A Game with Roosevelt, a Veritable Powerhouse

I was reading these forums a couple weeks ago and I stumbled upon futurehermit's thread regarding Roosevelt here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=261510

I've never played Roosevelt but I liked his thoughts on leveraging his traits for a powerful early start. Specifically, building the Oracle for Metal Casting to build cheap forges and building the Great Lighthouse (cheap lighthouse and cheap wonder).

If both of those early goals can be accomplished, it sets a very powerful base. Trades routes for commerce/tech and forges for quick military production. I usually go for Currency right after Alphabet but this beginning would allow going straight for Construction and pre-AD war.

So how about a game? Here are the settings:



I went with a high sea level to make sure we'll see the benefits from the GL approach. It also means less land to conquer and since domination is my preferred form of victory, it makes the game less tedious. It is a large map though, so there should be lots of AI interaction.

I've seen several immortal and even some deity games being played here. Kudos to those players. I don't think I have it in me. I've won some immortal games but they leave little margin for error and thus not much fun for me.

Here is the start. I didn't start on the coast by it is only 1 turn away.



It is a bit food poor as well. There may be some food on the other side of those hills but then again, there may not be any. I can see the coast to the East and those cows look pretty good so I'll move a bit SE of the starting position.

I hope I attached the correct save game here. I had to grab it from the auto save folder.

I'm mostly going to follow futurehermit's guide. For early wonders, I'll go for stonehenge, oracle, great lighthouse and colossus. I suppose I could go for more but those should give me a production and commerce edge on the AIs so unless happiness is a big problem, I'll go for war right away. Otherwise a detour for calender could be in order if I have any calender resources handy.

I moved my initial warrior SE and found a nice spot to settle.



Looks like a much, much better position than the starting spot. I can work the 4 resources and have 2 food left over. It would have been nice to have a fish as well but it looks like a great location.

The marble will make the Oracle a cinch to snag. I could also build the Parthenon or ToA as well but that would take me off the prescribed course of action. We'll stick with the plan.



Okay, I've scouted my surroundings and met 4 civs. My neighbors are not sharing religions yet so that's good. I'd like to war with one in the near future without pissing everyone else off.

I have some tentative city locations mapped out. I think the plan with an Organized leader with a bunch of coastal trade routes is to spam cities on the water. I'm maxed out with this setup - every city is 3 squares from its' neighbor.



Settler production time. 2nd city will be to claim the ivory. I'm already planning my elephant based attack. Out of these civs, only Alex could repel an elephant invasion. Khan would be easily wiped out.



New York goes up. A rather crappy city. At least it's coastal and can contribute some commerce. Actually, after looking around my small area and aside from my capital, no city will be a production powerhouse.

Stonehenge is a couple turns away. I've noticed BTS AI will either build this in 2400 BC or 1600 BC and usually never in between.

Mansa founds Judaism thereby preventing any strong AI relationships on this landmass.



Comes in at 2040 BC. BW hasn't come in yet so I built it the old fashioned way.



I popped a copper in the capital! This capital keeps getting better and better. Bureaucracy is definitely a priority.

I'm building another worker to mine and road the copper while my current worker improves New York and roads down south for my third city. City 3 will create a choke point and also claim the stone. There's a lot of desert there but it can claim 8 coastal tiles. I think I'll put the Moai Statues there to get some production out of it.



Disaster strikes in DC! Fortunately I got some gold from 2 different huts so I had it covered. Hopefully the next event will bring me +2 health or cover on all my melee units.

I'm building a work boat for city 4 (north of the corn). I'll use it to scout to the West until the city goes up.



City 3 goes up. I originally planned to settle on top of the incense but 1S got me the same number of coastal tiles with less overlap. Also, it puts me one square closer to the stone and makes it less likely an AI can culture steal the stone from me.

Oracle is one turn away. It came out really fast with the marble and the timing is just perfect. Check this out.



Following the plan I take MC and I can immediately start building a forge. Upon completion, I can build a lighthouse then the GL.

It looks like Alex is the closest AI to me. I better start building some units sooner rather than later or this game will be over really fast.



You can't even plan this. The forge will end the turn I finish researching sailing. Nice timing, eh?



Kublai the research monster?? Did he pop Alphabet from a hut or something? Not used to seeing an AI, especially this one, researching Alphabet so early. Not sure what my next move should be after seeing this.

Although it shows I'm researching Monarchy, I haven't invested any beakers yet - it's just a placeholder.



Kublai is open to this trade. I hate to give up MC so early but it gets me IW, which I will need eventually, and Alphabet which allows me to trade MC or Alphabet to the other AIs, possibly for Maths.

There's no guarantee any AI has Maths yet or will trade it to me though so I haven't made a decision yet.



Since I'm almost certain Alex will be my first foe, I'm going to focus my EPs on him. It'll be a while before I can get any info so I need to focus early.

Long time no see pete2006 ....

Hopefully another very interesting game to follow ...

