UNGY-04 Who do they think they are?

ungy

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After being defeated in a tough draw in our last attempt we are back for another go.

Great people--we don't like them.
Sure you can call us jealous but who do they think they are and why are they so great?
Anyway we'll have none of it and we'll delete any that happen to come our way. This includes those so-called generals.

We'll play immortal as usual and by popular demand we'll play Pacal of the Maya.

Returning from UNGY-03 we have:

Ungy
Rusten
Silverbullet
Atropos
Mystyfly
Pigswill

We hadn't talked about a map--I just rolled up a fractal:




And our start:



My first thought is that with the variant we won't get nearly as much use out of big food cities.
River=good but not a lot of grassland.
The warrior move will give us nothing too useful.
I'm thinking we might want to move 1S to pick up the plains hill. That'll drop 3 plains, 2 plains river, and one grass for a bunch of unknowns.
If we settle in place or 1S we'll have a good production capital to get us going--although it won't be great for commerce.
Another possibility is to move the settler 1SW to check out the possibility of settling 2W which could be a good spot and if not moving back to the plains hill 1S--this'll burn a turn for the option on 2W.
What do you guys think?
 

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  • UNGY-04 BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave
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Nice title. :D

Plains are always annoying, but they're less annoying here as we can't use any food surplus for specialists. We should be able to run some riverside plains cottages.

Unirrigated wheat is not a great tile so I'm fine with moving the settler 1SW. Moving onto the grassland hill (2NW) is another possibility, the north seems to be green.

If we move onto the grassland hill moving the warrior 1SW is probably the best choice as it can go 1SW again and reveal a lot of tiles before making our 2nd settler move. If we move/settle differently 1NW+1SW seems natural to search for seafood.
 
If I don't get bumped by a better player I'll take the open slot.
 
I see an edge of a floodplain next to the grassland hill (2NW of settler). I suggest moving the settler there.

We will still have good use for high food cities for settler/worker pumps and whipping units for war.
 
I moved the warrior NW-NW and the settler NW-SW. We have the settler move on turn 2 to make:



I'm for the blue dot--coastal, 2 hill pigs, lots of river, 3 grass hills, likely FP.

I'll take it there tomorrow unless anyone has other ideas.
 
Sounds good to me, but make sure you move 1NW and not 1NE. The blue circle seems to be the best spot right now, but there might be seafood along that coast.
 
Concur on NW first; losing the east pigs may not be too big a problem as it would leave a production city to the east being fed by pigs and wheat.

Which version/mods are we playing?
 
Sounds good to me, but make sure you move 1NW and not 1NE. The blue circle seems to be the best spot right now, but there might be seafood along that coast.
yes that was my thought as well.
 
I played a long (and not particularly good) set.

The floodplains turned out to be desert:(
but more importantly we are quite possibly isolated.

I researched hunting-ah-bw (seemed pretty obvious) but had trouble scouting. Lion attacks slowed down the starting warrior then lost one to a pair of archers to the SE. Got maps from a couple of huts.

I part built a warrior thinking it would turn into holkan but it didn't. We probably need to put in a holkan maybe before the settler as it doesn't seem so urgent to claim land.

If there is nothing decent on the island to the SW (or a contact) or to the SE I fear we are sunk with our variant.

I think we should research wheel next, but not sure about where to settle.

A map of the world:

 

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  • UNGY-04 BC-2440.CivBeyondSwordSave
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Nothing decent? Going to have to disagree with you there, I think this island is really good. There is a lot of food, a lot of riverside grassland and our UB provides happiness. Those riverside furs will provide 6 commerce once they're camped (one of them is even forested). If there's seafood down there somewhere (more likely than not I'd say given the shape of the land) it will be an awesome city.

I agree that being isolated would be a bummer as we can't lightbulb astronomy or liberalism, but I think the starting location is great (with the exception of our capital). That western island doesn't seem too small either, I wouldn't rule out meeting someone.

Settling for the riverside wheat and bronze+cows seems to be the best pick--especially seeing as we have it fogbusted. I say skip the holkan for now. We have a lot of visual and there are a lot of forested hills to fortify warriors on as well. If an archer approaches our 2nd city (unlikely) we can just whip a holkan there at size 2--we don't need to hook it up to a trade network or anything.

I'd definitely research fishing next to scout that western island asap and to have a fishing boat ready for our 3rd city (clams+horses). I find early scouting with a work boat to often be quite decisive on fractal maps.

We might want to consider grabbing the Oracle and metal casting for the Colossus as it has great synergy with the financial trait and this kind of start (a lot of coast). The economical boost could be necessary with no bulbing and possibly isolation. The prophet pollution doesn't ruin anything for us either as we'll delete any GP. We also don't need to research writing as quickly as there's nothing to gain from the scientist GPP thus it won't hurt us much.

