UNGY5 Let's keep it simple!

What do I mean by simple? Well I find all this commerce with the percentages and buildings that multiply beakers, commerce and espionage pretty complicated.
So we won't bother with building those.
No buildings that give a multiplier to any kind of commerce can be built (although it's OK if the AI build them for us).

Our leader--Justinian of the Byzantines.

The settings:






And the start:




Returning from Ungy4 we have:

Ungy
Rusten
Silverbullet
Pigswill
Mystyfly
Open

A pretty good start--cow, irrigated rice and lots of river.
We look to be a bit hammer short--I'm inclined to move off the hill to save us the hill but I'm not sure where.

It appears we have coast to the NNW.

Immortal? Yikes.

Well, seeing how my university's gone on strike and I have time may I join the ship?

Immortal with no Libraries?! Yowzer! I'll be lurking with interest.
btw, does the variant imply no Courthouses are allowed (double )

Signing in.

Really looking forward to this game, this variant sparks my civ senses -- nothing like a good challenge requiring alternate play. I'm probably going to be even more 'hands on' and annoying than usual -- expect a lot of comments!

If the start follows the scripts there should be 1 more hill and I think I see it 1W of the spice, but it's a bit hard to judge just by the screenshot and I haven't had time to open the save yet.

We won't be able to reveal much with our warrior so unless something extreme happens (like finding gems) settling in place seems best. There are 2 places that won't drop a lot of good tiles (that we know of atm) -- on the spice and 1N. Both spots drop a turn and maybe more -- the spice loses the only open grassland we have (probably a resource). Heading 1NE doesn't drop floods/resources, but we lose a lot of river tiles. If that is a plains hill I see 1W of the spice there should be enough production (2 hills and cows).

Regarding early game strategy: We'll need some more scouting first, but the biggest early game problem is no library for GS/GPP. With this in mind shooting for an early wonder is favourable. We have a lot of forests so chopping one out shouldn't be too hard. Personally I am very much in favour of the Oracle judging by what we see so far. We are spiritual and have access to a lot of early commerce (river). With CoL we can use spiritual to the max with on/off CS/slavery for GPP. The capital seems to be very commerce oriented as well and CoL opens up civil service with mathematics. Mathematics boost forest chopping which we have a lot of and aesthetics is no good for us with this variant.

The main problem with CoL via the Oracle is that we have to get writing first which won't do much for us. It might be better to grab monarchy or MC (forges allowed) -- but it's a little early to decide this. If we find stone the Pyramids should be easy (with chopping), but it might be worthwhile to push for it without stone as well -- it depends on how urgent expansion is.

ZPV said:

Immortal with no Libraries?! Yowzer! I'll be lurking with interest.
btw, does the variant imply no Courthouses are allowed (double )

Click to expand...

Courthouses only give "raw espionage" so they are allowed -- we only ban things that boost the commerce (+%), not things that add commerce. We're just banning things that multiply/are affected by the slider -- courthouses won't mess up that.

I believe I see two more hills (to a total of 3) 2W and 1N2W. I'm for settlich in place, we have a very strong location. Last time we took quite some time to move our initial settler and I don't see a reason to do this again.

I like the oracle idea. Just what to get from it? I see either MC or CoL - monarchy is so easy to get in trade we don't need to oracle it imo. We start with Myst so we're already on the way to the oracle.
MC has the advantage that it's early (we only need pottery). We could try the GE-gambit; look for a decent city, rush a forge there and try to get a GE while teching CoL for CS. Until we get CS (and run specs other than the GE) we can build proper infra whipped and some units for selfdefence.
I'm not that hot on oracling CS as we'll likely found confucianism (and miss out on AI-AI tension) and probabely won't be running many specs that early.

We also have mining. What other techs to get before we take the oracle route? Agri is a given, as is AH. Then the usual "if there's no resource around, go archery" and pottery?


If we should decide to forego the oracle we can chop out 3-4 settlers and REX, but that would depend on the surroundings (how many cities do we need to block out the AI, whether there is gold/gems around, ...).


This is an interesting start (and variant) and I'm really looking foreward to it.

