Dr kossin #9

Welcome to Dr kossin #9, which stands for Daily Round.

Yes, I will aim to get in a update every day - as long as I have the time (work, girlfriend, etc). I might skip a day here and there but I will compensate by playing an extra round here and there.
Now I don't plan on very long updates, sometimes just 10 turns, and will stop at strategic times.

That being said, I'm not a great player but I can manage at times. My goal is to improve and, if possible, help others improve as well. I couldn't beat Noble when I started reading this forum (could barely beat Warlord) and I am now in the process of getting comfortable on Immortal.

That's where you come in. I need your ideas, your criticism and everything else you can throw at me - even if you can't beat Noble. Since I plan on an update everyday, there will be mistakes from my part and I might not always get the best advice going forward. That's life!

You are also welcome to shadow this game, although I would prefer you post it in spoilers and no further than I have already played. You can still shadow the whole game and post it but it is important that no one uses that knowledge (land, AIs) to help me.

Without further time wasting, let's go to the game.

Dr kossin #9

Round 0 Settling decisions
Round 1 Settling spree incoming
Round 2 Christmas Season Spirit
Round 3 Towards Liberalism
Round 4 Surely, you must be joking.

Game settings:
Immortal
Fractal (I've had a friend check that it is not isolated or semi-isolated)
Normal Speed
No Huts/Events
BULL 1.0+BUG 4.2 in Custom Assets
Everything else normal.

The leader this time is Cyrus! Smithers, release the Immortals!


+50% production to settlers, +100% Great General emergence, +1 from monuments, -25%XP for troop levels.

His UB: a Grocer with a base 2


His UU: a Chariot with +50% attack against Archers


We start with Agriculture and Hunting.


It's quite a good combo as it allows to improve a lot of early resources and makes Animal Husbandry much cheaper to research.

And the start:


Here's what I think is in the fog:


2 clams and a plains cow... trusting the map generator would give me an extra resource somewhere (seafood is worth 2/3 so I have 2.3333 resources in my BFC right now).

With jungle to the NE, we can say we are just under the jungle belt. Let's hope for non-jungle terrain again!

Settling 1W on the plains hill for the extra is certainly tempting, but I may end up with only 2 hills and a plains cow for production (which may or may not be sufficient with 16 base ).

Settling 1NW gets us a health bonus and keeps all hills and resources we see.

Settling in place is also a possibility, although I won't get a health bonus there.

Settling 1S is not that appealing as we lose the flood plain bonus.

Settling 1SE doesn't have that much production and loses 1 clams.

The last option is moving inland, but with jungle so close and only plain cows as food that we can see... it doesn't look too promising.

I can tell there is at least 1 solid tile 2W3N of the settler given the lake in the fog.

Scout move: either scout southeast(2S1E) or west. Since I'm feeling like I'll settle west, exploring southeast first might reveal something to mix things a bit.

Techs: AH first seems a given with our starting techs, the cows, and our UU. Should horses appear somewhere nearby, there could very well be 1 (or 2 with luck) less AIs in the game early.
Fishing is the other option but I think it'll only be useful a bit later with Agriculture available.

1 NW and 1W might lose seafood. 1W looks good unless you see a resource 3S of the scout. If so, settling in place seems good.

Must say, I love me the Persians, even though this is Cyrus instead of my fav, Darius.

You also have the floodplains as a part resource. Scout south, if you see nothing, either settle in place or move. Tech is tough. Maybe go AH/fishing, with your worker fixing up the cow and then irrigating stuff. Hope 1E is horses, then immortal rush if that works. Also remember that immortals get defensive bonuses, so they can fortify.

Darius is better than cyrus, but Cyrus can be a beast warmongerer. More GG and charismatic = strong late game units.

UWHabs said:

Darius is better than cyrus, but Cyrus can be a beast warmongerer. More GG and charismatic = strong late game units.

Click to expand...

True. But I say both are great warmongerers. Darius has organized, which is a very nice military trait, though Charismatic is still better. I just love the synergy between financial and organized, making more money and saving more money! Yippee!!!

2 clams and a plains cow... trusting the map generator would give me an extra resource somewhere (seafood is worth 2/3 so I have 2.3333 resources in my BFC right now).

Click to expand...

Not necessarily. You might be getting cow glitched and this is all you get. Still, at least there's more than just one plains cow.

Why not move the warrior iNW so we can see more?

