A Place In History - Carving an Empire

Greetings everyone! Although this is my first post, I am a longtime lurker of these boards. I am a big fan of Sisiutil and aelf's threads, both as education and entertainment, and of the active community which powers this forum. I have always wanted to start a series myself to brush up on both gameplay and reporting, and this summer seems like an ideal time, especially with Beyond the Sword looming on the horizon. I've also felt that a lot of my offline games are starting to blur together, so I've decided that the unexamined game of Civ is no longer worth playing.

That being said, I'd like to introduce a new series, A Place in History. I will be playing and reporting games every Wednesday and Saturday, with advanced notification of schedule changes.

I don't have any grand design for how this series will play out yet, but I do have a general outline to distinguish A Place in History. First of all, I'll add a section at the end of each report detailing some generalized strategy which is relevant to that phase of the game. For example, I might compare different opening strategies or Medieval technology choices. Second of all, I plan to play rather long rounds, just because I prefer to feel like I finished up a phase of the game when I save it. As of now, I envision each game lasting for 4 or 5 rounds, or about two weeks. Finally, I'd like this series to be focused on advancement. When I feel like I have a pretty good handle on a certain difficulty level, which is to say, I've won a game under rather non-ideal or bizzare circumstances on that level, I will strongly consider moving up. Needless to say, I will be counting on everyone's support!

A Place in History 1: Carving an Empire

I normally play on Monarch, so this game will be on Emperor.

Settings


A roll of God's dice later...


And it seems that we will be trying to make Mehmed II an Emperor!

Embarassingly, I realized I didn't actually know too much about Mehmed II, so I wiki'ed him up.
"Alright men, kill the women and rape the horses!"

Seems like he was a conqueror in his younger days and sacked Constantinople, and later consolidated his empire by being tolerant. Excellent, he would have made a good CIV player methinks.

Here is our start:


Hrmm.. not exactly what I would consider a standard start, the computer decided to put us on non-irrigated rice. The reason is fairly clear, the rice is the only tile that can reach the fish. Being surrounded by forest is lovely for the early hammers, and since we are expansive with 4 health resources around, we might not even need a fresh water bonus.

However, settling on the rice also wastes our agriculture starting tech, and since we don't start with fishing for boats nor mining for bronze-working beeline, the choice of an opening strategy becomes somewhat hazy.

There appears to be jungle in the north. I generally dislike settling into jungle, as it tends to result in unproductive cities for the first crucial part of the game. Bananas and dye are fairly marginal resources as well, so I wouldn't be averse to moving south and abandoning this spot, and reclaiming it with a later city.

The Save @ 4000BC:

Opening Strategies

I've played my share of games, and although I did not have to worry about the endgame for all of them , I did definitely have to consider an opening.

Now there are a variety of openings I've tried, none of them strictly superior to each other, but all of them tend to result in the fastest start possible given certain conditions:

Prod: Worker-Worker-Settler
Tech: [Mining] -> BW, [Wheel], [Worker techs]
For those who don't take the scenic route, and in fact wouldn't mind razing the scenic route to the ground. Given mining as a starting tech, the first worker finishes at the same time, more or less, as BW. Revolt to slavery once BW is in. Worker then proceeds to clearcut along the capital, speeding up the second worker and the settler. Wheel is there to keep workers employed, as are the worker techs.

If starting without mining, tinker around with the worker while waiting for BW, hopefully there will be something for him to do with your starting techs.

Pros: Although not the fastest settler, by far the fastest to two workers. This could be crucial in getting your second city productive many turns earlier. Bronze Working is .

Cons: Rather inflexible in terms of research. Clearcutting forests may be a bad idea if you want to save them for your army or have an unusual health situation.

Situation: I'd generally call this my standard opening, if there are 3 or more forests around. Speed kills.

Prod: [Start Worker], Workboat-Worker-Settler
Tech: [Fishing] , [Worker techs/Religion]

Pros: A seafood tile is monstrous, and can speed the construction of the worker and settler. Allows your city to grow to size 2 before starting on food requiring builds. Although I'm not a big fan of religion, having a late worker gives flexibility to chase it, and perhaps on to the oracle. In general results in a stronger capital but weaker second city by XXXX BC.

