SGOTM 01 - Smurkz

Welcome to your C_IV SGOTM 1 Team Thread. Please use it for all internal team communication, turn logs and discussions. Subscribe to it to receive notifications, and do not visit the other team threads for this game until you have finished. Please also subscribe to the Maintenance Thread for this game, where teams and staff may post non-spoiler information of general interest. I hope you enjoy the game.

This game will be played in Civ4, patched to v1.61.

This first SGOTM will not feature any advanced variant.. the winner simply will be the team that wins the game at the earliest game date with either domination or a diplomatic victory. All victory conditions are still enabled though, with exception of Space Race, so you have to avoid getting another type of victory (and of course prevent the AIs from winning).

Individual start files for all teams will be available on the SGOTM Progress and Results Page at midnight, server local time, at the start of May 12.

Here's the start position.


Map Parameters
Playable Civ - Hapshepsut of Egypt
World size - Standard
Difficulty - Monarch
Landform - Mystery
Game Speed - Epic

Permanent Alliances are turned on (can form permanent alliances after either communism or fascism is researched)
Space race is disabled.
Egypt is locked into war with Huayna Capac of the Incas.
Egypt is locked into peace with an unknown civilization.

The map is hand built, and therefore may not have a standard configuration.

Please visit the following links to ensure that you are adequately prepared:
Civ4 SGOTM reference thread

Notes:

A. ONLY Civilization4 v1.61 is supported for this SGOTM. All teams will compete for a single award - the Gold Laurels.

B. All teams must play the sponsored variant - victory will be awarded for the fastest victory by either domination or diplomacy.

C. All saved game files uploaded to the server are parsed through software that extracts and archives data about your save, including reload count for each turn set.

Good luck to your team, and remember rule #1: Enjoy your game

Signing in.

Edit: Just curious which victory type everyone prefers. Myself, I could go either. One thing though, in my diplo HoF attempts I've found the fastest way to win a diplo game is by controlling all the votes through population. In other words, I destroy all other civs except for one, in his OCC, and than win diplomatically by population control. When you have over 90% of the population you win just by voting for yourself. Not sure on the exact percentage needed to win. Need to look that up.

Checkin' in.

Unfortunately I will not be able to say a lot on strategy from experience, as I bought Civ4 just two weeks ago. I'll post a lot anyway, please just keep in mind that this is mostly first impressions. Sofar my experience is one too easy space win on Prince, and several Monarch starts as Egypt, just to get a feel for what I can expect.

I have not played on Epic speed yet, will try to do that soon to see the difference with normal. I find normal speed to be rather epic already, to be honest.

What is the difference between the victory conditions? Diplo requires a tech, but less warring than domination I guess. 90% of world pop sounds too much, but I don't know the figures. Our Creative trait pushes out borders quickly, that helps with domination. The Spiritual trait seems largely useless - but maybe I'm biased against temples.

Some other issues we may want to discuss:

• Start location. I would move SW: one extra shield in the city center, more varied terrain, cow in range, and fewer floodplains (better health). Health remains a problem and we'll want the cow improved asap.
• Research: straight for Alphabet worked well in my test starts, and I could trade Writing for most of the techs from the first age, and hold back Alphabet for a long time to keep playing the broker. We already have two of the prereq techs, we need the horsies tech soon anyway for our chariots, and for that cow of course. With all those floodplains I think a small detour to Pottery for cottages before going for Writing will pay off.
  I think the alternative choices are weaker: the best would be to try for bronze first, but then we'll probably be too late in getting to alphabet to really profit from the tech trades. Besides, we don't really have a lot of forests to chop it seems, and hopefully we do not need an early army of axemen.
• Early military. The War Chariot doesn't seem well suited for city attack, but is an excellent and cheap field unit, for scouting, settler escort, offense and offensive defense (mainly vs barbs). Its main drawback is that we need to have horses nearby, but if so then this is by far our best option IMO. Btw, I find the AI's to be perfectly peaceful early on (on normal aggression): they'll run massive armies around your undefended capital and not even think of attacking. Funny.
• Build order. Worker first? Warriors first for scouting?
• Our traits. How can we use them?
• Do we want to try for a religion, for specific wonders, etc? My civ3 experience says to ignore it, but maybe that's not wise...
• Capac. Is probably not too close, or those Quecha's (attack 2 IIRC) would be a real pain. So possibly we can ignore him for now.
• Forced peace with one civ. Don't know what to think of this. If that civ gets too big, we'll have to fight by proxy. I don't know how to do that. If it doesn't get too big, then does this matter?