Edit: I forgot that we don't have agriculture yet. With that in mind settling horses+clams as our second city might be better. If not we'd have to research agriculture next slowing down our work boat scouting. I think that's the better choice now--the city won't need a monument either, it will have clam and horses within its first ring speeding up our early game (the Oracle?) a lot with the instant commerce the clam provides.
 
Rusten: good points and thanks for the morale boost--I was a little bummed as I wasn't imagining an isolated game (which of course this may not be).

What about the GLH? Might make sense to research fishing-sailing--masonry and try for that. Long term that might be the best wonder we could build.
Seems like we're a little late for oracle given the tech we need. I agree that oracle-MC-colosseus would be very strong tho--just seems tough to get (and of course given we'll want astro asap won't last too long).
 
GLH is great even if Isolated - even if the next island can only contain 2 cities we will get 2 intercontinental routes in every city AND get a boost after astronomy. I think its more likely to succeed the GLH than the oracle. Also, we are going to have quite a low happy cap, so not many ocean tiles will be worked with colossus at first. Since we don't have any gems/gold/silver on the island, forges won't help there.
 
GLH is a good gambit too. If we tech sailing early we won't need the wheel/roads to connect our cities either so we could beeline it right away and save precious worker turns.

Our happy cap will be pretty high with the UB. We'll get +3 from the UB and +1 from the fur and we didn't even scout everything yet--there might be more.
 
-- lurking --

80% that's semi isolation and glh should be great; saw this fractal version tens of times - lotsa food, 1 happy resource, a tip of the island going towards some other island.

just pray you don't get blocked by toku like in my last game and wait for ob and using glh ~2k years :p

and health seems horrid, though at least there's one granary source
 
I agree that health is scarce, good thing we're an expansive civ--that extra health will be very helpful I feel. Pacal is actually a very suitable leader for this variant as no specialists means growing cities instead and his traits/UB helps a lot there.

Think I'm going to play this tonight unless there are any requests not to--I'm really itching to get this game going as the variant seems fun. I haven't played a financial leader in a long time either--actually looking forward to it.

Seeing as the island to the SW seems to be at least big enough for a city or two (maybe even contacts) we seem to have a consensus for the GLH. As we're settling clam+horse first I guess we'll go fishing -> sailing.

Do we want to get a 3rd city up (irrigated wheat) before starting on the GLH? If so we'd have to squeeze in agriculture before masonry. My take on it is to wait a while as there's no competition. We can 2-pop whip a settler at 69/100 hammers instead for massive overflow into the GLH after it's started too.

My plan is to get the lighthouse to 29/60 hammers and then 2-pop whip once masonry is in. If the lighthouse for some reason is at 29/60 hammers before we have masonry I'll start on a settler temporarily. Once masonry is in I'll whip the lighthouse and get started on the GLH while re-growing the city. Once the city has almost reached size 5 again we can continue on the settler and whip it for more overflow into the GLH. I'm not going to be playing that long but you get the idea.
 
Played 26 turns up to an even number/natural stop (39 -> 65/1400 BC).

Start off by switching research to fishing. I also send our worker over to chop the forest on my planned city spot to not waste hammers. It also speeds up the next city by 1 turn as the settler can move and settle on the same turn.

Turn 42 / 2320 BC
We lose a fortified warrior to an archer on a forested plains hill. :(

Settler -> finish warrior -> holkan -> wb scouting west.
City #2 puts 2 turns into stonehenge for spare gold while waiting for fishing.

Turn 51 / 1960 BC
We discover a source of copper near Mutal! That's great news but too bad it wasn't gold or gems instead. :p

The SW island seems to be pretty big--I'm guessing we'll find someone soon.

Turn 60 / 1600 BC
We find someone, but you could ask whether we'd want to be isolated instead. :mischief:



Oh well, at least he'll have to attack us across coast and we'll have a choke point meaning it'll be easy to defend so I guess it's not too bad as the trade routes will be great.

I reach a dead end. I doubt any of us will have writing any time soon so it might be better to just head back and scout from below instead. I don't think there are any more civs within range to the west as Shaka has been putting 4 EPs against us every turn--we're breaking even in that regard.



I was pretty disappointed when I found out there was nothing more to the south. As I saw the land ended and there being a lot of coast I was expecing fish or crab. :(



I wasn't able to use our whipping plan--we had no commerce tiles in our capital and no gold popped from huts slowing things down considerably. As things stand getting a 3rd city was a no-brainer. I didn't send the settler down south but SE instead as we can improve those tiles. Unfortunately there were a lot of barbs ambushing me so the holkan is injured--we have to wait a couple of turns settling the city. I have made a work boat already so make sure you settle with the crab in the first ring. I'm thinking either 1E or 1W of the desert goody hut, there's no real way of popping it any time soon other than via culture. Who knows, maybe we'll even get a good tech from it.



