King of the World #19: Lincoln

Round 0: Oh, Say Can You See? (4000 B.C.)
Round 1: The Early Press (4000-2850 B.C.)
Round 2: Humble Beginnings (2850-675 B.C.)
Round 3: The Rio Grande (675 B.C.-175 A.D.)
Round 4: A Quick Little War (175-355 A.D.)
Round 5: Annihilation (355-850 A.D.)
Round 6: Resurrection (850-1090 A.D.)

In the King of the World series, we play on Civ IV's various Earth maps, putting our glorious leaders in some sort of geo-historical context. This sacrifices a bit of the exploration phase of the game, but allows us to understand and perfect strategies in a known space.

In this 19th installment, we will finally turn our eyes to the United States and its 16th president, Abraham Lincoln:



Check the Civilopedia for an in-depth discussion of his traits and uniques. For now, well, let's just say that we're going to be playing less Great Emancipator and more Great Subjugator. Yes, we're going to take Manifest Destiny perhaps a bit too far. As a Phi/Chm leader, Lincoln is secretly one of the best warmongers in the game, fuelling an elite war machine with a specialist economy and an easily-cowed populace.

So, with that in mind, let's consider the map. This is stock Earth 34 Civs with a few minor changes. Everyone's been given Archery (though not Archers), Boudica's been shunted off to Ireland, and I made the usual alterations to Central and South America:



As you can see, we've moved the Inca stack to the coast and opened up the Amazon to both Huayna Capac and Pacal II. Standard stuff.

So, without further ado, let's unleash the dogs of war!



Our immediate neighbors will be Sitting Bull and Montezuma. I'm thinking that Sitting Bull will be too tough a nut to crack, at least at first, so I'm thinking that Monty should be our first target. How should we best settle/build/research to get a reasonable stack up and running? Do we settle in place and beeline Iron Working, or move closer to the Copper? CAN we pull off an early rush from our position, or should we wait for Construction and its Catapults?

Let the discussions begin! Be sure to load this mod in order to get the save to work correctly.

Hrm. I think I'd try settling 1NE (I guess that's Newark? Is that small river the Hudson?), you lose those two peaks, and change the deer for crabs. Maybe build a pair of workboats while researching Mining > BW, then worker, warrior to cap and settler for Boston?

As for a rush or not, I'm somewhat torn. Getting rid of Monty is a nice goal, but he'll have Pacal and SB to beat up on first, so it might be useful to use him as a distraction while you establish an east coast empire. If you can grab the South as well that should set you up nicely to tech quickly towards construction. Perhaps Boston isn't the best second city location, maybe try to claim the Chicago area away from SB first, then the New Orleans area (that's always a tough one for me to settle, never sure what's the best location, in this case, probably 1E of the Mississippi delta). So yeah, I'd try to crank out some settlers and then build up to Construction and use cats & swords to start trimming down your neighbors.

I'd settle 1W. This makes it easier to fit 3 more strong cities on the eastern seaboard.

Skip an early rush. SB would be tough to take down. Avoid pissing off Monty and he should go for SB or Pacal.

Instead, focus on expanding as fast as possible to the west. Unfortunately SB will probably settle the double corn with his first city, but the deer-fish to the SW is an excellent option for 2nd city if you can't get any of the corn in the midwest. Then expand into Canada and along the eastern seaboard. You'll have good land with a decent number of cities and a solid production base. From there, look to backstab a neighbor who is already at war.

Settle 1W. Send a settler towards New Orleans then up along the Mississippi to the Great Lakes if you can. Peaceful expansion until you run out of land, then turn on the native population and live your dream of Manifest destiny.

Research you have a choice between Hunting (deer)/Archery or Mining/BW (Slavery/chopping).

By the way, what is the difficulty? Sorry if I missed it.

Copper is too far N to move your settler. Settle 1W to reduce your BFC water content from 9 tiles to 5. First settler to East Texas (1N of fish), then see what is available after SB plants his first expansion city. Tech hunting>mining>BW>archery. Build WB>worker>warrior(s)>settler(chop).

Without copper, horses, or ellies it is a cat+sword conquest by default.

For what it's worth, I would concur with the prevailing advice to get some cities up and running before going on the attack. An early rush on anyone would benefit the other AIs at least as much as you, especially at higher difficulties - I'm guessing you're at immortal?

And is that marble in what could be your BFC if you go west? Could even be worth trying for the oracle, perhaps...

Interesting! Is this your first Earth 34 KotW?

yared94 said:

Interesting! Is this your first Earth 34 KotW?

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I believe the first one was Shaka for a culture win.

I see everyone is having the same line of thought as me. Settle 1 west. It'll open up the eastern seaboard more, give you more grass tiles, and marble just in case. Double corn would be an amazing grab if you can get it, but I don't think that's likely.

The location above fish near New Orleans is a good block grab, but I rarely get any good production out of that location in early game. (Yeah, you got the slave whip, but it only gets you so much).