Signing in for now. Glad to be part of an established team.

I've limited Civ4 experience still, winning a few Noble level games. I just uploaded a loss however in GOTM-6. Screwed around thinking I could win by ss, while I could have attempted a diplo victory. Lost by ss.

I'll read over initial comments, but my main weakness right now is focus - tech options for victory goal.

I imagine we'll want to decide bfore play begins as to which victory option we want: domination or diplomacy. Each require set approach I'd imagine.

I did notice my name was first in AlanH's listing on the sign-up thread. I hope that doesn't mean I go first. Not a problem w/ good advice. But, if we can swap the lineup a bit, no worries here.

Looking forward to my first SGOTM in the Civ series. I've played several GOTMs in Civ3, et al and a number of SGs.

Reporting for duty!

@dojoboy: Welcome to Team Smurkz!
Even if you're new to the team you're obviously a long-timer at CF, and I'm sure you'll make a great addition to the team.

I'm happy to keep playing team captain if that's what the team wants. I'm in even worse a situation than zyxy though, I still don't have the game. I've been meaning to get it for quite some time, but never got around to it. I will get it as soon as I get the opportunity. As a consequence though, I shouldn't play first, both because I don't have the game and because I've never played it.

From what I've heard whispered, military VCs are a lot harder to achieve than in III. I'm also a builder at heart, and since this is my first CIV game ever I wouldn't mind going the diplomacy route. Count that as my vote.

I'll be sure to read up on some of the existing info and join the discussion - game or not!

dojoboy said:

I did notice my name was first in AlanH's listing on the sign-up thread. I hope that doesn't mean I go first.

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Someone had to be first in the list. dojoboy comes before the others, alphabetically Your team should make all decisions affecting performance. I just have to get you to the starting line, fire the gun, and watch the rest with great interest.

Niklas said:

I'm happy to keep playing team captain if that's what the team wants.

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I have no problem with you being team captain, in fact I was hoping for it. You did an excellent job in the last two SGOTM's so I was hoping you'd be team captain this one too. You may not have any experience, but you do have great abilities as a leader.

Been looking forward to this game.

Checking in.
Thank you for having me on the team. I'm really looking forward to it.

Niklas is the leader of Team Smurkz, I don't see any reason to change that just because a roman numeral has changed.

I don't think lack of experience will be a problem here for those that haven't played much IV, it will be easy to overcome with the great analytical skills you guys have shown over on the Civ III side.

While my wife pre-ordered the game and gave it to me as a surprise the day after it was released I wasn't able to play until after my wallet recovered from Christmas and I could afford to upgrade my computer (late January). At first I was a little disappointed, but I've grown to really like it a lot. I haven't played any single player III for while.

I'm still not that great of a player, I've been playing at Prince and am ready to move up a notch. Sometimes all of the options become overwhelming and I stray from my plan. I have learned a few things:

1) No building is bad - Maintenance isn't tied to buildings, just # of cities & distance. We're free to build anything we wish to spend the shields on. If we're having happiness issues, there's nothing to keep us from building a temple if we have the shields to do so.

2) City specialization is a good way to go - I was a tough sell on this one. I thought that being flexible would get better results. But I found that you really take some muscle away from National Wonders by putting them in middle of the road cities. Putting the Heroic Epic and West Point in your Military city gives you powerful units really fast. Building the Ironworks in a city geared toward producing hammers pays much higher dividends than putting it in a diverse city. Building farms to support specialists in one city yields better results than spreading GP points too thin throughout your empire.

Coastal citys are very powerful - They're almost always great commerce cities. Harbors, and the additional 50% trade route yield that they provide are a big boost to commerce. Working coastal tiles provides more gold than working a river tile. And having seafood within the city radius is a big food boost. Plus, if you mange to get the Colossus (+2 g in all water tiles), or the Great Lighthouse (+2 trade routes in all coastal cities) you can really make a lot of cash, and keep the research slider at a higher rate.