Great idea + what a challenge!
Are you disallowing buildings that increase % of processed commerce (=beakers, gold, culture, espionage) only or are Harbour + Custom House (increasing % of raw commerce from trade routes) also forbidden?
Good luck!

p.s.: No "funny" chipotle stuff from me this time!

Checking in.

Settling in place seems ok.

We know how we aren't gaining gold and beakers. Have we worked out how to compensate? Trade route economy we can probably forget, no coast for Glite and I'd reckon ToA, harbours and customs come under the heading of commerce multipliers anyway.
Pyramids for rep?
Oracle>CoL and run a shrine?
Build lots of units instead of them temples of Mammon and go for pointy edge expansion?

Rusten said:

Courthouses only give "raw espionage" so they are allowed -- we only ban things that boost the commerce (+%), not things that add commerce. We're just banning things that multiply/are affected by the slider -- courthouses won't mess up that.

Click to expand...

I was thinking of the -50% maintenance, actually. It looks like you've chosen the variant rule carefully, though.

lurker's comment: Well , a long time ago there was a SG in monarch with no sci multipliers and SS win.... but this is a whole new deck of cards ( it looks that everyone is getting crazy around here... no multiplier buildings, no workers..... )

And too bad that you won't get glance malus from the name in this one

DanF5771 said:

Great idea + what a challenge!
Are you disallowing buildings that increase % of processed commerce (=beakers, gold, culture, espionage) only or are Harbour + Custom House (increasing % of raw commerce from trade routes) also forbidden?
Good luck!

p.s.: No "funny" chipotle stuff from me this time!

Click to expand...

I'm not sure as to what we've decided. Harbors/Custom H./bureaucracy aren't effected by the slider in efficiency -- just adds plain commerce, so IMO they could be allowed, but the team can decide. Processed commerce as you put it was what I had in mind when deciding the variant.

pigswill said:

We know how we aren't gaining gold and beakers. Have we worked out how to compensate?

Click to expand...

GPP will be huge this game -- we will have to do a lot of lightbulbing.

ZPV said:

I was thinking of the -50% maintenance, actually. It looks like you've chosen the variant rule carefully, though.

Click to expand...

Right.

Courthouse only cuts costs and won't be affected by the slider so they are no problem as I see it.

Back to the game at hand: I'm really happy that we chose Justinian because we can play very different with success. If we take CoL from the Oracle we'll be able to run merchants (!) and effectively lightbulb the lower tree into our UU. Usually scientists are better as you have a library and want the early academy, but none of that is the case here. We can lightbulb MC, guilds and/or civil service with GMs. We could use a GS for philosophy, machinery (and perhaps engineering for pikes/trebs?) or a GE (can also lightbulb feudalism) if we go Pyramids.

The problem with GEs is that they're hard to control so I wouldn't revolve the strategy around getting them. Taking feudalism from the Oracle could speed up our UU, but this is probably too risky. Besides, we'll want philosophy for pacifism so CoL is most likely the better pick.

In general, I suggest you look at the great people tech preferences thread and use it when planning a strategy. GPP is one of the few things we aren't handicapped with in this game so using it wisely is crucial. There has never been a better situation to lightbulb the lower tech tree than this game. With a mix of GMs and GSs we can get to guilds early.

Another lurker's comment:
GMs and all other non GS GPs are rather weak bulbers -- I wonder whether GSpies on infiltration missions aren't the best use of GPs here (though hard to get)? Being spiritual helps a lot to optimize the gain from espionage too. Also in order to get Pacifism you might prefer building Shwedagon Paya over burning a GP.

DanF5771 said:

Another lurker's comment:
GMs and all other non GS GPs are rather weak bulbers -- I wonder whether GSpies on infiltration missions aren't the best use of GPs here (though hard to get)? Being spiritual helps a lot to optimize the gain from espionage too. Also in order to get Pacifism you might prefer building Shwedagon Paya over burning a GP.

Click to expand...

Espionage/infiltration is a very good mid/late game alternative, but as you say it's hard to get going early on and we wouldn't be able to attack with a tech lead.

Building the Shwedagon Paya does save a GS, but it means teching aesthetics which is poor here (can't get GL/NE without a library). It does enable drama (UB), but I doubt we'll be using the culture slider for happiness this early. It could work with Byzantium though -- another thing to think about.