I have pre-chopped some forests but had to leave 2 of them at eta 2 as barbarian archers arrived slowing down my workers. I marked them though; eta 1 means that the forest is cleared immediately and eta 2 means you need two turns.

We could consider going for writing as our next tech after masonry (via AH) and postpone agriculture, the wheel and pottery temporarily. If so our WB could continue through Shaka's culture and we'd get trade routes worth of 3 commerce much earlier (unless some barb cities block trade). Worth considering at least.
 

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  • UNGY-04 BC-1400.CivBeyondSwordSave
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are you sure it ain't worth building a blocking city even if it'll cost you a ton?

I mean:

- no gold from huts would say "no";
- 3rd city in a crap situation would obviously be "no";
- playing "let's check every turn" and inevitably having to reload since I forget one turn to check(ok, this ain't marathon, but still checking every turn is meh) for closing ob when seeing the galley is damn annoying
- the turf ain't that great so it'd be also "no"; normally on this type of map I'm happy if I claim "my" resources and whoever wants to pay, can have the plain plains; can always grab it post rene;
- however, in this situation having only 1 city(with walls, you do masonry anyway for glh) and on coast for the ai to bash in at 100% defence(50 from amphibious, 50 from walls) seems great. I mean, if espionage says just you and shaka, it's more certain than many things on this earth it'll be war non stop... and pre frigates/galleons/astronomy the ai always bash on the 1st city. On all the maps like this I've played. Despite their advertising with better amphibious attacks in bts, beside your front city you can keep an warrior forever.

also you'll have to expand at some point; furs obsolete and then the happy cap will be abysymal since you'll have nothing to trade with; plus, being normal speed, way less chances of poping metals from random mines. That or the media wonders.

p.s - also, normally on this type of maps, if I figured out early enough, it's cheaper to wait and pop the huts with scout; getting iw from random hut is always nice. But if you do that, usually it's good to fogbust them before, as otherwise you could get the archer fortified on them, eventually in the woods(didn't look at the save, so no clue if you poped already or not)

p.s2 - obviously, planting the blocking city when he shows up with the galley, just keeping the settler there till then
 
are you sure it ain't worth building a blocking city even if it'll cost you a ton?
I mean:

- no gold from huts would say "no";
- 3rd city in a crap situation would obviously be "no";
- playing "let's check every turn" and inevitably having to reload since I forget one turn to check(ok, this ain't marathon, but still checking every turn is meh) for closing ob when seeing the galley is damn annoying
- the turf ain't that great so it'd be also "no"; normally on this type of map I'm happy if I claim "my" resources and whoever wants to pay, can have the plain plains; can always grab it post rene;
- however, in this situation having only 1 city(with walls, you do masonry anyway for glh) and on coast for the ai to bash in at 100% defence(50 from amphibious, 50 from walls) seems great. I mean, if espionage says just you and shaka, it's more certain than many things on this earth it'll be war non stop... and pre frigates/galleons/astronomy the ai always bash on the 1st city. On all the maps like this I've played. Despite their advertising with better amphibious attacks in bts, beside your front city you can keep an warrior forever.

also you'll have to expand at some point; furs obsolete and then the happy cap will be abysymal since you'll have nothing to trade with; plus, being normal speed, way less chances of poping metals from random mines. That or the media wonders.

p.s - also, normally on this type of maps, if I figured out early enough, it's cheaper to wait and pop the huts with scout; getting iw from random hut is always nice. But if you do that, usually it's good to fogbust them before, as otherwise you could get the archer fortified on them, eventually in the woods(didn't look at the save, so no clue if you poped already or not)
Do you mean on Shaka's island? I'm thinking our next city is going to be claiming the bronze, irrigated wheat and the cows on the western edge of our island. He's not going to be settling there any time soon--It's still just 1400 BC. He doesn't even have any visible culture nearby the choke between the islands. We'll probably whip out another settler soon too (once agriculture is in) and use overflow into the GLH.

Popping borders with culture is even better than popping them with scouts btw as you can't get experience. Bigger chance of getting a tech (which is why I'm suggesting settling right next to it--1E picks up spice too) and also getting crab in our first ring for immediate commerce.
 
Is it worth beelining MC and trying for Colossus? Pottery is likely to be useful. MC gives us triremes which could also be useful as Shaka can only invade by sea which means galleys pre-astronomy.
Without bulbing astronomy is not something we'll be acquiring any time soon and the extra commerce from Colossus in the near future is likely to benefit us more than enhanced trade routes in the more distant future.
 
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