It's important to have a plan - My biggest fault. We're going to need a plan and stick to it. Everybody needs to be on board because there are so many options, and it's very easy to stray. These plans can be broken down into separate research plans, city settlement plans, military plans, GP plan, etc. Of course the hardest part is making them all come together in our master plan.

Chopping is powerful - While they nerfed it in the 1.61 patch, it's still a big boost. 20 shields is a lot, and can really reduce the build time of Settlers and Workers. Cities stop growing, and the computer switches around the worked tiles during these builds so I like to aid these builds with a chop. Sometimes a chop can be the difference between getting a Wonder or not. Of course this has to be mitigated vs. the health benefits of having forests around.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, as I think of more (or the conversation strikes a cord) I'll put them out there. Like I said, I'm not a great player, but keeping these things in mind have made for progress in my games.

Regarding this specific game.

I think the most powerful city site visible is 1s (red x) of the Warrior. It is a powerhouse commerce spot, is coastal, has the health benefit of the river, can get some hammers from the cows and the plains/forest to the South. and grow like a weed. I would consider moving the Settler there. The other option (and the one I favor at the moment is to move the Settler 1N+1NW to put the capital in a position to chop freely with all of the woods around it. This would save the commerce spot to be settled down the road.
(Another note: ICS is dead, and overlap is something I try to avoid. The best way to grow your empire without going broke is to expand your cultural borders)



I think early research could hinge on where we decide to settle. I like the mining -> BW route to be able to chop the first Settler. This would go well with settling the blue x. I also like knowing where the copper is (if any) to aid in planning city sites. At Monarch, I don't think we'd have much chance at founding an early religion, so I'd avoid that part of the tech tree until religion has spread to us, and we need temples or monastaries.

I've had much earlier wins by domination than by diplomacy. And when I do win by diplomacy, it's by having 1 or 2 friends, and taking cities from those that don't like me. Basically controlling a large portion of the voting %. I think you need 2/3 of the vote for a diplomatic victory and # of votes per civ is weighted by population. It takes me a long time to research to mass media, although I usually go for diplomatic if a) I'm still playing when mass media comes in, and b) I have a chance for a diplomatic win.

I'm not opposed to going for a diplomatic victory though. I think it would be fun to try for one from the start, and see how fast it can be done.

zyxy said:

What is the difference between the victory conditions? Diplo requires a tech, but less warring than domination I guess.

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A diplomatic victory is a lot harder than it was in civ3. You really have to pay attention to your relations with each civ and their relations with each other. It’s very easy to screw up your relations with civ A by trading with their worst enemy. The hard part is figuring out who their worst enemy is.

SGOTM parameters said:

Egypt is locked into war with Huayna Capac of the Incas.
Egypt is locked into peace with an unknown civilization.

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WW really sucks in civ4 IMO. Hopefully HC is fairly close (I doubt it since it’s a custom map) so we can destroy him early.

I’m curious who we are locked into peace with, as we ought to really work on our relations with them. I’ve never played with a locked peace with only one civ, so I’m unsure how it affects our relations.

Permanent alliances our turned on and can be very nice if used. Please note that having a permanent alliance with someone means their population and land area is included when calculating the % required for a domination victory. In fact permanent alliances our the only way for you to win a OCC domination or OCC cultural victory. Here’s an article that may be helpful:

Permanent Alliance Guide by WastingTime

zyxy said:

The Spiritual trait seems largely useless - but maybe I'm biased against temples.

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I’m not big on the Spiritual trait either, though I do really like the no anarchy. Can be very helpful as it allows quick civic and religion switches.

zyxy said:

Build order. Worker first? Warriors first for scouting?

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I’ve gotten to the point my first build is always a Worker. I usually try and line it up so Pottery is learned just before my Worker finishes. Early cottages are a definite advantage in this game.

zyxy said:

Do we want to try for a religion, for specific wonders, etc? My civ3 experience says to ignore it, but maybe that's not wise...

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A religion is nice only if you pursue it. What I mean is if we actively attempt to spread our religion through missionaries. If we are going for a domination victory than I would say instead to just let someone else create the religion and we just capture the Holy City.