Cons: In general results in a stronger capital but weaker second city by XXXX BC. This could be a big factor. Working unimproved tiles in your second city until worker is free puts a lot of strain on your main city to pump out military, settlers, etc.

Situation: Most coastal starts. Being financial increases incentive to do this, as does starting with mysticism.

Prod: Worker-Warrior/[Scout]-Settler
Tech: Worker techs

Pros: The worker comes out first and improves tiles right away. The warrior allows the city to grow to size 2, to work two good (5-6 food+hammers) tiles, which speeds up the settler.

Cons: Generally you need to keep chasing the worker techs to keep him busy. Once again, you have only 1 worker for two cities until you build another one.

Situations: I would generally use this opening for a non coastal start with few forests. It helps if I start with a lot of worker techs, especially the wheel, as it provides a lot of busy work.

Some other openings:

Prod: Warrior/[Scout]-Worker-Settler
Tech: [Worker techs/Religion]

If you really like to explore and want some insurance against your first man getting eaten by a bad news bear, you can start building a worker at size 2. Generally I find this to be a bit slow.

Prod: Worker-Warrior-Various Things-Settler
Tech: [Worker techs/Religion]

Various Things usually meaning an early wonder. I used to do this quite often, letting my main city grow to the happiness cap before starting a settler. Of course, your second city will be way behind on development, and maybe that ideal spot with bronze is taken by the computer? Anyways, generally I'd consider this more of a gambit now.

The most important things at the beginning, I believe, are getting those worker and settlers out. They are the only builds to halt growth for a reason: because they are the most significant accelerators of growth.

Settle on the Rice. The short-term benefit is large, and the sacrifice is small. There is so much food in this city, you ultimately don't need to work that square. The extra food will help get your Workers out faster.

Personally, when I play Mehmed I start kind of slow. On a Fractal map you have a little room to expand. I would go Fishing, then Bronze Working, then Pottery. Build up your capital to size 3 or 4, building Warriors and a Work Boat along the way. (Just one boat for now; the Clams aren't a priority.)

Get your first Worker out around the time Bronze Working finishes so you can start chopping. Get the Granary up as soon as possible following Pottery, then switch to a Settler. Ideally you would chop the Granary and whip the Settler.

Anyway, that's the kind of opening I would go for with a start like this. You are food-heavy and Expansive, so to me that means an early Granary and lots of whipping.

Welcome to the forums.
It looks like an intersting start, settle in place and worker-war-settler(chopped). Looks good to me. Maybe chop some fishing boats out early too. With BW-fishing as tech. What about moving inland and save this place for later, snatty developed a good 'move inland strategy', he seemed to have perfected it even when he couldn't find a good place for his capital.
Very well written post, starting as you mean to continue I hope.

I wouldn't move inland - too much chance of more jungle. In fact you might be pressed for a good close second city site so I would go with a strategy that made the most of your capital initially. Settle on rice and fishing first. I would probably build a warrior rather than a worker while researching fishing. It will speed you to size two and help you get your fishing boat out faster because of it. With the fish building a worker should be fairly quick.

If my status as a fellow lurker-noob may permit it, may I welcome to the board also!

Let me echo others and suggest settling where you are; moving your settler through the forest at this point would cause you to waste an awful lot of years. It's a shame those 2 dyes to the north won't be in your BFC as the thought of 3 dye tiles in a Beaurocratic capital would give you quite the bit of cash! The other option is to move one north, but then you miss out on the fish and, by settling on it, the forested hill for So I reckon stay put.

Good luck for the game!

I say settle one tile north .. you do lose the fish but gain the rice and 2 more dyes in the fat cross (= more money later) and make your capital easier to defend as it would be on a hill (minor point). If you settle in place, you'll need another city likely in the middle of jungle to claim the remaining 2 dyes.

It turns out that I may be busy this weekend, so I am going to go ahead and do a play and post today. The next round will be next Wednesday as scheduled.

After reading the replies, I decided to go ahead and settle in place. No matter where I move, the fish will be lost, and I am loathe to waste an early 5f 1c. Settling on the rice is, in my opinion, a big plus. There are at least 3 squares strictly better than the rice (fish, clams, farmed bananas), and a grassland hill, so I probably would not use it under the initial cap anyways!

