Katie Starts 4000BC ...

Eggolas

Warlord
Joined
Mar 16, 2006
Messages
286
Monarch level, large map.

I thought I'd try Catherine of Russia for a change. The starting position was interesting. Not gold, but three sea resources in the fat cross if I just inched over to the west and build on the hill.

Research Fishing, make another scout, move east with scout ... and the hut gives up BW, which appears in Moscow.

A GPP farm is probably in order if I can figure out how to make one. Or a science City.

Although I was starting a second scout, I think I'll change the build order to: Worker, Warrior, Work Boat. What do you all think?
 
I'll check that save out after I finish with the last one you gave me. I assume that the second save is with the BW discovery? Also, what speed is this at, marathon again?
 
Eggolas said:
Although I was starting a second scout, I think I'll change the build order to: Worker, Warrior, Work Boat. What do you all think?

After staring at it a while, I think your build order is broken.

I looked at a bunch of different ideas until one finally gelled. "You just got a magic teleport, bringing you 53 turns closer to axemen. Why are you planning to build a warrior?"


I like worker first. His first job when he pops out is to chop a workboat. The workboat improves the fish (the best sea based tile) and kicks the city from +3F to +5F. The worker now mines the copper (the base land based tile) and I think just finishes it when the city grows to size two. Now what?

I'd be juggling barracks, fishing boats, and axemen in the build queue at this point. Which means the tech after Fishing is Wheel.

After that, I think you have options. The land tiles are food neutral, so you can certainly go to Pottery, cottage the bejesus out of everything, and use the seafood tiles only when you need to grow.

Or you can just admit that the the Fairy Hut Mother has summoned you to war, and have at it. Scout finds targets, worker builds road to targets, Axemen capture targets. No Pottery necessary.

In either case, your health and military problems have been solved here, so I'd be looking on the religious branch, trying to pick up a religion, some techs to support specialists, and maybe a wonder or two to build. Parthenon leaps to mind, since I don't see any good way to convert the food to something useful short of some specialists.

Long term, I think you are right - this is a GP farm with kickin' production for building wonders - you keep a team of workers near by to retool it as necessary, but most of the time the mission is grow grow grow. So look towards transferring the palace when you get a chance.


Edit: um, I'm going to leave that there, but I think I've discovered that I don't know what I'm talking about. But having experimented a bit with Quiche... how about growing to size two with warriors, then pop rushing a pair of workboats?
 
OK, time to actually play this one out. The biggest problem I see for Katie is the happiness limitation and the need for Calendar to unlock the silk, dye, sugar and spices to grow the cities.

A CS slingshot is fairly easy and should be completed around 1100 BC I estimate.

However, there is stone to the northwest on the way to Germany. Anyone think that a Pyramids would be better and possible? I've rarely managed a Pyramids without stone and being industrious and I'd hate to get a few hundred gold in exchange for giving up a CS Slingshot.

As for techs from huts, I'll not say too much except that Bronze Working, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry are available early.
 
Eggolas said:
OK, time to actually play this one out. The biggest problem I see for Katie is the happiness limitation and the need for Calendar to unlock the silk, dye, sugar and spices to grow the cities.

A CS slingshot is fairly easy and should be completed around 1100 BC I estimate.

However, there is stone to the northwest on the way to Germany. Anyone think that a Pyramids would be better and possible? I've rarely managed a Pyramids without stone and being industrious and I'd hate to get a few hundred gold in exchange for giving up a CS Slingshot.

As for techs from huts, I'll not say too much except that Bronze Working, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry are available early.

For the CS slingshot vs Stone, I think it depends on if you're building Stonehenge first or not.

The bad news is that you'll need to research more techs in order to accomplish the slingshot. The Great Prophet (from Stonehenge) you would be using for CoL would need to be used for Theology (post Monotheism, adding yet another tech to research).

The good news is that you can pull off a modified slingshot. Grab Masonry, then resume the normal CS slingshot, but use The Oracle for Code of Laws. After CoL, grab Monotheism, and burn a Great Prophet to research Theology. Then use a second Great Prophet to aid in researching Civil Service.