Wonders are definitely different than in Civ3. I typically only build them in relation to how the city is specialized. Oh yeah, city specialization is very big in civ4.

Rather than me attempt to explain anything (as I’ll probably mess it up), I’ve listed a few articles you all might find interesting.

Technology Research Explained…. by Requies
Unit Maintainence Explained by Roland Johansen
Technologies by DaveMcW

There’s several other good articles that I either can’t remember or have forgotten about. Hope this helps someone.

lurker's comment: CommandoBob, sort of, I guess, lurking in?

Glad you're part of Team Smurkz, dojoboy! And if you want to see what these guys can do, check out SGOTM 8 (Team Durkz) and SGOTM 9 (Team Smurkz).

Sadly, like Niklas, I do not have a copy of the game. I also do not a PC that can run the game, until my son gets home from college later this week. He likes CIV and had a full copy of the game on his machine but deleted it. (And I could not justify, even to myself, getting C3C and CIV in the same month!)

Have fun!

CommandoBob said:

lurker's comment:
Glad you're part of Team Smurkz, dojoboy! And if you want to see what these guys can do, check out SGOTM 8 (Team Durkz) and SGOTM 9 (Team Smurkz).

Click to expand...

Thanks much CB! I will read ya'lls expoits over the next couple days.

I came here to check out the start again, but my school's firewall is blocking the image - wierd. No problems at home.

I appreciate your frustration with not being able to play the game. My mac is not going to be able to power Civ4, so I'm relegated to carrying my laptop home daily. Well, that is what their meant for, eh.

About this game: Which victory condition is most difficult you think, domination or diplomacy? If the consensus is domination, then we may be looking at a map with high water, reducing the area to dominated. Would this level the field against thos going for diplomacy? I'm inclined to believe that the map is designed to make domination difficulties equal to those inherent difficulties for diplomatic wins. Now, we are locked into war w/ the Incas, which doesn't help diplomacy if they smooge the other civs.

I believe I'm hedging toward a diplomatic win. Being locked into war w/ the Incans is going to force us to keep our rivals happy. There is also the possibility to hunt down the Incans ASAP and eradicate them, thus ending the state of war. I'm sure they're not going to be parked right next door however.

Methos makes a good point regarding population control in an earlier post. Removing the Incans will definitely rid ourselves of a population that will never vote for us.

How much time is lost when trying for a religion versus opting for growth and military techs? Is it critical. Is the religion critical? I personally don't think so. We can later convert to a smaller civ's religion (one not in the running), edging toward gaining their votes. In fact, we should be decidedly undecided on a religion, just like those Moors in Spain - converting to keep their heads. Is there a penalty for switching religions?

I like McLMan's thoughts on city placement, but one concern. Is it possible to lose our settler while moving unescorted?

One thing I'm looking forward to is how you guys specialize cities. Honestly in my Civ4 games, I rarely change citizens into any specialist type. :dojoboy ducks:

If we are locked into war w/ the Incans and locked into peace w/ a mystery civ, then is our mystery friend also locked into war with the Incans? If so, I don't know how I feel about possibilities of their location to one another

More later...

Nice to see you lurking, CB! And welcome everyone!

Well, I think domination goes better with my playstyle: whenever those AI come with their outrageous demands, I get the strong urge to dial up my cavalry commander and tell him about our new training grounds . But I am happy to try for diplo, and learn to manipulate the AI into liking me.
I would guess that even then some warring will be needed. We probably have to take out Capac, and we cannot be friends with everyone. However, for a diplo win, we need a careful selection of friends and foes, depending on their mutual relations: a friend of my friend is my friend, and such.

@Niklas: you're right, warfare is harder, especially early on. First, most units have special features that make them more effective against certain others. When you attack a stack of units, the best defender is chosen depending on which unit attacks. That puts the attacker obviously at a disadvantage. On top of that, some of the early units are especially strong in city defense.
Another problem is maintenance. Corruption and building maintenance are gone now, and instead there is city maintenance. One component is due to distance to capital (or FP), the other is due to number of cities. The ugly part is that the second component goes up in every city when you acquire a new one, which means that new cities can be a drain on the economy. Later in the game you obtain means to do something about this (courts, and money making improvements), but it definitely limits expansion speed.