Moving the capital might be a good idea, but as this is my first game on Emperor, I decided to move my valor slider over to 100% discretion.

So, in the year 4000, I ordered my people to build their homes in the swampy rice paddies of Istanbul.


As the citizens of Tiwanaku complained about their high-carb all rice diet while investigating the intricacies of breaking clams, the 1st Royal Ottoman Loincloth Brigade discovered our neighbors, as well as a technology of questionable value.

3920BC


3760BC

My first summit with this leader was a debacle, as he insisted on keeping his gold ear covers on and had to keep asking me to repeat myself. It seemed that we would not be able to get along...

3560BC

I meet another, and the last head of state. I am pleased to note that they are both scrawnier than I am. Perhaps if he didn't eat so much salad...

After exploring in isolation for so long, the first Brigade leader suddenly disappeared. It was later found that he had been charmed by the innocent barbarian lifestyle and changed his name to Dances with Lions. Fortunately, the second Brigade had arrived to pick up the slack.


The messenger with the description of "copper" had reached the 2nd brigade. Just as the leader realized he was camping near a cache of the metal, their party was suddenly attacked by a horde of lions led by a man wielding a ragged Ottoman banner and his surprisingly well groomed love interest.


Meanwhile, back at town, the warrior came in along with fishing and size 2. Labor was diverted to a work boat, while research went mining -> bronze working. Although I don't usually delay the worker for so long, he really couldnt clean up this dump without BW.

Lured by the promise of free fish, worker recruitment exceeded expectations.


It was at this time that Emperor Haika I, also known as "Haika the Verbose" was deposed by the people and replaced by Haika II, later called "Haika the Terse". The revolutionary cry: "There's no way in hell we're going to finish at this rate"

2760 - Just whipped the worker. There was a workboat which I wanted to finish, but I didn't know exactly how the overflow would work, as in whether the excess hammers would be wasted or not, so I played it safe and sank the overflow into a settler.


2720 - My first dotmap! I never use these when playing on my own, but I went ahead and mucked one up.

Shot at 2007-07-12
Site 1 feels natural, good early production and growth, close to home.
Site 2 is another early game focused move. Picks up more production, denies bronze to HC, and settles towards him.
Site 3 has gold just south of the town. I'll admit it, I just can't deal with this low happiness cap on emperor.
Site 4 may not even be settled by me. With three decent food/production sources, copper, and a nearby financial neighbor, urge to kill is rising.

2560 - Edirne founded


1960 - Capital has the 2nd border pop, revealing...

non-jungle land above the capital! I guess assume really does make an ass out of u and me. I sent two spare axemen north to explore.

1920 - I was about ready to settle my third city, but a persistant barbarian archer pestered my warrior who I sent to reserve that spot. I had no choice but to assemble a stack of doom.


After a bit of dirty dancing
1840 - Ankara founded


My scouts to the north discovered the empire founded by Dances with Lions.

Fortunately they seem to be teching slowly.

1240 - Ready to found third city, a decisive battle between 4.4 *ax on forest hill vs barb. If I lose this one, founding of third city could be delayed by 10+ turns. Heaven or Hell!

Nike smiled upon us today.

1200 - Discover JC in the far north. By this time JC and Huayna had both converted to Hinduism. Troublesome for the war, but not nearly enough to divert our strategies.

1120 - Bursa Founded


900 - Huayna's 4 cities have been scouted out. The holy capital with 60% will probably be a lost cause. The aims of this war are to take Machu Picchu and Tiwanaku while pillaging Cuzco.

800 - Everybody goes to their assigned locations. A more recent recon showed that Machu Picchu only had one archer, so I made that my first target. However, there are two heading up.

750 - A key point in the war. The ax stack moves up to block the road to the Machu Picchu. The 2 Quecha 1 Settler group is heading north, single Axeman is sent to follow.


Machu Picchu was captured the following turn with the loss of one ax. I missed the screenshot but something interesting was that a CR I axe got about 22% odds against fortified 25% archer, but 64% against a non fortified archer. It makes a big difference!

