Dr kossin #37

Welcome to Dr kossin #37.

Dr is an acronym for Daily Round. Yes, I mean to get in an update every day to the games I will be playing. Of course there might be some days where I can only play a little or not at all, but I will make up for it those other days when I do have extra time on my hands.

Since the 21st edition of this series, the difficulty level has been cranked all the way up to Deity. I'm not at the point where I can win every game thrown at me on Deity level... I probably can't even win every game thrown at me on Immortal but it is getting a bit boring. My goal is now to achieve competitive skills on this level which should hopefully help me improve more.

You, the reader, can help me achieve this goal by pointing out where I got astray, give suggestions on how to proceed, use complex abstract mathematical analysis to argue, curse at me or anything that you may like. Please note that you must respect the Terms of Service of CFC in any case

You may shadow this game and post it here if you please, but I kindly request that you put it in spoiler tags and that anyone reading the report abstain from using information found there to help me out.

Should you want more clarification about something I've done, just ask for it and I will try to answer as best as I can.

Enough talk, on to the game.

Dr kossin #37​

Round 0 Where to settle?
Round 1 The opening
Round 2 The second city
Round 3 Expanding out, part one
Round 4 Expanding out, part two
Round 5 The path to Liberalism
Round 6 GPP
Round 7
Round 8 Here comes the Cavalry
Round 9 The long path to Flight
Round 10 Carriers Bombers = INSTANT WIN (almost)
Bonus Round Round 7, revisited

Game settings
Deity
Normal Speed
Fractal
No Events
No Huts
Fractal
BTS 3.19 with BUG 4.4 in CustomAssets and BULL 1.2 mods - >>>Get Them Here<<<
Everything else is normal.

The leader, this time, is:


Please refer to the Khmer Civ IV wiki for more information on this leader/nation.

The start:


The map has been checked for isolation, nothing else. All I know is I'm not isolated, so it could be a short one if the map isn't very kind.

Looks like a good starting location if a bit devoid of specials. I'm hoping for something in the fog beside flood plains but it looks like the map already gave enough food so I'm not too hopeful there.

If there's a grain based resource in the fog it will be easy to decide Ag>AH for research path. I'm more reluctant to do that without a special however because it just takes so long to farm flood plains for the same yield output as a mine. Growing on unimproved flood plains isn't that bad in itself... I'll just have to squeeze in Pottery somewhere.

Anyway, settling on the wine could work but it looks more brown in that area and I'll possibly hit some desert east of the flood plains. Moreover we'll lose 1 grassland hill with no guarantee of a 3rd hill.

Finally, gazing at the map reveals we are in the northern part:


See the snow on the trees just before the fog? (Peaks are always white so you can't use that)

Looks to me like you've got 3 FPs to the east and plains to the west. I'd move the scout 1 S then 1 SW and see what lies in the fog. If there isn't anything interesting in the west, I'd settle on the wines.

Disclaimer: I normally play on Emperor, and free advice is usually worth what you pay for it.

I'd put the scout on the hill, I'd settle anywhere E for a few more fps. I love capital flood plains.

Settling on Wine seems like a sound plan. Perhaps not optimal seeing that the majority of the FP's seem to be located directly east of the settler but riverside wine makes for a good capital tile and it seems that 2 of your hills are located south anyhow and you won't be losing on the food either.

Hopefully we'll see daily rounds this time around!

Settling on the wine will add no extra yield to the city tile. I think it is not too hot and he is probabl better off working the wine in he future.

SIP seems like a decent plan to me. There are FP to the east, so if you want to move the scout before deciding then he needs to definitely go west. I think I'd go 2W1S or 2S1W.

As for techs, definitely AH first. It seems not very likely that you will pop another resource that is food, because you have cow and FP that accounts for all the food. After that it depends on the map how fast you need BW. You are close to the north so spawnbusting the barbs away may be tough to do. You will need chariots or axes soon it seems. Given the fact that you start with hunting and that you have some river tiles the detour for archers might not be so harsh if it should come to that.

Good luck!

Shurdus said:

Settling on the wine will add no extra yield to the city tile. I think it is not too hot and he is probabl better off working the wine in he future.

Click to expand...

It's on a river, so it's 2 , 1 more than usual.

SillyGoat said:

Looks to me like you've got 3 FPs to the east and plains to the west. I'd move the scout 1 S then 1 SW and see what lies in the fog. If there isn't anything interesting in the west, I'd settle on the wines.

