Noble's Club XXVI: Pacal

My infantry head-shotted shaka

i settled in place what with 4 food resources, really good commerce and decent production. this seems like a great city site! i think the best first city i've had in any of my games.

my early tech path was as follows with my reasoning:

1. Fishing - so i could use water tiles
2. Polytheism - i usually try to get one of the early religions so i can make friends early (we'll see in this game - we're awfully isolated)
3. Agriculture - to irrigate the corn
4. Bronze Working - (Slavery + lots of food and trees is good )
5. Sailing - we're on an island

my build order with explanations:

1. Warrior (Nothing worker could do yet and more exploring seemed good)
2. Worker
3. 3 Workboats ( hooked up the crab and the 2 fish )
4. Galley

I hit Bronze Working and went to Slavery right around the time the first workboat was underway , i chopped and whipped for the 3 boats and the galley to get everything out fast. ( this is an amazing slavery city, even without a granary it grows very fast and i'm getting commerce out of the worked tiles )

City Management

I'm not really using many hammers as my production is coming from chopping trees and whipping. I've used the fish , crab and coast rather than the bread so I can tech as fast as possible.

I cleared 3 forests for production but have left the rest to this point. This has always been a tough part for me and i'd love some advice here. Should i chop them all? My thoughts are that this isn't a natural production city so leaving the grassland forests isn't a terrible idea. once i have pottery i suppose this will be even more of a decision.

for now i cleared the two hills where i wanted mines and the arctic forest which is a plain. given the choice I'll usually clear plains forests first since i still have one hammer after clearing. i don't know if this is good logic or not so any guidance here would be appreciated.

Other

I explored as much as i could, I met Justinian first and then Sitting Bull just before the final save. I did found Hinduism so my capital is a holy city. Unfortunately one of my first two neighbors founded buddhism ( Justy) so converting him will be harder. I do see Hinduism in Sitting Bull's future however )

I've circled the next island to the west, it has ivory and some floodplains, definitely see a good city spot there. direct north of us is a desert before there's some more decent land again at the top of the island. with all the jungle though iron working will be needed. the 4th city spot might be the western island rather than north. the 2nd city spot i placed to the east. more on that later....

Continuing Tech Path and City Builds

6. The Wheel - time to hook up the corn and be ready to link up the 2nd city to the east.
7. Priesthood - ( Monarchy will get me the wine , hopefully i'll want writing for open borders soon)
8. Monarchy - ( still haven't met anyone so no need for open borders yet )
9. Pottery ( i want granaries to grow even faster and whip more - i'm very tempted to go with writing to get libraries going with all my commerce and that gold coming soon but i figure i want granaries first )
10. Writing ( libraries would be nice )

Continuing Build Order

5. Worker - looking towards next city
6. Lighthouse ( i'll likely whip this done then grow with a warrior, then use him with settler)
7. Warrior ( in one turn with overload from the whip, city also grows to 4 this turn)
8. Settler
9. Hindu Temple ( i've got a lot of food and slavery, i figure a happiness boost can help)
10. Galley - more exploration. need to meet more civs.

2nd City Placement

So another are where I'd really love some advice. I built my 2nd city on the coastal hill so that i can reach the whale, two gold mines, one flood plain, 4 grasslands and 1 forest plain. i like this spot as i should become a commerce monster but i really debated the square directly southeast of the small lake to the north. this would have given me the stone, sheep , another wine and one gold. my thinking was i had more chance of losing the spot to the east to justinian and it might be easier to grow it faster with it having more food in general. now that i really think about this i'm not sure that's right given the sheep i could get with animal husbandry. also it means my first two cities are further apart. it's a good 3rd city spot anyway.

Future Thinking:

The 3rd city spot seems a given although the timing i guess depends on my economy. i'm not really used to having an island empire so i'm not sure i can afford to expand to the eastern island soon. i think code of laws might be a priority to keep costs under control.