With Alphabet in, trades were checked

As expected, HC is quite advanced. The trading screen is blocking it, but he also converted to Hereditary Rule. This war should be ended soon, especially as I had constant barbarian assaults from the unsettled north tying up forces.

Terminator finds Sarah Connor


Another decisive battle - 6 axemen vs 3 archers. Heaven or Hell?

Hell! First two axemen reduces archers to 2.5 and 3. I decide to wait for reinforcements rather than press the attack. At this point, HC is willing to sign peace for 1 small tech.

I could only reinforce with one axeman. 5 axemen vs 3 archers.

I had to attack now. HC had two archers threatening Machu Picchu, and I had a feeling that if HC finished or whipped another archer to the walled city, it will make the city impregnable.


With much riding on this battle, my axemen charged in.




After breathing a sigh of relief, I signed peace with HC for IW.


Current State of the Empire


Ankara


Bursa


Edirne


Istanbul


Machu Picchu


Tiwanaku


Northern Territories, and a preliminary dotmap. Not sure how much of this will be wrested away from JC peacefully.


Some trades I am considering


I feel like I should try to open up trades with Huayna first. I don't need Math right now, and if I play out Alphabet to JC right now, I have a feeling Huayna will get it soon.

To summarize this round:
Although it was rather poorly executed, the axe rush got its job done, boxing in teching Huayna. Looking forward, I'd say continue expanding to the north, using scientists to prop up the economy. There are a lot of choices to make here, especially tech wise. Parthenon is still available! If the marble city is settled early, it might be a good thing to consider alongside the GL, but I am not counting on it. I hope Hinduism spreads to open up some diplomacy options. It will be a long time until Wednesday, so looking forward to your advice!

The save


Strategy Section: Classical Logistics

Interesting game, you have a very large empire, I hope you can keep your economy afloat. If you get maths, will a GS offer code of laws? Cheap court houses could be useful. Plus maths gives you the UB hammam with +2 happiness.

Nicely played so far. GL should be considered, definitely. Would be nice if you could get the marble online in time. Also currency-col would be nice at some point to be able to support your further expansion.

Yesterday's post was cut short, especially the conclusion was given short shrift; getting used to snapping screenshots taking a long time. Here is the proper conclusion missing from yesterday's post.

Looking at our current position, we have plenty of room to expand both horizontally and vertically. Our city sizes are still capped by a relatively low happiness limit, so tech priorities should be diverted towards alleviating that asap. On the production side, our overflow axes from the first war can be put to good use escorting settlers north, exploring JC's territory, and serving as military police. Thus, all production should be diverted towards settlers and workers, while trying to keep the economy afloat. Once all available land is settled, we can move towards another phase of warfare aimed at JC.

A couple of caveats to this general plan. Edirne is capable of putting out a good amount of production, and there are a couple of wonders I would like to pursue. Once the marble is connected, I would very much like to start on the parthenon. We get a good return in terms of gold if we miss it, but after reading UncleJJ's compelling post on how philosophical can boost a SE, I am hoping we can secure it. The GL can be built after, or concurrently with the Parthenon. Besides these two wonders, I want to focus on building settlers from Istanbul, and have the smaller cities focus on growing.

Obviously, this leaves little room for building hammams, let alone colliseums, in the near future. Although we will get math one way or another, I think happiness boosters which do not require infrastructure (i.e. calendar and monarchy) should be a priority.

This leads into what I think is a crucial juncture, how we handle the tech situation in the next few dozen turns. On a larger continent with more neighbors, we can be more lax about research, and reasonably expect to pick up enough techs from stragglers to make up the gap. However, with only three lonely men occupying this rock, careful diplomacy and tech choices will be crucial in making sure we don't fall behind internationally. Huayna is naturally irked about our land grab, but we do not have any other demerits with him. He currently refuses to trade technologies with us, since we are his worst enemy. Fortunately, there are a number of practical ways to remedy this situation.