Not quite as efficient of a slingshot, but certainly more flexible, and probably the best way to get to CS on Monarch if you're researching Masonry early. You could take a risk and try to research Code of Laws (thus using The Oracle for CS), but I think the AI will beat you to The Oracle either while you're building it or while you're researching CoL (though you should have The Oracle prebuilt and ready to pop the same turn you complete CoL).

Not that the AI isn't known to occasionally "ignore" certain wonders. It's entirely possible that you'll get lucky and the AI won't start on The Oracle in time to beat you to it, even if you do opt to research CoL. Still, that's really a huge variable.
 
VoiceOfUnreason said:
After staring at it a while, I think your build order is broken.

I looked at a bunch of different ideas until one finally gelled. "You just got a magic teleport, bringing you 53 turns closer to axemen. Why are you planning to build a warrior?"

I like worker first. His first job when he pops out is to chop a workboat. The workboat improves the fish (the best sea based tile) and kicks the city from +3F to +5F. The worker now mines the copper (the base land based tile) and I think just finishes it when the city grows to size two. Now what?

I'd be juggling barracks, fishing boats, and axemen in the build queue at this point. Which means the tech after Fishing is Wheel.

After that, I think you have options. The land tiles are food neutral, so you can certainly go to Pottery, cottage the bejesus out of everything, and use the seafood tiles only when you need to grow.

Or you can just admit that the the Fairy Hut Mother has summoned you to war, and have at it. Scout finds targets, worker builds road to targets, Axemen capture targets. No Pottery necessary.

In either case, your health and military problems have been solved here, so I'd be looking on the religious branch, trying to pick up a religion, some techs to support specialists, and maybe a wonder or two to build. Parthenon leaps to mind, since I don't see any good way to convert the food to something useful short of some specialists.

Long term, I think you are right - this is a GP farm with kickin' production for building wonders - you keep a team of workers near by to retool it as necessary, but most of the time the mission is grow grow grow. So look towards transferring the palace when you get a chance.

Sorry, but I think you're right about the worker first strategy and then axes. Also, if I had followed your early axe war strategy, I would have probably captured Berlin with its three gem mines! Oh well, an opportunity lost.

It's now 1180 BC. I razed the German copper producing city near the Egyptian border, pillaged all of the gem mines and generally tried to keep the Germans from expanding south into my area. St Petersburg was founded to the NE, capturing the pigs, horses and corn field. Novogard was founded to the NW, capturing the cows, the wine and the stone, with the silk to be in the third ring of expanded territory.

Four turns from Code of Laws and six turns from the Oracle for the completed slingshot! Happiness is indeed becoming the major problem. I'll need calendar. Also, I may have to take out a pesky German city south of Berlin to capture the lone Dye available.

Further expansions look possible ... to the east five tiles along the coast to capture the cows and the Wheat and WNW to the hill to provide a buffer and defense position vs. Napoleon who is saber rattling already! North to the spices is also a possibility. Moscow's financial strength is showing though, as is St. Petersburg's cottage industry. Novogard is probably more properly a production site, albeit a so-so one. It was there to capture the stone primarily and to head off German expansion to the south any further. I probably sited it incorrectly ... the hill may have been better.

There are three promoted axemen positioned next to Berlin to forestall further movement of settlers while I land grab. I need to know where the iron is though . . . macemen and crossbows will be the next military acquisition so that I can finally take Berlin on the hill. I want those gem mines and they won't be nice and trade them to me. :lol: I guess I forgot to state earlier that Berlin is the prize revealed so far on this map, a coastal city with cows, two grassland gem mines and a grassland/hill gem mine in its fat cross and a sugar resource in the tier 3 expansion!

If the Slingshot comes off, then I have some research choices to make: Mathematics/Calendar to unlock some happiness for Moscow to expand, Alphabet to trade with England, France, the Aztecs, Spain and Egypt ... but the requests for tribute will come quickly or to Iron Working to reveal the iron and pave the way to maces and xbows. Or ... Monarchy and Hereditary rule for the happiness imposed on the cities.

