Help Monkeyfinger shake off his rust. (Emperor, DeGaulle)

So I stopped playing BtS about a year ago, and have been limiting my Civ4 experience to nothing but mods ever since, with FfH being the main one. (In some ways this is worse than totally quitting, since I've formed a lot of habits that do not apply to BtS.) Anywho I started trying my hand at the core game again yesterday and I suck, at least compared to how I once was.

So you know the drill, unless things have really changed in a year. I post saves, screenshots and reports, you guys help me out.

Emperor was the difficulty that was getting nice and easy for me when I quit, and DeGaulle, with his sweet traits and trash uniques, has always been a leader I've considered good but not uber. So that's what we're rolling with. Maybe I should be doing a "squish everyone with Huayna" game instead, but meh.

Standard continents map, no optional setting checked.

Start:



Thinking of settling 1NW, on the dye (Calendar takes quite a while to roll in, right?) I totally forget what the best thing to build at the start is, same for research. I'm used to "agriculture, queue up 5 warriors" right now. Something tells me that's the wrong move.

No need to waste the clams imo. Settle in place, research fishing, scout the surroundings.

EDIT: Maybe a case could be made for settling on the plains hill for the extra hammer

Settling off the coast with seafood is one of my pet hates, so I would settle either in place or 1NE, which wastes a turn moving the settler but as I see it, there's a big patch of riverside grassland there (10 riverside tiles at least), for a nicely cottages Bureaucracy capital later on. IIRC you only get a bonus hammer/commerce in your city if the tile has a base of 3, which isn't the case here, so settling on a perfectly decent riverside dye seems a waste. Irrigating the tile before calender is a good option.
Move your warrior NW first though, so you find out what's to the north, maybe it will be worth settling off the coast after all.
First build with seafood should be a workboat, if you don't start with fishing, tech there while building a worker, then switch to a WB after teching fishing. Make sure to work the highest hammer tile available for the WB, then finish the worker.

Move the warrior NW; but it would have to be something special to stop me settling in place. 9 cottages - 6 of them on the river - and 12 production. Looks like a bureaucracy powerhouse to me.

You start with Agriculture so you can get all your immediate food needs from that corn. I'd tech Mining -> Bronze, build a worker and look for someone to kill. But I don't play above Monarch.

nokem

Moving the warrior NW reveals:

I say settle in place, Moving 1N will waste the clams until you build another city on the coast. Calender is quite a long ways off so i think you should just settle in place. It seems you're close to jungle. Every time i see jungle i jump for joy at all those nice cottage grasslands and almost always there are a few clumps of gems lying around!

PS: You can't cut jungle until IW, a quite expensive tech. Another reason to settle farther south!

There's probably a clam 2S. As much as I'd like to settle on the plains hill, dye in a capital without a guaranteed second city site with enough food to take it.

vicawoo said:

There's probably a clam 2S. As much as I'd like to settle on the plains hill, dye in a capital without a guaranteed second city site with enough food to take it.

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I might still be in favor of the plains hill, though it does have a decent chance of holding a resource too. A faster start is never to be discounted, and he has the tech to immediately work the irrigated corn .

Hmm, this feels weird. I remember monkeyfinger from when I first signed up...1000's of posts ago .

I'm going to hate myself for this once I get to steam power but I settled in place. Some good arguments here, the ultimate thing swaying me was that I'd lose a hill if I made any of the moves.

I teched fishing -> mining -> bronze -> mysticism (for stonehenge), working on pottery now.

Build order was worker, work boat, settler, now another worker.

Map:



Starting warrior got reckt by a pair of lions pretty recently. Shame. Looks like some good land down SW, but I didn't get to finish exploring it.

I would settle 1NW of that Copper to get the Cows in the first ring. I don't think you can improve the Rice till IW. I looked at the save and I see you met Joao. Connect the Copper ASAP and rush him if you can or he's settle much of your land since he is a mad REXer.

I'll be following this game closely as I really like DeGaulle as a leader. Stonehenge is a no-brainer since you have a lot of land to grab. You are quite isolated in fact, unless there's someone lurking just to the SW there. I'm thinking wonder spam, settled specialists economy? I believe you can chop the Pyramids; I think it's a choice between it and Oracle. Rep+Caste ASAP would be nice, but I don't think you can get both?

