgrade our troops; gold production is a must. I think we will get a lot of use out of Merchant specialists; a single Great Merchant could upgrade most of our army for us.

Let ze experiment start!

I settle in place & begin a Worker; I want to improve those cows fast, and we'll have to delete our warriors later anyway.

Our first techs are Hunting to Animal Husbandry; with that oasis by Washington, I finish learning both before the Worker pops. Then I research Archery for defense.

Our warrior pops a tech & some gold from nearby huts:

before running into a tight scrape:

Well, that's one warrior we won't have to remove.

Our worker pops on the 15th turn and starts pasturing the cows. Washington builds a Scout next to continue recon.

In other news:
-Buddhism FIADL 3680 BC.
-We have Incan neighbors:

-We seem to be on the southern shore of the sea.

Notes:
-Archery pops next turn. I suggest Wheel > Pottery next; flood plains with cottages are sick for Financial civs. Then push for Mining > Bronze Working.
-No more warriors. We'd have to remove them later anyway. Concentrate on archers, with perhaps an extra scout. (Or just send an archer to scout.)
-The dot map:

For our second settlement, I'd suggest the green dot. It will be a huge production city, and the early marble could help us get the Oracle. The red dot would get us horses, but its proximity to the capital will make it lose 3 tiles, plus it's bordering tundra. Both yellow dots could be good settlements but those areas need to be explored to make sure.

Zalson, you're up. The next 20 turns are yours.

Oh, well, thank you. Fun. Got two turnsets, and need to finish reading Adventure 4 reports, on top of midterms and all else. Would I have it any other way?



--Zalson

P.S.

Got it.

Nice, ill download the save file to check out our starting position. I agree about carefully picking the tech's we research. It might also be smart to not hook up certain resources for a little while, this way we are not forced to upgrade warriors into axeman or something similiar.

Er, one question about rules (not that I'm playing or anything).

What happens if you build the pyramids?

Are you allowed to pick? Swap? Only Universal Suffrage?

Just something to consider...

-Jester

If we build the pyramids, we choose one of its Civics as the tiebreaker and stay with it for the rest of the game.

Goals: Do what the captain says.

IT:Change our name to RB 14-Cutting Edge . Mark the city sites with signs, so I can keep track of them.

Early: Switch to Pottery; Get an archer. Get scout almost killed by a lion.

2920-Writing to Pottery, road the cows.

Middle:
Finish Archer, start another (will start a settler as soon as the other is finished). Hinduism FIDAL (2880), by Huyana. Meet Napoleon, shot fails again. Archer to Scout. Then I'll start another archer, and then a settler.

check that, make that another scout (we NEED to explore)

Late

Nothing. Found a hut to the south, but since I moved the scout wide, I hit a lion instead of the hut. Oh well. I made some minor tweaks to the dot map. Started a settler on the final turn, production and movement can still be changed. Best of luck!

Dot Map:


The 'X's are possibly weaker spots. I like the green dot better than the original green dot. It still pulls in both resources, including one food, at the expense of only a few shields (once we get lumbermills, that is). I think that Washington is the overall best site. It's just begging to pop SOME sort of something.

Brown X is only if there is another resource at the bottom of the map. If not, we can minimize the use of tundra by building a city on the dot. It'll lose tiles to Washington, but with two food resources and a river, it can be a commerce-specialist city.

Cyan X grabs the deer and a cow, again, a nice specialist city with some production.

However, purple dot is by far the supreme specialist city ever. Three food resources, with H20 and a floodplains. I would recommend going for that ASAP, and then whipping the heck out of it, while postponing COL and Feudalism to keep whipping capabilities. Yellow dot just grabs the gold and corn. All these spots are open to debate. I don't think we'll be able to get very many awesome production cities, unfortunately. If you can find one Qwack, I'd make it a priority to settle.

--Zalson

Oh yeah, the save:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/RB_14-Cutting_Edge_BC-2400.Civ4SavedGame

--Zalson

Put me in if have a place .

Okay, Ucel.

Zalson, I notice none of your proposed sites are on rivers. Without rivers, we can't build farms until we learn Bureaucracy. That could hamper our early-game growth. The brown dot could work. The green dot is bad; I'd recommend one left of the green X instead. (River + 3 resources) The light blue dot could work, but I'd expect border wars with Huayna there over the horses. Yellow dot should be scrapped; I think there's a better location to settle to nab that gold to the SW, by the river. We need to scout it out to be sure.

I suggest we put off the Purple dot until we can find copper & iron; our third city should gather a vital resource.

BTW, which direction did Napoleon come from?

Got it, ill play my turns later today.

Hmm. The Brown dot area, etc., is over by the river... any important farmed tiles should be easily gotten...

As for one left of the green X, let me just say, er... gesticulate Right on with that call. Get's 3 resources, two of them food= very good. I don't really know much about the inland sea map, but it doesn't look to have many hills.

As for purple, the only reason I wanted to make it priority was because that was the direction Napoleon came from (thought I had mentioned that; I have a problem for being not very observant when it comes to writing etc ).