I wouldn't be too concerned with GMs being poor lightbulbers, the techs in question are cheaper than a full GS lightbulb anyway (with the exception of guilds).

Signing in.

We decided to allow harbours and didn't mention custom houses. I don't see any reason to ban them though. They are a very week building in BTS anyway.

I agree with settle in place and oracle (unless we scout something else like stone).
MC is probably more optimal for this map as we will need pottery more than writing early, but we need to scout more. If we found good food spots that would favour CoL so we can get lots of great people.
If we find stone we might be able to have pyramids+A.Wat+settled priests combination for some nice mid and late game production boost.

The first tech we need is definitely agriculture. After that AH seems obvious, but we could also go mining->BW or we could go pottery and take advantage of our flood plains early. I haven't calculated it, but my hunch is that early cottages will bring us to oracle faster (faster to BW and priesthood).

However, if we do work early cottages it will considerably slow down our expansion. farming the FP and whipping/chopping is better for best utilizing imperialistic, so it's too early to make any decision yet.

Its worth considering that without writing we can't trade for alphabet or mathematics whichever tech we have (unless we want to trade MC for writing + stuff). Also CoL means caste means specialists for gpp.

vra379971 said:

Immortal? Yikes.

Well, seeing how my university's gone on strike and I have time may I join the ship?

Click to expand...

sure. As we haven't played together, I would only ask that you have experience on immortal, and be at least very comfortable on emperor.

Rusten said:

Harbors/Custom H./bureaucracy aren't effected by the slider in efficiency -- just adds plain commerce, so IMO they could be allowed, but the team can decide. Processed commerce as you put it was what I had in mind when deciding the variant.

Click to expand...

I was assuming we would allow them.
I think we'll have enough of a challenge.

Rusten said:

Back to the game at hand: I'm really happy that we chose Justinian because we can play very different with success. If we take CoL from the Oracle we'll be able to run merchants (!) and effectively lightbulb the lower tree into our UU. Usually scientists are better as you have a library and want the early academy, but none of that is the case here. We can lightbulb MC, guilds and/or civil service with GMs. We could use a GS for philosophy, machinery (and perhaps engineering for pikes/trebs?) or a GE (can also lightbulb feudalism) if we go Pyramids.

The problem with GEs is that they're hard to control so I wouldn't revolve the strategy around getting them. Taking feudalism from the Oracle could speed up our UU, but this is probably too risky. Besides, we'll want philosophy for pacifism so CoL is most likely the better pick.

In general, I suggest you look at the great people tech preferences thread and use it when planning a strategy. GPP is one of the few things we aren't handicapped with in this game so using it wisely is crucial. There has never been a better situation to lightbulb the lower tech tree than this game. With a mix of GMs and GSs we can get to guilds early.

Click to expand...

Yes I think we'll need to run caste early and make the most of our GP--I'm really looking forward to that. I agree we should take a shot at oracle-COL.

As to the game, I'm OK to settle in place as it seems we have a hill or two outside our view. The capital will be pretty strong even w/o the buildings as that's a lot of grassy river.

So I'll give it a start later today--settle in place unless I turn up something surprising with the warrior and research ag-ah, build worker-war.

Rusten said:

I'm probably going to be even more 'hands on' and annoying than usual -- expect a lot of comments!

Click to expand...

excellent! that's how the rest of us learn.

Rusten said:

If the start follows the scripts there should be 1 more hill

Click to expand...

? How do you know this?

@ungy: could we have a list of banned buildings? I assume that academy is out?

yes, academy is out unless captured.

Banned buildings (unless captured):

Science: library, university, observatory, academy, monastery, oxford university
Gold: market, grocer, bank, wall street
Culture: Hermitage, cathedral, broadcast tower, rock'n'roll, broadway, Eiffel tower, Hollywood
Espionage:jail, intelligence agency, Scotland yard, castle

ungy said:

? How do you know this?

Click to expand...

There's a set requirement for what (most) capitals are to have, and one of those is 3 hills. We're sitting on one (assuming this one is included) and spot one to the south so there should be a 3rd somewhere -- and I think I see it 1W of the spice (plains hill).