Very nice city 1NW of copper. Nice CE terrain overall. I would suggest Moai in the capital.

futurehermit said:

I would suggest Moai in the capital.

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Jog my memory. What's Moai?

The Moai Statues are a national wonder that provides +1 to every water tile in the city (lakes, coast, and ocean).

Magic Shadow Power...

1 AD


1505 AD



My tech sucks when I expand . Sure, I can win this way @ emp and with some success at immortal, but I don't think this kind of play will cut it on deity :/.

Did you cottage a dye? Some people might think it's ok, but they're high commerce tiles (equal to towns pre-plantation) with trade value makes up for the 3 less commerce to towns late game. Even if it's a town by the time you get calendar, you could have added it later as a 5 commerce tile as opposed to adding a 1-2 commerce grassland cottage.

Another controversial criticism, early workboats when you have a superior food source (irrigated clams) is sacrificing a lot of hammers, that's 2 warriors you could have built. Especially if you lost your first scouting warrior, how are you going to expand safely without a warrior escort? What if the second warrior dies? You're going to have to chop a warrior.

vicawoo said:

Did you cottage a dye? Some people might think it's ok, but they're high commerce tiles (equal to towns pre-plantation) with trade value makes up for the 3 less commerce to towns late game. Even if it's a town by the time you get calendar, you could have added it later as a 5 commerce tile as opposed to adding a 1-2 commerce grassland cottage.

Another controversial criticism, early workboats when you have a superior food source (irrigated clams) is sacrificing a lot of hammers, that's 2 warriors you could have built. Especially if you lost your first scouting warrior, how are you going to expand safely without a warrior escort? What if the second warrior dies? You're going to have to chop a warrior.

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Irrigated clams, huh? How much food does it add when one does that, and how does one ditch dig to add water to water ?

I agree though. I personally didn't/wouldn't cottage the dye (possibly farm it just for early commerce, if you intend to work a non-resource farm anyway). Irrigated corn is probably the best tile in the game (equal to grassland pig but stronger after bio)...meaning working it immediately is usually a good idea.

I very frequently go unescorted settler in high level games after the animals disappear but before barbs invade, or if I have the gwall. It just needs to be only traveling flatlands when not in your borders. I haven't lost a settler doing this in a long time.

IMo settling NW on the dye seems best.. you get a 2 commerce capital tile, don't waste a turn and it is an amazing burrecracy capital as well as without any useless ocean tiles...

Damn you oyzar for waiting as long as you did to say that and damn me for my impatience. That was my instinct too, but no one agreed with it so I deferred.

Anywho. I founded the city between the copper and the clams as everyone suggested. Stonehenge was completed in a far away land like 2 turns after that. Well dog's balls. I've completely forgotten what the wonder pace on standard emperor is like, so I don't know if I should have expected that or not. Great wall fell pretty shortly after, so my gut says there's some industrious prick out there hoarding.

Built a granary, then another worker/settler pair, then the oracle (yes!), then a barracks, then half a dozen or so axemen in Paris. Orleans built a monument, a granary, a barracks, and about half a dozen more axemen. Tech path was pottery, AH, writing, CoL from oracle, Mathematics, and now working on Civil Service. I skipped alphabet because if BtS is anything like the mods I've been playing, our isolation makes Joao think he has a monopoly on his techs, meaning he won't be trading them, except maybe for his life.

Here's my third city.



I can't see myself whipping much because I never liked whipping my capitals and my other cities lack enough food. Should I revolt to caste system and find somewhere to run a boatload of scientists?

You can see most of my army in Lyons. 3 more are on the way. Is that enough to do a rush with on Emperor?

Joao has iron, I saw swordsmen skulking around. Axes will work well here.

Should I be expanding more? Thoughts on my tech path? I really don't feel confident in my knowledge of BtS's tech tree anymore.

I'd expand more personally but you'll see when you get past 1 AD in my spoiler the pros/cons of that. Your axe force (+3) will probably get you some cities, but you'll definitely need to reinforce it after that to finish joao off. Of course, you might want to take peace, fleece him for techs, then declare again later, that's up to you (I didn't rush in this map so we've chosen different paths). I actually recommend fleecing him for techs since you're going the rush route. Might as well milk it. It's not like anyone else will appear to get pissed off by it .