First of all, the gifting of rice to Huayna is something I would want to do if it could get us back to cautious within the next 10 turns or so. In fact, if it can reliably improve relations soon, I would not mind giving a spare copper to him as well. I believe in putting excess resources to work, at best for other resources, then gpt, and at worst for a diplomacy boost. Monarchy would be an incredible tech at this juncture. Hereditary Rule gives us flexibility in happiness while providing a big civics boost with Huayna. We control one, and possibly more sources of wine. It should be the top tech to acquire asap. Now we know that Huayna has Monarchy already, but he is not willing to trade with us yet. If the rice loosens up his purse strings a bit, I would jump on an alphabet for monarchy trade coupled with alphabet and polytheism for math and a small tech from JC.

The best case scenario, of course, is that Hinduism spreads to one of our cities. I'd pray to Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma every day for that to happen, as it would give us such a diplomatic boost.

Assuming Huayna does not warm up to us in time (we are up against the clock of our alphabet monopoly expiring), I would go ahead and get what we can from JC for alpha + poly, and gift alphabet to HC. In that case, we'd be looking to research a monopoly tech which we can trade for monarchy and something from JC.

The next tech to research after literature would be priesthood, to open up not only Monarchy, but CoL.

Looking past that, there are many medieval techs we need ASAP, and a variety of ways to acquire them quickly. I'm going to make this a strategy point, rather than the originally planned Logistics post, since I think it will be more relevant to our moving forward.

Defcon 3 Techs:
Currency vs CoL : Both of these are crucial for an expanding empire in a variety of ways. CoL opens up caste system, and mehmed's cheap courthouses, and the powerful Philosophy lightbulb. The downside is that it requires a period of infrastructure building to become effective. Currency offers a small but significant boost to commerce through trade routes. More importantly, it allows a dead tech like literature to be traded away for some hundreds of gold, effectively paying for itself. Also, since Huayna control so few resources, we can easily abuse him for GPT. Markets are expensive, but putting one in our commerce city is a worthwhile return. Overall, I would aim for Currency first, it has the bonus of making CoL cheaper to research.

Defcon 2 Techs:
Metal Casting, Calendar, Construction: As long as we have Monarchy under our belts, Calendar is not as high of a priority, but would be undeniably helpful in getting lucrative dye squares online. Metal casting gives us 1 happiness and accelerates production at the cost of a significant hammer investment in forges. It is also generally a powerful trading chip. Although I don't care much for the return on colliseums for their hammer cost, construction lets us build catapults, the bread and butter of a medieval army. However, this is not so useful for the peaceful expansion and economic consolidation phase we have ahead, and I believe that we should let JC live and prosper as long as he is useful to the Ottoman empire. And I mean that sincerely.

Defcon 1 Techs:
Compass, Music: Obviously these techs are not so much useful as they are bargaining chips. If we do get Parthenon, I would consider running two artists in Tiwanaku under Caste System. If I'm not mistaken, the artist would lightbult music through literature, thus replacing himself and getting us some harmless beakers we can work with. Compass does little for us at the moment, but likewise can be lightbulbed through a scientist, which might be worth it if it has a good chance of earning us two higher priority techs.

Later on the horizon: gunpowder beeline. I am no expert on GP tech preferences, but I think merchants can lightbulb guilds. In that case, it might be worth considering trading philosophy for feudalism, lightbulbing guilds, and self researching gunpowder. Meanwhile, scientists generated through pacifism and parthenon across multiple cities continue the march towards liberalism, possibly aiming for astronomy. The question here becomes timing. Fighting a war with janissaries is attractive, but a war with catapults can come scores of years earlier. If we were on a larger continent, this idea might have more merit, but I suspect janissaries might come online too late to be necessary in a continental war and galleons too late to make them relevant in an intercontinental invasion.

These are my thoughts on potential strategies in a nutshell. One thing I will add, is that taking tiwanaku was probably correct on a tactical level, since it was closer to the front, taking the smaller, useless hindu city to the south might have been the strategically correct decision. Being guaranteed the hinduism option would have made our current position much stronger. Something I'll consider more in the future.

Haika said:

Defcon 1 Techs:
If I'm not mistaken, the artist would lightbult music through literature,

Click to expand...

He'll bulb drama first, then music.

Beelining Guilds is tricky. Your merchant will lightbulb CS then paper before guilds and afaik there is no way around this. CS can be bulbed with a GM and paper can be bulbed with a GM or GS. The NICE thing is that you need CS and paper anyways for your liberalism beeline, so just keep that merchant in reserve, research CS, lightbulb paper with a GS, trade CS and/or phil for feudalism and machinery when available (if possible), then lightbulb guilds with your merchant.