@Dojoboy, McLMan & Methos: thanks for the comments and the links. Very interesting, especially that micromanagement still helps to deal with overflows. Well, if it is true, then it's really unfortunate, and a display of rather bad programming IMO .

Concerning a religion: we don't stand a chance for the first ones anyway. Perhaps we can try to get one of the later three (Confucianism, Taoism, Islam). But if we want to be friends with someone, it might be good to try and adopt their religion. The AI seem to like it if you have fallen for their heathen religion instead of for one of your own .

On starting location: I am not too excited about McLMan's dotmap and would still like to move SW. So I have shamelessly stolen his map and added my pref so that we can compare. The pink and blue crosses are McLMan's spots, the green circle is mine:


Early game: wherever we settle, we will have 5 happy faces IIRC, and that will limit our city size until we get some luxes or other advanced stuff. There is no way AFAIK to resolve unhappiness in the early stage of the game, so it is better to avoid it.

Floodplains locations have serious disease problems, and every sick guy eats one more food (don't ask me the rationale of that one, but this is the way it is.) Each of the three spots starts on fresh water, so gets 4 healthy faces, with +0.5 for each forest in the city radius, and -0.4 for each fp, -0.25 for each jungle. So the blue cross scores best (ignoring the 10 tiles we cannot see): 3 forests and 3 fp makes for +0 or +1 healthy guy, for 4 or 5 total (I am not sure how rounding works). Green circle does pretty well too: 2 or 3 forests, and 6 fp makes for -1 health and a total of 3, and if we improve and connect the cow then we get back to 4 total. Pink cross is troublesome: 10 fp and perhaps one forest makes for -4 health for a total of 0, or the grand total of 1 with the cow. Of course these numbers will all go up as we gain more food sources, but that will take some time.

Now let's see how much each city can produce at size 5, assuming settler or worker production (most costly builds early on).
[For Niklas: during worker or settler production the city does not grow. Surplus food is translated into shield at a 1:1 rate. Settlers/workers only cost shields, no pop. FP's are like in civ3, a herded cow is 3 food, 3 shield.]
The blue cross can work 2 irrigated fp's and 3 forests for 10 spt (3 from city center), losing nothing to health problems probably. Of course there may be better tiles in the fog, but we cannot know that now. The green circle can work the herded cow and 4 irrigated fp's for 15 spt (4 from city center), where 1 spt loss due to illness has been accounted for. The pink cross can work the herded cow and 4 irrigated fp's for 11 spt (3 from city center), with 4 spt sickness loss accounted for.

Long term: what can these cities be used for, and how do they fit in?
Blue cross: hardest to say because we can see only half the tiles. Based on that half, it is a not-too-good, not-too-bad city. No fancy tiles, but nothing really bad either. Less river tiles than the other two probably. It seems more central than the others which is good for a capital. The tiles to its east are probably wasted, and there seems to be mountain or tundra to its west.
Green circle: The most versatile of the three IMO. Has both high food and high shields tiles - this looks like a production powerhouse. Gets an extra shield in the city center. Its main problem are that tiles to its east are possibly wasted, although settling E or SE of the warrior would be ok-ish, with only 2-3 tiles overlap.
Pink cross: high food, low shields. This would be a good specialist farm, but I am not sure we want our capital in this role. The least centralized of the three probably, and low production means that building improvements will be a problem, in particular this town will not have a lot of time to construct units. Although it's coastal, it may not be a good naval base.

All in all, I like green best, followed by blue (but that's a bit of a gamble, and possibly gives us a very slow start). Pink is a troublesome spot I think.
Btw, a forest chop gives 20 shields only (or less if the forest is further away.) Each of these towns can generate that many shields early on in about 1.5 - 2 turns. So I think chops are not that great.

Though I like the pink dot, I do not like it as our capitol or first city. The pink dot will make an excellent GP farm. Build the Globe Theatre and National Epic there with everything irrigated, and we've got GP's coming out the wahzoo.

I probably like zyxy's green dot the most, as I really like settling on a plains hill. The only thing I worry is that we don't know what half the tiles are. Plus the capitol's city radius would overlap the future GP farm.