Thanks. Good to be back! I thinking this game will be pretty exciting. Roosevelt does seem like a strong leader and it is easy to leverage his traits.

Any input on this game?

This looks really interesting. Good idea moving the stone city 1 tile south, looks like it got there just in time; do you think it's worth having 3 cities on the north coast though? The top right city will barely be able to feed itself, I would have considered just 2 cities: 1 tile west of the tundra and another on top of the wine (will give 2 on the city tile). Sure, the GL benefit will be less but so will the maintainance cost.

But that is the beauty of Organized. Cheap courthouses and 50% maintenance costs. Those city locations look bad now but with a lighthouse + Gl + Colossus, they'll bring in a bunch of commerce.

There's no rush to build them all I admit. I imagine city4 will be north of the corn and then city 5 will be next to the sheep/grapes. Then I can put the other two off until after I war with Alex.

Pete2006 said:

But that is the beauty of Organized. Cheap courthouses and 50% maintenance costs. Those city locations look bad now but with a lighthouse + Gl + Colossus, they'll bring in a bunch of commerce.

There's no rush to build them all I admit. I imagine city4 will be north of the corn and then city 5 will be next to the sheep/grapes. Then I can put the other two off until after I war with Alex.

Click to expand...

I await the inevitable commerce boon. Deffo go for the corn one next!

Capital looks very nice !!!

Maybe i´ll do a shadow game. This start is interresting.

1 comment ... Don´t build that many cities on the small peninsula. (only later in the game maybe) Try to expand south/west to grab more land. The stone city allready blocks the AI.

Yes, I agree on delaying the crappy northern cities. On sending a couple settlers south... I'm a bit hesitant. I've yet to build any military units and Alex is my next door neighbor.

I'm thinking of building the corn city, finish my wonder building and mass producing units.

Gold, marble, copper, 2 food resources, and lots of grassland river in your capital, combined with nearby stone, will allow you to pull off early wonderspamming and make a good strategy around it? Huh, never would have guessed.

Yes, the capital is pretty great but referring to the sheep (3 food) and cows (4 food) as food resources is a bit of a stretch.

If I have settled in place, the only food sources would have been the 3F sheep and a 4F flood plain.

Wow, a better player than me following my guide Nice opening so far, great capital! I'm going to be following this with great interest! I like your opening setup. The land around your area isn't outstanding, but having both stone and marble is excellent for wonderspamming. You also have copper for the colossus, which is nice. Can't wait for the next round. Great to have you back, I loved all of your previous threads and learned a ton

If I can succeed with your strategy that makes you the teacher and me the student, right?

I never thought of playing Roosevelt. I usually stick with financial leaders.

The stone and marble can lead to wonder spamming but I'll try not to go overboard.

Pete, I just read some of your original threads back almost two years ago, and I'm wondering whether or not this will be one of those domination wins?

Domination is pretty much the only way I know how to win.

a really nice capital u have there. can't believe that the game gave u such a lousy starting position. thank god u moved.

i would probably settle new york near the stone to creat choke point though & have the 3rd city further out of the peninsular. u can backfill later. organize trait makes long distance settling less painful.

Looks like a cool game. I'll be following this one. Not to be a hassle but would you mind posting a few screen shots of your empire and what you know of enemy territory (with year included) when you get a chance? Just trying to get a sense of how fast you are expanding and improving your territory.
Thanks!

Pete2006 said:

If I can succeed with your strategy that makes you the teacher and me the student, right?

I never thought of playing Roosevelt. I usually stick with financial leaders.

The stone and marble can lead to wonder spamming but I'll try not to go overboard.

Click to expand...

Haha

The thing I like with Roosevelt is that there is absolutely no need to build cottages early-to-mid game (though you can of course). You get your beakers from settled gp (reasonably easy to get pyramids, esp with stone!), organized saves you $$, and away you go. Instead, I focus hardcore on production to expand my empire either peacefully or via warfare.

By the time I start to think about laying down cottages, it is mid-game, the CE civics are available and the taj allows me to swap into them anarchy-free. It makes for a nice transition-economy, which I am still convinced is the strongest way to play this game.

Both of those techs are techs that you want to trade for. You don't need maths for that to be worth it.. Making kublai tech ahead isn't that dangerous as he will eventually slow down.. No granary in capital hurts... Farm that grassland eh?

Well first post, here goes. Just found this site about a month ago, have been playing the Civ series since Civ I and I just love the game, albeit not as good as some of you!

I absolutely love the information I can get from here from people like Futurehermit, Sisiutil, and Sulla and Sirian's Cuban game was a fantastic read. Well before I hijack your thread Pete I just thought I'd let you know that I'll be following this game closely I like your easy going writing style and think this will be a fun game to follow. I'm at a point where I have to have financial as one of the traits to win, so watching you build big shiny wonders will be a change of pace for me. Good luck, although after this start I don't think you will need it!

I'm in (I'd put the coffee sipping smily here but couldn't find it)