Of course you don't NEED guilds, because you can get gunpowder via the other route (education iirc).

So, I would just recommend using GSs (powered by the GL and NE) to go up the liberalism route.

I would self-research gunpowder though and take nationalism as your free tech so that you can draft some jans as well. This also sets you up (especially if you bulb/research/trade for music) for cavalry (military tradition), which can support your jans at some point in your war, which should be instigated by jans + catas/trebs.

When last we left our empire, we had just vanquished the innocent Huayna Capac, and were set to multiply like rabbits all over our continent. As far as we knew, our only neighbors were clever Huayna and cranky Caesar. We were also broke, currently running a deficit at 20% science.

This round, we'll do a little consolidation, and take some diplomatic risks, some of which pan out, others not so much.

As discussed earlier, I gifted rice to Huayna. This turned out not to be so effective; even 30 turns later he still did not show a positive merit from it.

Luckily for us, we caught the diplomatic break we were looking for :
.

We immediately converted.

Next turn, tech trading was opened up, but HC still refused to part with his Monarchy, as it was a monopoly tech. I picked up a few cheap but useful ones from him (sailing and masonry), while pulling the trigger on math from JC.

The C1 Shock Ax in the background of this picture would lose his life to the marauding barbarian, along with the settler he was escorting, much to my dismay.

Livy gives us a tip-off that we made the right choice to axe-rush


The price of safety is not too severe, so we pay it.


At this point our research is seriously in the tank. After going through cities and trying to maximize commerce where I could, we managed to break even at 30%. Meanwhile Huayna just keeps churning out wonders for us.


Meanwhile, our Axes which we sent to scout out JC's land up north discovered something, or rather someone, interesting.



Always good to see ol' 4 eyes around. Anyways, apparently he and Caesar had been going at it, and good:


After a bit of contemplation, I decided not to gift him a tech, or make any of the lucrative trades available. Instead I declaimed loudly my loyalty to the Hindu block, from safely behind JC's back of course.

While mucking around between JC and Monty's borders, our axeman met workers of a quite different ethnicity:

After rueing the fact that we had attacked the only civilized nation on our island, I decided to cut my losses with Tokugawa and gift him literature. This brought him from annoyed to cautious. It also broke our monopoly on the tech, but it was all we could offer him.
Huayna, on the other hand, I turned down. He can go research it himself.


Montezuma decided to test his luck

and of course I quickly gave in. Alphabet in his hands would not do much, he was enemies with all of his neighbors. On the other hand, it gives me +5 with him (+4 fair and forthright, +1 shared tech) and no demerit from JC.

After settling the marble city (which I later regretted as it had not really enough food), I noticed that JC had assembled a SoD (Stack of Defensive Units) near the nothern barbarian city. I sent an axeman next to the city to see if he couldn't poach them.


In 150 AD, our rusty research machine finally cranks out a tech. Unfortunately, it seems that HC had gotten this tech a short while back, so its value as trading bait decreased by half.


Nevertheless, we did what we could, and picked up some valuable techs off JC.

On this same turn, Montezuma decided he wanted another taste of blood, and sent his ravening hordes into Rome once again. Our axeman grabbed a seat to watch Monty splatter his stacks in typical AI fashion against the walls of Antium without bombarding the defense.

Our first GS, Charles Darwin was born in 200AD. I noticed that HC already had currency, so I switched research to meditation, aiming of course, at the semi OP Philosophy lightbulb. The ensuing trades were rather helpful as well.

We converted to Caste System and Philosophy as well.

Also, the ax which has been keeping an eye on the north saw his chance, and with disregard for his own life, charged in for the honor of his empire.
He became a hero that day. Sorry Jules, the town was kept.

Although we were running rather deeply in the red at 60%, I decided to go ahead and found another city, figuring we could still run on the philosophy wallet.


With four turns to go on the GL, HC births a GE and steals it from us.


I decided to be the better man and congratulate him on his luck. The consolation 400 gold lined the cloud pretty well.