AH/Fishing

Since I'm thinking about settling 1W or 1NW, I want to see what I'd lose east (or to give a strong argument to settle east or in place instead) since from the lay of the land we can pretty much guess what's up there.

Plus the scout has 2 moves which might be wasted otherwise.

I'll move the scout as proposed and post a screenshot. If nothing proves interesting, the settler will move 1N to get vision via the lake and then move accordingly west or southwest.

Round 0

I move the scout and find Fish far east with few hills available.


I then send the settler 1N to see further through the lake...


Jungle...

Guess I'll settle on the plains hill.

I like it, just send the scout between the forest and the other plain hill. You never know what you can find...

Settle south of the lake and grow the city big in the BCs with specialists and farm (you'll want the fresh water).

Edit: That said I'm surprised you didn't settle 1SE after the scout revealed fish -- looks best to me, but now it will cost another turn.

I'm 75% sure there's horses 1SE of where your settler currently is, on the riverside grassland. I would have settled in place.

Round 1

Whenever Rusten says something, there's bound to be a good reason for it... at least so I tell myself. The only reason why I didn't settle to grab the fish with Persepolis was the lack of direct production from that location. Anyway... I did settle next to the lake like he first suggested and look for yourself...


Even better than grabbing the fish
I explored the island and found no neighbors. Too bad for Immortals...
After AH, I researched Mining, BW, TW(for Immortals) and then finally Fishing to scout around the land I could see.

Here's the cast so far:




The lay of the land called for this obligatory strategy...


You can also see Kadazzle was right with horses being in the initial BFC.
Open borders with Ragnar and Kublai are just golden right now as a result - although they do benefit a lot from me as well.

I researched Alphabet next even though Tokugawa was there before me, I was able to get this trade and Please Kublai somewhat.


I can now fill up the island since I've got most of what I need to improve my land. Calendar would be the other tech I need now.


Looking back at it now, my city placement is bad... I could have split cities up to get at least 3~4 more coastal cities. I can still take advantage of the Great Lighthouse by changing the initial dotmap a bit. Stone will let me quickly build Oxford University and also allow me to build wonders for failure gold to even further augment my tech rate.

Ragnar and KK's continent


Toku's continent


Techs



I can gift Alphabet to Ragnar to try and please him a bit.

Religion wise, I can convert to Toku or KK's religion or stay in NSR, which is somewhat safer. Diplomacy will be touchy...


Should I generate a Great Merchant, bulbing Metal Casting could prove to be useful to build Triremes and sink possible invasion fleets from Tokugawa. I'm a bit less worried by Ragnar/KK since they share a border and will only hate each other more as the game goes.

This looks like another fun game, I'll try to play another round today.

I can never get ANY luck. RNG wants to scr00000090000000000 me. GLH goes in 1340 in my game, the turn before I'd get it. It's obviously the strongest wonder on the whole damn map so I was not happy with that. I did win anyway at least.

Settling on the stone got me mids so I went quite heavy on farms/rep X_X.

A city on Toku's continent to get marble-wheat would prevent galleys from making it to your homeland, at least until he declares. Also provide overseas trade.

Can easily squeeze two cities in on the east coast, west coast is more problematic.

Round 2

Yea... I didn't play a second round yesterday since I got sidetracked with my Deity attempt. Here is today's round:

I gifted Alphabet to Ragnar, which bumped him to Pleased.

After running 2 scientists in Persepolis forever, the odds were 50%/50% and I ended up with a Great Merchant.


After finishing Currency, I opted to bulb Metal Casting to have a shot at The Colossus (I missed it by a few turns to the Oracle civilization).


Kublai was in the Holiday spirit and cam in asking for his present early. Merry XMas to you KK!


Currency being out of the bag... why not make a gift to Toku?



Open borders, trade resources = profit. Annoyingly, I could never trade for Mathematics, Monarchy or Code of Laws so I all researched them myself.

While I'm at it... also bumped to Pleased.


The next AI... it doesn't get any better it seems.


Here, enjoy! Combined with Hereditary Rule, his favorite civic, he's easily Pleased and could move to Friendly in the future.


A trade with Ragnar...


The RNG is also feeling kind towards us, yay!


The next GP is a scientist which makes an Academy in Persepolis.


It allows me to turn the slider to 100% and fast research Civil Service for a civic switch.