I'd also say expand and beeline for cats. If you can keep Sitting Bull mostly off the grass, then he's going to have a hard time growing. Go for him while Monty is igniting a Mexican civil war, and conquer North America so the only direction you have to worry about is going south.

EDIT:

Oh, and for build order I would go Work Boat -> Worker, then tech Mining -> Bronze Working

It may just be possible to chop rush a Setter for the double corn. Maybe. Slavery would also help with New Orleans.

Settle 1W. It's a stronger production city with the marble and provides river access for levees. This is especially important since most of the warring will be modern warfare.

SanePerson said:

Settle 1W. It's a stronger production city with the marble and provides river access for levees. This is especially important since most of the warring will be modern warfare.

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You have river access anyway. I don't know about settling, it's a tough call. 1NE is weaker prod-wise, but is better long term. I'd still say 1W still for more riverside grassland and the marble. A possible early Oracle slingshot could be possible. I'm curious what the difficulty is too.

Difficulty is Immortal, game speed is Epic.

I'll not be another sheep in the chorus line!... I say settle 1 west and skip the early rush. Sitting Bull is no fun to rush early and Monty will hit closer targets giving you time to expand.

1W makes a good all-round capital.
I'd recommend settling 2 cities west quickly, followed by the GLH in Washington and researching Iron Working while building it. Monty will have mostly archers and some jags, so swordsmen are better than axes to take his cities.
You can afford to wait this long to rush him because he won't get metal any time soon. With Iron in Cap, no need to settle the bronze rightaway (there's no food there), focus on blocking SB.

Edit: the best tile you have available when settled is the deer tile (3F1H). This tile is much better for producing a worker then a boat. So I'd go worker first, teching hunting then mining>BW then GLH techs

I'd opt for 1NE but that's because I hate peaks in my BFC. Furthermore, that would "free" the Deer for a city around... what is that, Jacksonville? It's too north to be Orlando anyways, but I digress. Furthermore, you obviously want to settle the New Orleans area and while this plan would place cities a bit tight together I've seen that you're no stranger to overlap so all in all I think it would work just nice. That is to say, plant it down next to the deer, north of the fish. I'm captain obvious, nice to meet you.

I don't think you can beat Bull to the sweet double corn spot but you can always try because it obviously is the one of the best locations in the Americas. I'd go ahead and try to settle it first and plant the city 1N of the marble, assuming you relocate capital 1NE because that way the corn city could borrow some production for necessary builds and maybe even the Great Library?

I'm sure you'll make the right calls though, you always have, and this is just me saying I'll follow with great interest.

I'd move the starting settler to the eastern shore of Lake Michigan and settle on turn 3 (NBD on epic) - 2N on first turn, 1NW1W on 2nd - this would be a superior starting location on any map (2 wet corn, 3 hills incl iron, marble)! Settle city 2 in LA/TX area (1N1E of fish looks nice) and you have blocked off the entire east coast.

1 NE is the best spot in my opinion, because you can settle a city for copper and fish to the northeast without any wasted tiles in between. Otherwise you have to claim the copper with a different city than the fish unless you want to waste the crabs. Your first settler should then head to the tile to the east of the Mississippi river delta to claim the deer and fish. You'll probably fight Monty's culture for the fish, because he'll settle his second city to claim those other deer and the fish. Being on the east side of the river gives you a little extra protection from an early Monty DoW too.

1 NE you get 8 riverside tiles, swap deer for Crabs or clam (what ever), better capital city is better then an extra city on eastern sea board. Capital is going to be settler pump, military pump early on, best to get the best and adjust others later.

Emperor Peter said:

Edit: the best tile you have available when settled is the deer tile (3F1H). This tile is much better for producing a worker then a boat. So I'd go worker first, teching hunting then mining>BW then GLH techs

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Assume Neal settles 1W.

Worker first is 9 turns working deer/forest tile with no growth. Then 4-5 turns for camp upgrade (I forget which, includes 1 move minimum into forest tile). End result is 13-14 turns for a 51 tile and city population of 1 with 12-15/22 growth, and 2 turns to pop 2 either way.

Work boat is 10 turns working grassland forest hills. Then 1 turn for clam upgrade. End result is 11 turns for a 42 tile and city growth of 11/22, with 3 turns to pop 2.

By turn 14 the work boat first strategy is putting out 712 a turn working both the fishing boat clams & forest deer, with a pop of 2. If you wait 'til pop growth to build a worker, you get a worker by turn 20 with bronze working, which comes quicker with the extra 2. Going Mining -> Bronze Working first would also get the Iron 2N hooked up quicker.

By turn 15-16 the worker first strategy is putting out 712 with camp deer and unworked clams. Worker first also has the disadvantage of a worker who can only build two grassland farms after turn 13-14, and therefore would require a tech to not be idle, most likely wheel, which would have to come before Mining -> Bronze Working.

Worker first is a good strategy, but work boat first is usually just a little better.