Role Play Challenge: William King of the Sea

Willem, King of the Sea: Start

Well, here is the next RPC installment played by your's truely. Past games can be viewed from the RPC summary in my signature.
These games are a combination of the AIs characteristics (as we see playing the game), historical achievement (Several real life leaders have rolled over in their graves from these), with a specific play syle or economy.

In this game we will play as Willem of the Dutch (Ragnar is being played by Sis in the ALC) who is financial and creative. His UU the EastIndianman is a more powerful Galleon with extra cargo space and the Dike is a levee that give 1 hammer to all water tiles. Powerful indeed.

In this game we will try to make Willem King of the Sea, what this exactly means we can figure out as we go along. What I envision is all city assaults have to come from our navy except for AIs on our main land mass. All victory conditions are open, but we will try to control as much lands as possible. We will also use a strict cottage economy (CE) and when I say cottage economy I mean it.

So onto the rules (which cannot be altered) and guideline (which can be altered to fit the game.


RULES:
1) CE: we only run a cottage economy. We cottage all tiles that are not resources or hilss. Post democracy even hills need to be cottaged.
2) Specialists: We will run a GP as a normal game, but will not run specialists other than free ones, settled ones, or when we are forced to by city size (such as our MONTY game).

Guidelines:
1) We can only capture cities not on our starting land mass via naval assaults.
2) We must establish and maintain a stronge navy throughout the game.
3) William loves free religion, so we cannot adopt a state religion. We can only run tribalism or free religion.
4) We should target naval techs as a priotity and must take astonomy with liberalism.
5) All wonders ar ein play except the Great Lighthouse or the Colossus. We do not want to repeat the Victoria game.

Game Conditions

All victories are enabled
Archipolego Map with high water level.
Normal leaders
Marathon speed
Standard size.


So our King of the Sea



And the start



Seafood and two happiness resources.

Willy starts with Fishing and agriculture.

OK, where to start?

I guess you intend for this leader to roll over in his grave because you butchered his name? it's WILLEM

Not the first ti,e my spelling or typing has been the source of ridicule. I'll change it, thanks.

I'd say settle 1W of the jumbo.

-abs

Am I the only one thinking that the island just stops right after what you can see right now? Or just rampant paranoia? You'd have a lot easier time with the Barbs, if so, but that's really an isolated start if so. Fortunately you start with Fishing . . .

Yeah I thought that way too.

A seven - tile island starting location? wow...

Settle in place for the PH bonus to hammers.

I vote for 1NW. Dike is not affected by river placement and you'll want that extra mine in the long run rather than the +1production from settling it. Counting the elephant and the other mines it would give you +33% strong production-tiles compared to settling in place and might yield hitherto unseen resources.

Hammers are thin on these maps. Settle 1NW. He has plenty of food for a bunch of mines.

No farms at all? o.O I've run plenty of CEs, but I always farm a little. I'm interested to see how it'll work out.

Production will be the issue. Settle in place, it's quicker.

I would say 1NW too. You really want that plains hill mine with 3 sea food. You need the hammers. Although settling in place will grand you a workboat a lot quicker I still think in the long run it will be better 1NW. About the paranoia guys, right top is rounded of so there the island will propably end but left top seems to extend.

I'd move since you don't lose access to any of the resources by doing so.
1 city with mostly sea tiles can be a real production monster with Moai Statues and a dike but its best to keep your options open I think.

OK my main question is if I move off the river do I lose the ability to build a dike? I would love to be able to work the Jumbos and 3 hammer hill but not at the expense of losing the Dike in the capital.

Moving would also help with potential overlap when you get around to settling the small island to the south.

Settle in place. Fresh Water, Production Bonus. Why should anyone move?

madscientist said:

OK my main question is if I move off the river do I lose the ability to build a dike? I would love to be able to work the Jumbos and 3 hammer hill but not at the expense of losing the Dike in the capital.

Click to expand...

No... you can build a dike if you're next to ocean or river. On archipelago maps, this makes Willem's UB very powerful, since most cities will be along coast (but not necessarily next to a river), so almost every city can benefit from the dike. Very useful lategame; gives a good production advantage over the AI.

As already has been pointed out, 1NW is probably the best move. You don't lose any resources, and get a (low) possibility for more seafood. AFAIK you don't lose the dike by doing so, but waiting for someone to confirm that..
I would probably build Workboat->Workboat->Worker->Workboat->Warrior while growing to happy cap. The third Workboat I would use for exploring, you need to know fast where to settle your 2nd city. I'm not sure about the tech order though, either Hunting->Mining->BW or Mining->BW->Hunting. By going for BW first you would be able to chop out the third Workboat, but I don't think it's so big thing... Hunting first allows you to improve the Jumbos as soon as you get your worker out, and that gives you 1F3H3C tile to work with those Fish&Clam tiles. After those 3 key techs, next one should definitely be Sailing for Galleys and fast settling your nearby islands.

He probably should go Hunting after BW since the worker should come later. Either way, Sailing has to come immediately after revealing any copper/opening chopping. If he's isolated, we'll need a way to move settlers off the island.

There isn't copper in his starting island if it really ends right after what we can see.