RR9 - A man's castle it's his home

Well, as it is summer, i think that a ligher variant is in hand... that and losing the previous game As for topic of this game I decided to simpy make sure that one of the more hated buildings in this game deserved a little spotlight ... and no, it is not the walls

Well,without further delay, the variant of RR9:
Nothing unfeasible, just a little off the beaten tracks

The settings

And the start:

I swear this is the second start I got ( the first had 3 FP, riverside plains gold hill and riverside corn ... yeah, I'm not that generous ). Anyway, double marble in the starting BFC means probably no metals around .... The leader was also random ,but followed some restraints:

- No UB related with castles ( Spain , Celtia )

- No protective leaders

- If possible no Fin or Phi leaders

Well, I got the good ol'Tur .... Ottoman leader with the traits of vanilla JC in the first run and thinked that it was OK enough.

Anyway, some thoguhts about the variant:

No obsoleted castles means no Economics. That alone has huge repercussions on the game:

- No free market

- No Corporations

- No factories

- No space win

- No tanks, infantry, marines , mechs, paratroopers.

Now in what we can do :

- In military: Rifles are the top gunpowder unit until you get SAM infantry and anti tanks . Besides that and MGs, you can get gunships and jet planes ( providing that you buy Al from someone ), bombers, destroyers, subs ( both attack and regular ones ), guided missiles and last, but not least , nukes. It is a diferent kind of military, but I would definitely not argue about it's efficiency.

-The Great lighthouse will never obsolete for us ( and if we capture it obsoleted it will start working again for us ). That alone is a huge boon , and combined with the trade route out of castles, it might make us some serious money and probably will make us not miss the FM + Corp TR money.

- We can get to Mass media if we want. Not that we want to win via UN in this game

- The variant screams for state property

Save attached below

Roster

r_rolo1
Thy_Spellcraft
nocho
Silu (?)
Jerrymander
Trynthlas

Alternates
Ichabod
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(?) means pending confirmation

Count me in.


One thing I love about the Ottomans: Janissaries.

Are we going to try to go for a sea trade route economy to supplement the general cottage spam or specialist strat?

I would not count in making a TR economy from the boot , simply because we don't start coastal , and that alone is enough to make getting GLH almost impossible in emperor+ . I just pointed that, from the moment we get the GLH, it will work for us until the end of the game

I'm not sure of going cottage spam... we can also go the spec route and after that workshop and watermill the world ... it might be even more adequate for our variant to do so.

Oh, right, State Property...

lurker comment:

I will watch faithfully as you complete this game... I've always wanted to see castles get used, after all.

rolo, I'd like to join if you've got room for one more.

Checking in!
And we should move the warrior 1W to see whether it's worth to move our settler 1W too.

Reporting for duty!

If the warrior 1W or 1SW on the marble hill doesn't reveal any food, I'd settle 1SE for 4 hills, more floodplains and riverside. And a small chance to luck out on a food resource to the east or metal in the hill SE of the marble hill. It would lose the plains marble, but that's not such a great tile anyway.

Just seen I wrote W instead of E.. But nocho you're right on moving the warrior onto he marbled-hill. And of course going in eastern direction in case we won't settle in place seems to be the only alternative that would make sense.

Trynthlas , you're in. I placed you in the end of the roster.

Nocho & Thy, you're in as well

I'll wait to silu to give a life sign in here for a little longer, but i agree that moving the warrior to the marble hill or 1 W before settling is the best thing to do. I agree that there might be a food resource 2 W of the settler, so it would be nice to have a little more info , being the area so arid as it looks to be ...

Woohoo! Emperor is going to be a challenge

Conquest victory with the restrictions tells me we need war early to get rid of some of the competition or we won't be able to pull it off in the later game. Hope we find someone close to smush

The map is hemispheres with 3 continents, varied, Islands ... so we should have 2 civs in our continent. Most likely one will be in range of atleast a pre-jannisaries war. Obviously I can't assure that we will be in conditions of making that war or if that will be desirable

Too bad we're not playing as Ethiopia...

Blame the RNG for that ... and anyway , barring that both Oromos and jans are pretty useful in war ( just at slightly diferent windows ) ,the Ottoman UB is MUCH, MUCH better than the Ethiopian one in terms of the variant

r_rolo1 said:

Blame the RNG for that ... and anyway , barring that both Oromos and jans are pretty useful in war ( just at slightly diferent windows ) ,the Ottoman UB is MUCH, MUCH better than the Ethiopian one in terms of the variant

Click to expand...

Oh, absolutely. The Ethiopian UB is pretty weak overall, and kind of useless given Yara is Creative.

PS - I'm on board with nocho's suggestion on city placement.

Are we still waiting for Silu to start this? I think we can kick this off anyway, if Silu comes back from kayacking or whatever they do up north during those 24 hours of sunlight a day in summer, he can join if he wishes, otherwise we're still with 5 which is an okay number.

I think the warrior best move 1W indeed and not 1SW, gazing at the borders of the fog the tile 2W of the warrior seems to be forest, so from the marble hill we still wouldn't see the tile 2W of the settler. If no food then move settler, if a good food tile SIP is okay as well and have another city around the hopefully extended floodplain area.

Ok , after recovering a little of the heavy of yesterday ( it's summer for heavens sake ) , I moved the warrior 1 W ( after thinking a little , I assumed that moving the warrior to the marble hill would not unfog the 2W tile, due to the forest in between ) :

And we have corn Also, if you notice well, there are more two FP in the south that would be in the BFC if we move 1S ( + a desert hill + a unforested plains tile that ,as far as we know might have something else ) without losing any of the discovered resources. Said that I'm quite inclined to settle 1S. Too bad we would lose a turn ....

P.S This was a major x-post with nocho anyway, I'll move on as planned ... we can't wait forever for Silu and , as far as I know, he might be tanning himself in some tropical island .

I'm fine with either in place or 1S. Might want to save those floodplains for another town, though.

1S we won't have fresh water access it seems. In place we may only have 2 hills of which one shouldn't be mined. Still, not undecent hammers if we mine the marble hill and quarry the plains marble. So I guess I'd say in place, our capital's castle should be well visible on a hill, right?