Disclaimer: I normally play on Emperor, and free advice is usually worth what you pay for it.

Click to expand...

There's not much need to reveal tiles that might be revealed by settling, I'd go a bit further west before going south with the scout. Advice that works on Emperor also works on Deity. Actually everything works on every level, you just need more things for Deity

Grashopa said:

I'd put the scout on the hill, I'd settle anywhere E for a few more fps. I love capital flood plains.

Click to expand...

An interesting suggestion. We know for certain there's a lot of brown tiles to the west. The question is if any of it is wheat or cows. My gut feeling is that there's no resource there so as long as there's more flood plains east it might be worthwhile to settle in that direction for an even stronger capital.

JFleme said:

Settling on Wine seems like a sound plan. Perhaps not optimal seeing that the majority of the FP's seem to be located directly east of the settler but riverside wine makes for a good capital tile and it seems that 2 of your hills are located south anyhow and you won't be losing on the food either.

Hopefully we'll see daily rounds this time around!

Click to expand...

The main reason I can see for settling on the wine is the extra commerce. That would still not make Agriculture>AH fast enough (20 turns) but it would help quite a bit nonetheless.

I'm going with daily rounds again but whenever life gets in the way I'll have to step aside as usual.

Shurdus said:

Settling on the wine will add no extra yield to the city tile. I think it is not too hot and he is probabl better off working the wine in he future.

SIP seems like a decent plan to me. There are FP to the east, so if you want to move the scout before deciding then he needs to definitely go west. I think I'd go 2W1S or 2S1W.

As for techs, definitely AH first. It seems not very likely that you will pop another resource that is food, because you have cow and FP that accounts for all the food. After that it depends on the map how fast you need BW. You are close to the north so spawnbusting the barbs away may be tough to do. You will need chariots or axes soon it seems. Given the fact that you start with hunting and that you have some river tiles the detour for archers might not be so harsh if it should come to that.

Good luck!

Click to expand...

Long term the wine isn't that great of a tile (might be good to grab early Monarchy however) at 2F1H4C. Overall the yield is better for certain if the tile is improved than if I settle on it I agree. I'm hoping AH will reveal horses but I won't put any money on that one hehe

King Pluto said:

It's on a river, so it's 2 , 1 more than usual.

Click to expand...

Yep.

It is hard for me to see well, but it appears that all of the unseen BFC tiles are either forested or floodplains. If this is so, then I think there is a fair chance that the startsite algorithm did plow through to the end, that is, the "forest everything I can" step. That would mean that you have four+ resources. Which would mean that the two unforested tiles we see both have a hidden resources. Of course, there is always the possibility that you just happened to start in a naturally forested area. Hard to say.

Anyway, all that is an argument for SIP. As much as I like settling on riverside wine, I think that's a bad play here because of the good chance you'll end up with desert in BFC, and because the wine tile looks to be light on hills. You must have 3 in startsite BFC, and clearly one is 2S1W. The wine tile would get it, but no other we know of. Just one hills is not enough for the capital.

King Pluto said:

It's on a river, so it's 2 , 1 more than usual.

Click to expand...

Oh right, my bad. Did not play a game of civ for months... It shows.

I'd personally check if there's anything you'd lose by settling on the wine. Nothing lost in the tiles to the west, settle on the wine. If there is something, then just settle in place.

Well there's 2 ways to go about this:

check the 2 plains tiles we aren't sure about (maybe what/cow) or check ~4 tiles we'd gain by going east.

Let's examine each scenario:

Case 1: send scout west
Find nothing interesting. Settle east and get 5 desert in the BFC

Case 2: send scout west
Find a food resource. SIP and get what we see.

Case 3: send scout east
Find desert east and SIP. Gain what's to the west anyway.

Case 4: send cout east
Find more fp, hills, etc... and settle east

Case 5: settle in the direction the scout went and miss out on something the other direction
Well we've got a spot for city #2

Either case, there's little risk involved with the 2 tiles to our west.

Outer-ring BFC horses are easy to get with Creative... you reach the second border pop on t25.

What's likely to happen: send the scout east, find nothing and SIP.

When moving blindly there's 2 options:
-check what you'd gain
-check what you'd lose

It's hard to decide which to investigate but generally investigating the one that reveals more tiles overall is safer.

Other than wine site, SIP is your only option for not losing a turn before founding your capitol. How much of a handicap is that on Deity?