With bureaucracy approaching, and Istanbul with a total of one hill and 2 developed cottages, I decided to move our capital to HC's one off the coast wonder, Machu Picchu. Istanbul started on the National Epic.


JC wrapped up his war with Montezuma, and seeing that HC already had Civil Service, I went ahead and got what I could for it.


It turns out HC is a rather stingy guy:


After building the Hindu Shrine in his wonder stacked capital, I can't help but speculate whether HC is trying to provoke me to attack him. I pondered the degeneracies of the AI as I researched towards gunpowder.

All in all, a rather standard builder's round.

Our medium sized cities:


Workers are heading north in an attempt to maximize growth in the recently founded jungly cities.

And our tech position:


Tokugawa is back CS and Philosophy, Monty has not researched CoL yet, so we are doing alright techwise.

We are a bit further ahead than the research screen currently indicates. I am researching MC because it is too sad not to have forges by now, and I am waiting on a pair of scientists from Tiwanaku (9 turns) and Istanbul (Soon after) to lightbulb education. I am not too clear on what the situation is for lightbulbing liberalism and/or gunpowder, but I might change my research plans accordingly. Also I'd like to grab theology at some point before beginning serious drafting/production of military units.

Hopefully we can bring the noise to Huayna at around 1000 AD, but then what? Do we pull a Brutus and stab Caesar in the back, using free religion and mutual struggle to make Montezuma our next ally/victim? Or do we cooperate with Caesar and take Montezuma's (faraway) cities? Where do we go after gunpowder? Rifling for better drafts? Or chemistry/steel for better siege? We also have horses available, so MT is certainly an option. Either way, the people and ruler bore of peace, and yearn again for a clash of nations. Looking forward to your input.

The Save @ 800 AD

Good post...I'm following it closely...Is there a reason for all the spoilers, or am I missing something??

Jeff1787: Thanks for your words of support! Knowing that at least one person is reading this thread is all I need to continue, seriously . The spoilers are for speed purposes. I figured that people with slower computers/connections might not want to load 80+ images every time they open this page.

First off, looking at the current state of the world in 800, I took down some rough tech measurements.

We're generating ~200 beakers of research at 100%, with a deficit of 50 gpt and a current budget of about 800 gold.

Here are some tech choices/paths listed in priority to us, in my opinion:

First off, we have a decision whether to research full steam ahead towards liberalism, or wait 10-15 turns for our two scientists to turn up and lightbulb education for us. I'm inclined to wait, because scientists after education lightbulb down a path we don't really want (Printing Press, etc) at the moment, and we have a variety of useful techs we can backfill in the meantime.

Techs to research while waiting on scientists for education (~15 turns):
Metal Casting [460 left]: Forges, and opens up the Machinery -> Engineering -> Chemistry line.
Drama [486]: Theatres for WW management, and more importantly get Globe Theatre started at Istanbul ASAP.
Music [936]: After drama, opens up Military Tradition. Besides that it is pretty much a dead tech though (Monty was first to it).
Theology [780]: Opens up theocracy, which would be a significant improvement over pacifism once war preparations begin.
Guilds [1560]: Lightbulbable by GM if we choose to churn one out after scientists. A rather expensive tech that opens up the sketchy knights, Banking for merc, and discount on GP research.

In terms of what we can get, I think the decision is between the MC -> Machinery [1092] -> Engineering [1560] set, and the MC, Drama, Music, Theo set. Engineering gives an important +1 road movement, opens up the useful trebuchets, and lets us move on the Chemistry[2808] -> Steel[4368] after Gunpowder[1872]. The second set, allows us to start on the powerful GT drafting engine, gives our units +2 exp, and drafted units +1 exp out of the gate, and opens up Military Tradition[3120], after grabbing Nationalism. Both paths have their merits, so your input would be appreciated on this matter.

Alternatively, we can start researching into Education right now, bulb the remainder with 1 scientist, and burn the next scientist on liberalism. This would get us to liberalism 7-10 turns earlier, and hence gunpowder earlier as well. I'm not exactly sure what the rules on scientists lightbulbing liberalism are though, since I don't have compass, am I okay? Either way, this would let us possibly draft an extra round of janissaries, and we can fill in the cheaper techs as the war progresses.