War would not appear to be in my immediate future which is good given i have no access to copper. i'd prioritize iron working if i felt an early war was a necessity but the western island looks empty so I think I've got at least 5 city spots for now so I'm not as concerned about it.

Lots of water is a boring game =). Land > all. I despise water maps due to the lack of war, lack of diplomacy, lack of fun, etc....... Water is just the absolutely worst kind of game to play on so I have quit

Not looking at the map carefully allowed me to play this game blind, but I notice now that the food layout is a bit quirky. I'd have probably WB edited it for earlier NC's. Anyway, factoring in the lighthouse the lake is food, and I decided to split the gold mines up so that I could get the stone and whatnot.



Now, this is something I don't usually do. If it works on IMM it should work below. We have financial and start with mysticism, so I figured I'd give the oracle a relatively low-risk MC slingshot attempt.



Why oracle metal casting? Well, if you don't go GLH on this map, the alternative is colossus. Taking advantage of FIN + colossus, we have coastal commerce that is very competitive with cottage commerce for most of the game that I care about.

And the wonder whoring and religious line cut my expansion a bit, mehmed even made it to my island. Here I am at 1 AD, position looking decent since I'm likely to get apostolic palace also.







Nobody has alphabet yet which is pretty rare for this difficulty. Once they do I'll have enough trade bait to backfill decently.

As predicted I got christianity:



From this point it was mostly camping out and working lots of water tiles + whip. Unlike cottages that need to grow the colossus coastal commerce can be whipped away and grown back quickly, which has good synergy with the seafood that frequently accompanies it. Moai and later oxford went in capitol, most other cities just whipped to this point. I get TAP:



I lose circumnavigation. That's what I get for leaving the astro line alone too long.



Some AIs start to throw some fireworks into the mix:



I won lib and took the generic, boring lib tech:



But maybe it won't be so boring soon.

More AI fireworks



After lib ----> nat I lost taj mahal but teched astro then to steal. Maybe you can guess what started happening @ gunpowder: "hell no, we won't go!" perhaps? Oh, but you guys will:



I found that I can keep good tabs on where I've drafted and cycle it properly via using the f1 city screen. Odd. Later on I'd be using that for the cannon whipping, too (all my hammers this game are drafting/whipping so far).

I went for Justinian b/c he was teching rapidly and I wanted to get him out of the way before he was trouble. Sadly, this meant he bribed gilgamesh into war with me almost instantly. I lost a good bit of frigates but made headway:



But this time gilgamesh calls for help:



D'oh.

Everyone had rifles that I was fighting, and I was still cannon/musket, but at least the navies were @ parity. All my ship production switched to mutal with drydocks/moai/settled priests and engineers to nearly 1/turn them every turn. I settled my GG's there and eventually got combat III ships out of the gate. Mehmed landed on my island after I sued for peace w/ gilga (he gave me 100 gold?), and took a city. I recaptured it, and then the drafting hell #'s just swarmed mehmed. Cannons whipped every 10, muskets drafted every 10 (why do people dislike muskets?!), and toward the end of the war I finally picked up rifles!

Wha BAM!





I kept all of mehmed's mainland cities to get me even more production. I can spearhead my troops @ north corner for good supply chain logistics. I'm backwards but khan doesn't have steam power yet, sury hates SB more than me (thankfully), and SB and Khan are @ war. Khan has nothing to bribe gilgamesh with, and even if he brings him in justinian and mehmed will distract him.

Sury has a huge amount of power, a bit stronger than me actually. But, rifles will keep being drafted, then infantry. Biology should help me along nicely too. @ start of next segment I'm bribing my vassals out of emancipation too!

If I can cap GK and SB I can probably just win UN. Spreading TAP religion is too much work.

By the way, sometimes the spoils of war are nice:



The only city of Justin's I kept, thanks to the shrine income. Of course its culture pressure is immense, but I keep it out of revolt w/ leftover draft muskets. That's not necessary in mehmed's land because I took all of his continental cities. Hell, I'll eventually be able to draft there too, haha!

I think I've got this, I'll return to it in a bit.