Dr kossin #35

Certainly a nice start! Oasis to boost research early on, gold to finance expansion and plenty of floodplains. We'll hit the health cap pretty soon unfortunately.

In place seems good although moving NW might allow to gain a 10 commerce before the culture expands to include the Oasis.

Also note the Tundra up north which is a clear giveaway of our approximate location.

Ag>AH seems like a no-brainer but how to proceed from there will depend on the map and AI proximity.

I'm not sure my starting build/tech path, but they roughly started as:
Worker -> Warrior -> Settler -> Worker -> Warrior x3 -> Settler -> Settler -> Worker
Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry -> The Wheel -> Pottery -> Mysticism -> Bronze Working -> Writing -> Aesthetics. I settled my south city first, and I placed it there to nab Stone/Horse, and to get some more quick commerce by sharing the flood plains with the capital. My second and third cities were built to the north the make sure Gandhi and Hannibal didn't get them, and so that I could get cultural pressure on their border resources early. Soon after I captured the barb city to the south, I planted my SE city as a pretty good cottage site... it has enough green tiles that I can farm 2-3 and grow alongside the extra food from the Rice and Spices. That, and it has bundles of riverside tiles. More on tech... I recall trading Aest for Alpha and IW, and also for Monarchy. After that I went Math -> Calender for all the resources (3 different) I had. I traded that for Horseback Riding and built 4 quick Horse Archers to DOW Gandhi. Odd thing too dec a deity AI so early, but I teamed up with Hannibal (who had already declared war at Ghanaian and already took two cities) and ended up taking 1 city (which had founded Taoism) and razing another. I made peace (once I had a 10xp unit...), and after that I noticed no one had Metal Casting so I went to that quickly and traded that around. At that point, I realized I had a tech lead... something that rarely happens on Deity for me. There is a lot of war going on, between Hannibal and Gandhi and Joao and Shaka. They just keep DOWing, making Peace then DOWing again. I can't complain though - at least they're not attacking me.

I didn't decided to race after Music this game (even though I traded for Literature and built the GL) but it is very viable for this map. Even though you get boxed in very quickly on this map (I saw both Gandhi's and Hannibal's borders from my capital at 2200BC..) it is easily attainable to get 6 cities, especially with the potential barb cities to the southern jungle (that's where my Horse Archers came in handy).

I have got 3 Great Scientists so far. I decided to settle the first one, but used the second one for a Golden Age to pop out the third one quickly (used him to part-bulb Education) and to swap into Bureaucracy (After Metal Casting I went CS -> Paper -> Education) and Monarchy. My two southern jungle cities are going to be cottage cities (even though the Rice/Banana/Banana site would be an excellent GP farm..) while my two northern cities (besides the far north one) are going to be my production cities. My cap and York are mix cities, and I'm contemplating switching my capital's farms for cottages. Still not sure where to put the Heroic Epic or the Globe Theatre, and haven't decided about the National Epic yet. I am currently building The Hanging Gardens in my capital, started it right after The Great Library as it was only going to take 5 turns because of the Golden Age... 3 turns remaining + I have a chop coming before that I believe. Hannibal built the AP, and thankfully all my cities have the religion.

Three interesting things that I found during this game:

1. The tech pace is incredible (5 turns from Edu at 1AD doing 60%).
2. Barbarians are nearly non-existant.
3. Even though you're boxed in, as long as Hannibal and Gandhi found the two starting religions respectfully, you shouldn't be worried about any war decs early in the game.

Some pretty pictures:

















Even though my game is going well, there are still some major flaws that I need to work on:

1. Exploration. I had enough exploration that I needed to do for the early game, but now I need to see my neighbours' lands. I have just sent my 2 remaining Horse Archers scouting.

2. Diplo. Although Diplo is decent in this game (Shaka is nearly at pleased, Darius is Cautious, Hannibal is pleased or friendly) it needs to be better. I'm probably going to just gift Shaka some techs, and give Darius some resources and potentially techs to make sure they don't backstab me (or I could flood him with missionaries). That way I only have to worry about Gandhi attacking me - but considering he is the most peaceful leader, and he's at war with Hannibal, and that Hannibal has taken the two cities closest to mine, meaning the only way he could attack me is from the south... anyways, I doubt he'll attack.

3. City types. I believe I should be specializing my cities more - I have a general idea of what each city should be doing, but sometimes I get side-tracked with the beautiful idea of financial riverside cottages.

Any suggestions/ideas are welcome.

I reckon it would be really interesting to be in Joao's position. There's Shaka at the north end of his peninsula but he could easily throw a couple cities north which would focus on military, then take over the two islands to the south that he has a monopoly on. Easy victory from there?