Welcome CB! I'm glad you're here. Just because you don't have doesn't mean you can't participate in our discussions. You're still Team Smurkz!

zyxy said:

Btw, a forest chop gives 20 shields only (or less if the forest is further away.)

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A forest adjacent to the city provides 30 shields, plus remember that once Mathematics has been researched we earn +50% shields from forest chops. The next tile over is when it drops to 20 shields.

IMO forests aren't worth it as much as improved land is. It isn't until Replaceable Parts before you can build a lumbermill, and that's just too long to wait to use it until its full potentional. I only don't chop if I don't need that tile or can't improve it. BTW, I typically use chops to rush wonders that I want, or a settler if really needed.

Edit: To keep from creating a triple post...

dojoboy said:

One thing I'm looking forward to is how you guys specialize cities. Honestly in my Civ4 games, I rarely change citizens into any specialist type. :dojoboy ducks:

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By specializing cities I personally don't mean through specialists, but instead by builds and terrain. A city located between two rivers with lots of grass tiles, floodplains, etc. can have cottages built throughout. Than build a library, great library, uni, observatory, oxfords university, and a lab and you've got a great science city. Swap those builds with a market, bank, and grocer and you've got a gold city. Do you see what I mean? It's not the specialist, but the builds and the terrain around it.

Take a city with a couple good food resources and lots of hills and you've got a major production city. Build a library here would be wasteful, but building a forge, heroic epic, pentagon, factory, etc. and you've got a production/military city. The pick dot would make an excellent GP farm as I've mentioned earlier.

Sorry for the long edit. I tend to take too long explaining things. Civ4 definitely requires city specialization.

zyxy said:

All in all, I like green best, followed by blue (but that's a bit of a gamble, and possibly gives us a very slow start). Pink is a troublesome spot I think.

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I agree that green is the best site if we're looking at one city. But the thing that troubles me the most about it is the overlap we'd end up with in order to take advantage of the tiles to it's East. Also, I wouldn't go with farms in the fp's at red x, but cottages. Turn it into a commerce city. It is also quite possibly "behind the lines" and can be built much later on as a backfill city after expansion toward our rivals.

Methos said:

By specializing cities I personally don't mean through specialists, but instead by builds and terrain. A city located between two rivers with lots of grass tiles, floodplains, etc. can have cottages built throughout. Than build a library, great library, uni, observatory, oxfords university, and a lab and you've got a great science city. Swap those builds with a market, bank, and grocer and you've got a gold city. Do you see what I mean? It's not the specialist, but the builds and the terrain around it.

Take a city with a couple good food resources and lots of hills and you've got a major production city. Build a library here would be wasteful, but building a forge, heroic epic, pentagon, factory, etc. and you've got a production/military city. The pick dot would make an excellent GP farm as I've mentioned earlier.

Click to expand...

Ah, I understand now. To what percentage of city MM does converting citizens to specialist take in any given game?

Methos said:

A forest adjacent to the city provides 30 shields, plus remember that once Mathematics has been researched we earn +50% shields from forest chops. The next tile over is when it drops to 20 shields.

IMO forests aren't worth it as much as improved land is. It isn't until Replaceable Parts before you can build a lumbermill, and that's just too long to wait to use it until its full potentional. I only don't chop if I don't need that tile or can't improve it. BTW, I typically use chops to rush wonders that I want, or a settler if really needed.

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You are correct about the 30 shields, I was still talking about normal game speed. At Epic speed, shield/food/gold requirements for buildings/units, growth, and techs are all multiplied by 1.5 it seems, and so are worker turns. Oddly enough, culture rate is not. Obviously, movement rate is also the same.

I agree that forests are not valuable terrain, except early on when they provide some healthy points, and it is decent terrain before improvements. So the main question IMO is how soon we want to chop, and the urgency of bronze working. Well, I guess we could start researching animal husbandry first, and then take it from there, depending on the land and resources we find around us.

Sorry for the long edit. I tend to take too long explaining things. Civ4 definitely requires city specialization.

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You are explaining it very well, thank you! [size=-1]And your posts are shorter than mine... [/size]

Hi , Marc Aurel checking in.