I think that settles it. As we explore more about our area, I think the dot map will progress better.

Anyway, it's off to class. Got an obscenely busy day today.

--Zalson

Ok my comments about the dotmap:

I think the first city we settle has to be on the best location possible, I agree with lemmer about the 1 West of green X. It gives us 2 food resources, a decent amount of production with the forests and marble, and a river. A good site for a commerce oriented city. with green X we get some extra plains and 1 flood plains more, with 1 west of green X we get corn and a grassland, I think thats better.

Purple dot is defiantely a good city site. I think we should wait though because its a decent distance away and can put some maintenance crunch on us. I would suggest this as our fourth city.. hopefully we can get it fast enough, because its strong.

Brown dot is also good, however I think brown X will be a better choice so the city has no overlap with the capital. We have to scout that area first, I propose brown X for our third city because the silver will pay for the city by itself. And it gives us horses, we can either go brown X and build horse based army or find copper and go for Axeman. Another reason I like this city is because it looks like it has the best production capabilities near our Capital.

With the switch to green dot, I dont think yellow dot is viable anymore. I have a feeling there may be some flood plains in that blacked out area south west of the gold, which will make for a better city cite. We'll see about that.

Teal dot is a somewhat weak city and I dont think we should prioritize it.. until later. Plus we have horses on the other side so the only thing that city would do it deny horses to Huayana, and its possible he has horses somewhere else.

Purple's maintenance should not be a problem; remember, we're Organized. Distance doesn't hurt us as much as other civs. My main concern is Support. Purple is too far from the capital to quickly get reinforcements if it's attacked; settling Green first will put our troops a bit closer, and we should prepare a road & guard the site with archers before we send the settler up there.

Anyway, our 3rd city will depend on where the copper/iron is. Horses come in second compared to the almighty metals. We should hold off the discussion until we discover copper; it'll affect our dot maps. And be sure to push back that fog to the west so we can see what's surrounding the yellow & brown dots.

ah right, I forgot about organized . Anyways, im going to go play my turns now.

Turns Completed...

Summary:
Settler Completed and New york founded
Bronze Working and Writing researched
Masonry from hut
Barracks completed in Washington
Copper hooked up

I start by checking out our surroundings in more detail. Switch settler in Washington to Barracks. We will switch back to settler next turn since we had growth due in 1 turn .

Judaism Fiadl 2320 BC. Get Masonry from hut in 2280 BC. Bronze working complete in 2080, I switch to slavery immediately since I have no choice with these rules . Heres the location of our copper, nice!!



Anyways I researched writing after bronze working since I couldnt think of anything else which would be good. I put research onto Alphabet, next person can change that if they want since only 1 turn has been put into it. Anyways, heres my suggested Dotmap now.



Purple dot IMO should be first, because its really the only good production site near our starting location. Teal and Orange dot after Purple, Red dot lowest in terms of Priority. Tell me what you guys think.

And heres the save, I forgot to change the date on the save file, since I just saved over the other one.

one more thing, the hill 2N of Washington needs only 1 more turn's to complete its mine, I was mining it but I found the copper so I switched my worker to mine the copper.

Ucel, you've got 20 turns.

Got it, will play today.

Idea: Wouldn't it be more cost effective (and helpful) to chop out Stonehenge in Washington? We have only one nearby Calendar resource, so it's not like that would be a major problem... just a thought.

Nice turns Qwack.

--Zalson

1) 1640 BC
Chopping stonehemge seems like an idea, moved worker to the hill

2) 1600 BC
Washington: Worker->Stonehenge

Barbarian archer emerged and attached our one. Exp up

3) 1560 BC
Stonehenge build somewhere. That's about chopping Started an archer for the 3rd city

4) 1520 BC
Signed OB with rest of the neighbours. We got 9g from our "Stonehenge"

5) 1480 BC
Met Hatsy. She's on the top of the score board. We are on the bottom.

6) 1440 BC
Washington: Archer->Settler

7) 1400
8) 1360 BC
Instead of wonder we helped ourselves to chop the settler. Ready soon.

9) 1320 BC
Starting Road to New York

10) 1280 BC
New York: Obelisk->Barracks

11) 1240 BC
Washington: Settler->Axeman
Met Gandhi, the silent buddhist

12) 1200 BC
Our brave archer died on the wild plains. Hail to the hero

13) 1160 BC
More barbs. They tried New York. Now we have promoted archer there
Purple Dot built, started Obelisk there.

14) 1120 BC
And meet the last neighbour: Alex. Super! 3 aggresive, from which 2 are our neighbours.

15) 1080 BC
They start already. Vicky ask us to close the borderd to Napoleon. Sorry my lady, but we have him closer than you.

16) 1040 BC
Alphabet->Math
Traded Poly for writing with HC

17) 1000 BC
Napoleon wanted Pottery .
I think we can risk an early war, so said NO.
Traded Poly for Priesthood with Vicky. Maybe not the best bid, but opened us CoL

Only Gandhi cannot write yet, but he offers us only Meditation for this tech. Noone knows Alphabet, I leave it for the next player.

The world as we know it now:




And the save