IMHO, SIP has no desert, no peaks, 15 riverside. This may be one case where I would park my settler even before moving the scout.

Standard maps never have desert, peaks, tundra in the BFC.

Losing 1 turn isn't that much of a concern if it gets you a better capital, on any difficulty. It might change the blocking value of the land however which isn't something you can monitor on turn 1.

kossin said:

Standard maps never have desert, peaks, tundra in the BFC.

Click to expand...

Yes, my point was that by not moving you don't have to worry about accidentally adding desert to your BFC...

You may have already played, but I like moving the scout south and west to check the plains. If there is wheat SIP if not, go to the wine, if theres an abundance of desert move 1N from the wine to the forest. This allows for checking the plains for a food resource, checking the wine and settling if there isn't a spree of desert, and settling for the 3 floodplains and cows + unknown if there is.

Nope, haven't played. Thought I'd take a bit more time to discuss the opening.

Right now I see 2 options:

-SIP
-settle on the wine

If we SIP then there's no point scouting west: you'll get the tiles you reveal anyway.
If we want to settle on the wine, the only reason to scout west is to see what you'd miss.

It's like a game show: you have a suitcase of money and are offered a new one. You have a clue about what's in the one you're holding but not so much about the one offered.
The host offers to reveal more information about one or the other case. Which information would you take?

If you investigate your current position you have no clue about what you're missing, even if your situation appears good. Investigating the new situation however reveals the possibility of greater gains (or lesser).

The risk of settling wine is less production and desert. The gain is more flood plains and more commerce initially. It's worth investigating even if we SIP.

Round 0

As I see it, there's 2 options with the scout:
-explore east
-explore west

North is tundra and of no interest right now.
South is too far away of the scout so not considered.

And 2 options with the settler:
-SIP
-settle the wine

Settling north or south is a blind game I'm not willing to take (especially north )
Settling west will just give us more plains and less flood plains.

SIP is the safest approach and is usually the best way to go ahead. However a lot of occasions happen when moving is advantageous long-term.

Settling blindly on the wine isn't a good idea.

Thus the correct path to handle this situation is:

1. Assume you're settling in place.
2. This means the scout wouldn't be any use going west since we ruled out settling west and we'll get the tiles anyway.
3. As a result, send the scout on the hill to see what lies west.

4. Settle accordingly.

Isn't two floodplains equal to a resource? There were already 4 resources shown, scout to the east was a no brainer no? I mean what could you possibly see that would cause you to settle to the west? And there is no way I blindly settle east towards desert.

I love to start with scouts.

Nice play. Gold in capital BFC is sweet. And your chosen startsite still picks up the two non-forest tiles, which I am still suspecting of hidden resources. (The floodplain 2E of the start looked like it might be non-forested grassland in 1st screenie.) Gold+cows+6 floodplain+wine+horse+iron?? Maybe.

Round 1

As summarized in Round 0, the capital was founded 1E on t1.


Having already scouted east, I decided to keep going in that direction.


And then I started meeting the neighbors. First, this peaceful fella:


Followed by this one:


Uhh, ohh. We might have a problem here. Hopefully we'll get lucky and the RNG will give us some time of peace to develop the empire and catch back to the AI.

Ragnar was the one to found Buddhism.


This makes a strong case for early Writing. Open Borders to hope for religion spread will help keeping him off my back.

I got a bit more lucky with the next neighbor:


And then one of the Russians. Not Catherine, thank god.


Initial research path went AH>Ag>TW with early Pottery in mind. I stopped at t25 as the gold mine is completed to consider my position. There's plenty of good land to be had but we won't be able to get it all unless the AI expands in other directions (doubtful). Here's a non-resized view of the world so far.


Diplomacy


Techs so far.


I'm not sure we can avoid Archery here.

We've got a few choices.
1- work the gold and go for Archery before Pottery, build 2~3 Archers to take care of barbs. The capital will take too long to grow working the gold so it starts on a settler now. (Or something along these lines)

2- work the flood plains to grow to size 3 and then start a settler

3- forget Pottery and go BW... the hills we have are under forests so there's definitely something to be said of this

Pottery will enable an early granary in the capital since it doesn't have food specials... slow growth is deadly in the opening turns.

Since we don't have to worry too much about commerce, production will be a priority early on. I just don't see myself whipping this capital before Pottery is finished.