At any rate, the update will be posted tomorrow, probably in the evening (US Pacific time). Looking forward to your suggestions as always.

I'd like to discuss a general philosophy when making decisions during Civ. Although quite vague, I think a lot of solid choices can be made using it as a foundation.

Civilization is for Squares

As an extreme example, imagine you are playing a One City Challenge in the later stages of the game, and your borders have just popped to include another wheat tile. Your health and happiness caps are already very high, 20+, and the added health lets you run the population of your city up one more. However, what does that one extra population give you in this case? Assuming you are at size 20 or so, it lets you run one extra specialist, or perhaps work an extra tile. Ignoring for a moment the stacking national wonders rule in OCC, this extra boost is probably marginal.

Now, on the other extreme, say that you are still in an early emperor game, and you had just expanded all over the map with 10 cities, militarily or peacefully. However, you have not yet found a way to lift your happiness cap, so all of your cities are size 3 or smaller. What does putting in an extra city at this point do for you? Most likely not much. You can fit a city on the marginal land still remaining and have it work three tiles, but it most likely won't even cover its maintainance.

In the OCC case, you would be much better off settling another city, since that city can take advantage of the non-infrastructural happiness and health bonii already available to your first city. In the early Rapid Expand case, you might be better off settling a marginal city with 1 happiness resource, or hunkering down and grinding out monarchy, to vastly expand the productivity of your other cities.

Land is power is a very sage rule of thumb. Land that you can't work is useless, however, so I would translate that aphorism to "Tiles worked is power". Not quite as catchy, and of course, certain tiles are better than others, but generally if you are working more significantly more tiles than your opponent, it's a sure bet you will gradually catch up over time.

Tiles worked can generally be summarized as
Number of Cities X Min [Happiness/Health Caps]
This is assuming enough food in a city to reach the cap, which one should try to assure while dotmapping.
You can imagine this formula as being parallel to the formula for the area of a rectangle. Basic geometry tells us that very long rectangles have a low area to perimeter ratio, and a square is the maximum area to perimeter ratio for a rectangle. So thus, when looking to increase your tiles worked, you should look at the current number of cities you have and their maximum sizes. If number of cities is significantly greater than max size of city, you should look to find ways to increase your city sizes, by building more workers, or researching towards something that increases happiness. If your max city sizes are significantly greater than the number of cities you control, you might want to look into leveraging your powerful cities towards expansion, usually of the martial form.
Of course, this is not to say you should always try to have 6 cities of size 6, or 20 cities of size 20. There are a lot of factors, such as each city's internal infrastructure, that may greatly increase the value of a tile worked in that city. But generally, when you find yourself starting to build some marginal infrastructure, like a coliseum or a temple, to increase a city one more size, think about whether or not you would rather build a settler or a stack of catapults there instead. Similarly, when you are about to build a settler to grab that last piece of desert land with one fish and two hills while your other cities are struggling to pay their rent, think about whether you should just sink those 100 hammers into research for calendar instead.

I'm enjoying reading the post too. Looks like a good game.

I am pretty sure that a Great Scientist is going to bulb Printing Press, Compass and Engineering before Liberalism.....so If you can get those three techs first, you can use the two GS's for Education and then Liberalism...but would you get Liberalism first, hard to say.

If you stay at 100% research, you can get:

Metal Casting...2 turns
Compass...3 turns
Engineering...7 turns
Printing Press...11 turns (might have to turn research down a notch by then)

mrchadt: Thanks for reading!
Jeff1787: The order is noted. As we don't have many cottages, printing press would be a high cost low benefit detour (but it would lead to rifling). Most likely, liberalism will have to be self-researched. In that case, both scientists will be held back to lightbulb education.

Also, as you might notice, it is 11:53 PST and I haven't posted an update. My original idea for having updates on Wednesday and Saturday was so that I could dedicated Saturday to CIV, and some day in the early part of the week as well. However, oftentimes other things take priority for Saturdays, so I'm going to change the scheduled update times to Monday and Friday. Friday would be the weekday update, when I play sometime during the week, and Monday would be a weekend update. Rather than try to grind out a poor round late at night, I've moved back the update to Monday. I think this arrangement will work out better, and I'll try to have a big update ready on Monday to make up for today!