I'm not really sure which is the better approach. I'll give it a shot tonight if I can. My sense is that I'll be razing German cities near my border for awhile longer. :D I really hate the Germans and Napoleon.
 
Eggolas said:
Sorry, but I think you're right about the worker first strategy and then axes.

After staring at this position all morning, I've cleared up a bunch of my ideas, and discovered an answer that I think works beautifully.

It sort of works backwards. What's the workers first job? Chopping is wrong, the first job is to mine the copper. Second job is to connect it, which opens up the axes and spears. So building warriors while mining is a bit silly. Barracks is one option, but it's a little bit slow (you probably want to get one defender out before the barracks finishes).

The build that makes the most sense is the workboat. You can build the workboat in 15 turns at size 1; if the workboat starts as you begin mining, you actually save a turn (I've only counted it out, not actually played it), though you might choose to take some extra food or commerce instead.

Next realization - you only need one workboat. The land is food neutral - you can run all those tiles without needing to work the ocean, so the seafood is only used to grow quickly (presuming that you first cottage the tiles by the river, so they also get the financial bonus), and for the healthy.

So I can throw away all my crazy schemes where workboats happen first, to reduce time to build the worker. That also means that my crazy scheme to milk out two scouts (or a scout and a warrior) without delaying fishing is useless in practice (though an interesting exercise in tile management, trying to get exactly 60 hammers and exactly 192 research, within the constraints of the border pop, and launching the first scout in the minimum time).

The boring scheme is worker (24 turns), workboat (14 turns). You don't have an immediately useful build after the workboat unless the copper is connected. And you can't connect the copper until the wheel is available. You need 17 turns to research fishing and another 26 to get the wheel. The worker needs 7 more turns of training after fishing, which means when he pops out there are 19 turns left. The mine takes only 12 turns. You can trade some food/hammers for some commerce, and bring the wheel in another 3 turns, but any more than that and you are pushing the settler out.

On the other hand, it only takes 7 turns to push the scout out. That will delay the research by 7C, which delays fishing by a turn (who cares, we aren't using it yet). The worker shows up on turn 31, and now we can good with the commerce to bring in the research time if necessary.

So I think the optimal run is
finish the scout (7 turns) working the copper.
train a worker, working the floodplains.

Worker starts improving the copper.

Now it gets a bit micro. The worker and the research are in sync if the number on the research bar matches the number of turns remaining on the mine AFTER the worker has moved that turn. A quick check of the research bar shows we're running late with the tech. Some scribbled math shows that we are 4 points late (it looks like three, but the very last turn on the tech we won't be working the floodplains, so we need to cover that). Working the clams for two turns catches us up in research.

As soon as the mine is finished, start working it. It should indicate that the workboat arrives in 6 turns. Wheel comes in on the dot, so start building the road. Note that where the tech and the worker were in synch, the build is one number lower than the worker.

When the workboat is built, the copper isn't connected! No worries; put a dummy build in the city. Have the worker finish the road. Now go back to the city, and select the axeman.

Work the copper for one more turn, while the boat gets to the fish. next turn start working the fish; when the city grows to size two, put the new guy back on the mine. Worker probably improves the other mine (since pottery won't be available yet).

What I really like about this is that the opening move leverages both Hunting (by rushing an early scout) and BW (using the 1F/2P tile that wouldn't be available otherwise) to execute the rush. That we take advantage of the unimproved fish to get the Wheel done on time is just gravy.
 
Following up on the copper mine first strategy, I built some axemen, letting the food neutral sites govern. The result was the destruction of the German civilization and the capture of Berlin and Munich (copper mine), complete with the three gem mines! The Oracle CS still went off and the holy city became Berlin!

Fascinating.

P.S. I finally played this out with the worker/work boat start. Despite having the three early techs from huts, it was an early game struggle, with aggressive civs expanding towards me from all directions and a couple demading tribute early because of military weakness caused by the Oracle blackout period. It was a space race condition, but domination or conquest was clearly available after Cossacks.

The first war was an cat rush. The second was a Cossack obliteration and set the stage for the space win as I needed a 30 degree latitude production city for the Elevator.
 
Top Bottom