Caste System will allow me to generate a quick Great Scientist (I hope) to bulb part of Education. The other option is to trigger a Golden Age, run even more scientists to get another Great Scientist, possibly combined with running Pacifism and a religion for its duration, and then switch out 8 turns later to Slavery and out of Religions to avoid the Diplo hit.

The land we own


Techs



Diplomacy looks good right now.


So does GNP...


Tokugawa is actually researching very fast, he had Civil Service in the BCs!
I have a workboat scouting through Tokugawa's land looking for Gilgamesh to further improve my trade routes.

I seem to be safe from a Tokugawa DoW right now. Since we don't share borders, he can only consider a distant war against me, which is blocked since the maximum power ratio in such a case is 0.3, while I'm hovering just under 0.5 the map leader. Maybe I'm not reading it right, it happens a lot

Nonetheless, I should keep building some Triremes and keep and eye out if I ever see someone go into war-mode. Sinking ships is easier than killing units.

Round 3

A long round... had some time and there wasn't much micromanagement to be done with peaceful times.

A trade... allows me to get his trade routes.


As a side bonus, I won circumnavigation!


Here's the next AI, as backwards as I've ever seen him.


Couldn't spawn a Great Scientist despite 90% odds...


A couple of trades...




Remember that Merchant? He was put to good use.


Another trade...


Which revealed the last AI, just south of us!


Another trade. Didn't need it but it was good for trading fodder.





Beelined Economics for obvious reasons... trade routes and the free Great Merchant


I wanted to build this for failure gold but it seems I forgot to take it off the queue...


More trading!


Déjà-vu?


Finally a Scientist! He triggers a Golden Age.


Anything to gain 1 turn!


Another Great Scientist born... settled.


Taj Mahal finished. More Golden Age time.


Delayed Liberalism forever and took with Electricity. Maybe I should have teched towards Assembly Line and taken that as a freebie instead...


With the free Spy from Communism and the free Scientist from Physics... more Golden Age!


A look at the island... hammers... can you guess what I have in mind? Prepare for a bloody end!


Techs... it's actually fairly slow since I have to tech everything myself!



Diplo is fine (I'm immune from Ragnar, was Friendly when he went into war-mode)


Civics... State Property is an obvious choice soon. I'd get out of Monarchy but the happy cap is kinda hurting right now and I'm dependent on military police.

My god how long of a golden age was that. Nice job btw, I can never imagine tackling immortal and being the undisputed tech leader!

24 turns of Golden Age so far... 36 had I had the Mausoleum

The AIs aren't trading with each other and this isn't a particular strong teching cast, combined with the layout and me getting GLH makes it a very gentle Immortal game.

Might get time to play another quickie tonight!

Round 4

Well, technically it's tomorrow here, so not round 3b

Having a bit of free time, I decided to have some fun!

I settled almost all Great Persons from this point on. I could have triggered another Golden Age but I couldn't be bothered doing so much micromanagement.


Gilgamesh offers me this trade which I accept.


Just because I can build it...


Because I'll use it...


Because it was available...


I said I settled almost all great persons because... thank you KK!


I beelined the major modern war techs:
Assembly Line, Industrialism, Combustion and Flight. Everything else is just bonus. Since my cities were almost all around size 20.. I workshopped/watermilled over just about everything leaving a farm here and there. From there I just build troops...


He doesn't last long...


Neither does he...


He last a bit longer...


He doesn't!


Meanwhile I've been building a second stack which heads to Kublai's land. You can see the damage after a few turns:


Liberating cities is a good option here since the game is almost over and it 'gives me' 2 infantry per city. I got lucky and generated Saladin as a vassal for Protective Infantry.

The first stack joins the war and works on Ragnar's northern cities while the second goes after Ragnar's southern cities.

Shortly afterwards...



It's all over!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Post game
The Great Lighthouse was huge on this map. Imperialistic wasn't that great although it was faster settling the island. Charismatic was a great help since there wasn't that much happy resources on my island and I couldn't trade for that many either so I had to rely on monuments and Hereditary Rule.

What was built/improved...


Demographics - hammers get you wins.


Military power... cake walk.


MFG... I was ahead since 500ADs and it showed on infrastructure.


So, how did we fare?


Not bad but not great. Standard score for a 19th century conquest game.

It sure was a pretty fun game though! (Much less stress than that Deity game)

I'm off to bed now, look for Dr kossin #10 in some hours!

Damn this was quick Not even time to respond properly to this one. Great game. We want more

Cheers mate.