Having just threaded with Niklas, McLMan and zyxy in Civ3 SGOTM 10, it’s fun to play the first CIV GOTM in parallel. BTW, a special hello to CommandoBob! Great to know you are lurking to be sure Smurkz keeps together. And another special hearty welcome to dojoboy - the new Smurkz on the block.

What can I say to the situation?

The start

The trait.
My general start is to acquire as much land and with that resources as possible. These resources are even more important in CIV than in Civ3. However you can much easier trade them as long as you have something to trade with. As everybody knows already – building up much cities early cripples your research capabilities by huge city maintenance. And conquering cities even makes this factor worse. So I am not interested early on in cities that don’t give me a special thing I need for civilisation growth. The way I try to claim a huge part of the land is to block other civs out early. Our special creative ability is very useful for this by earl pushing our borders to distance 2 from city center. If we do not sign any “open borders” treaty we will keep also galleys out of our “to be settled territory” in the future, since they cannot navigate on the oceans. If we block the shore and the shallow water tiles the enemy ships are banned. For that strategy we need an early good knowledge of the landmass to find a suitable blocking line. Normally that takes 2 – 3 cities, what is exactly the number we can build without huge impact on city maintenance costs.

The capital.

I concur to zyxys comment on our need for the cow early on for health purposes. We have too much floodplain tiles around and will suffer heavy unhealthy malus. Additionally cows give very good resources. Like zyxy I think SW is best to start at. We are in range of the woods for chopping and have 6 floodplains in reach, what is definitely enough. OTOH we would have to look for a possible blocking line in the west (north/south), since the east features the shoreline.

Military

Zyxy is right. AI’s are peaceful early on, besides Huana Caipac in this game. So we need to know where he is. If he is not close, what I suspect we need our military only for the barbs. That will be a problem if we go for settling a blocking line somewhere else. OTOH these barbs then build the cities for us and we only need to conquer their cities when we can afford them. That stat has often worked in my games. Only thing is, one has to keep an eye on a strong enough military. But since this is for free in the early stages and sizes that is no problem and chariots are a good choice.

Build order.

I normally play worker first. Since we have agri from the start, we can fast irrigate one floodplain making a (4fd /1 gold) tile after getting (3 fd 3 hammers / 1 gold) tile with the cow, that’s should be best, but we should calculate this in detail later on. After that a warrior is obvious IMHO.

Research
Since we are at the shore of the same river than the cow we wouldn’t have needed the wheel early on, but we have it as a start tech. Since we also have agriculture we should head for animal husbandry asap .- Once because of working the effective cow - twice because of finding the horses early on. After that alphabet at least is a choice that can handle every way the game goes somehow by trading for the required tech when possible. One word to the prince players – getting the techs you want by trade becomes more difficult on higher levels (monarch emperor &#8230 Depending on your power ranking, the AI’s are less willing to trade their techs with you, even if they would benefit from the trade. Religion is no way in this scenario IMHO. The reason is simple – if you don’t have mysticism from the start you normally are too late either for Buddhism or Hinduism. Only in case no civ with that starting techs is around, but I don’t believe that’s the case. That normally also rules out Judaism. If one of the later religions becomes available, we already might have had a chance to conquer one of the holy cities. We will see later on.

@ Niklas : No better captain than you I can imagine – thank you for accepting this role!

I will have you all know that I really appreciate the analyses and comments you are providing . I feel that I've learnt a lot about this game just by reading this thread. And thanks for the links Methos, I'll be sure to read them and any others I can find.

Since I don't have that much to add to the discussion myself, I'm going to try to take the role of discussion leader. I will try to summarize where we stand on various issues, and what things that are left open and needs more thought and discussion. I think it will teach me something by having to formulate these summaries, and I'm sure that if I miss something or get something wrong you'll all jump on me . At least I hope so

I'll go read the articles now, and come back to write a summary of the early game discussion.

@dojoboy: As you may have gathered by the comments, Team Smurkz is also playing in Civ3 SGOTM 10. CommandoBob is part of the Civ3 crew, and it's nice to see him lurking on this side as well. Feel free to drop by our team thread for that game and say hi!

I think it's time to start thinking about the roster. Niklas, what do you think would be a good sequence of us starting the game?
what will be our capital this time? Smurkzpolis, Smurkphis, PI-Smurkzes, ...?