Hammurabi - Immortal Cookbook

Normally, I'd just SIP and call it good. Two food specials, one of which (cows) is one of the best tiles in the early game (3f 3h when improved).

That said, that blue circle makes me curious. The AI is baaaaad at recommending city sites, but it does take into account information that we lack access to, in this case resources off the screen. We can tell that if we SIP every tile in our BFC will be forested (EDIT: I stand corrected by kossin, two of them are not forested so probably contain specials), except the two specials. There might be a deer in there, but for the most part that means we won't have any other resources in the BFC IIRC. SIP will give us 3 PH and 1 FH tile, it is next to the river for the health, and has the two specials. Moving to the blue circle puts us on the hill for the production bonus, it is still next to fresh water, and it still gets the two specials. It also has the potential for other specials, which is largely not the case for SIP. When I look at the closeup, it appears that it also might be a coastal tile (EDIT: Confirmed by kossin), but if coastal that would open up the GLH as a possibility. For these reasons, I'm leaning towards the hill for building Babylon.

Build order roughly (regardless of start location): worker > warrior (repeat until size 3) > worker > settler.

Tech order roughly: AH > Mining > [Fishing if needed] > Mysticism (border pops) > Archery (Bowman UU) > BW (might move earlier to chop forests)

General plan: Explore the area. If there is a juicy target near by, contemplate an early rush. Aggressive and Organized combine to make conquest an attractive approach to neighborly relations.

Hammurabi is Organized and Aggressive meaning cheap barracks, courthouses and factories plus melee and gunpowder units with that start free Combat 1.

The map type is Pangea, normal size, normal water height...

If you haven't played Pangea on higher levels before, be sure you expand fast as the free room clogs up pretty fast.

This start is obviously a forest spam one, meaning non-forest tiles most likely contain resources. There are 2 known such tiles, NNE of the settler and SWW of the settler.

Since this start isn't exactly food heavy, you should check, or at least try to, those tiles to see if they contain anything useful.

The alternative is obviously the blue circle. Plains Hills will add 1H/turn giving you a 2 turns edge on the worker. If you look closely at the zoomed in screenshot I've included, you can see that the location will be coastal... blue tiles!

This was rotated 45 degrees (Ctrl+arrow).


Notice the cursor indicating the next plains hill doesn't have fresh water... this is a water body of at least 10 tiles. The other hint is of course the waves present - you can see them in the screenshot but it's a bit easier by zooming in from the game.

All this gives us a clue that we're near the northern coast, so upper half of the map. (What does this tell you about resource spread? Where should you aim to scout first? How about second city given two identical locations in different regions?)

Obviously you'll want to start with Animal Husbandry... there's very little incentive to grab Hunting before unless settling reveals Ivory, deer, etc.

The usual worker first opening should give the best results.

(What happens if you move and find seafood? When do you research Fishing?)

A disadvantage of moving the capital is that you will be blocking less land from that location... or you could block a seafood resource. But you could also block one from SIP so it's a gamble either way. You also lose both potential resources that aren't forests. Should you want to move to the other plains hill... you get to keep the suspected tile to the NE while losing the SW one... however you lose the river access (levee) and health bonus... note that connection to the second city is still possible via the river given a body of water inside your culture.

Now I'm not going to tell you where to settle... discuss it up yourselves!

Grabbing 6 cities on Pangea isn't always easy but usually it can be done even if some of them will be crappy. Other options include, but are not limited to:
-Chariot rush
-Axe rush (you are aggressive after all)
-Horse Archer rush (one of the more powerful strategies)
-4 city setup for a Catapult war (priority given to farms, mines, keep forests for post-Mathematics)
-3 city culture victory
-OCC setup

Do you absolutely need 6 cities?

GLH on Pangea? Seriously, from turn 0?

Unless you are on a peninsula, GLH will be a very bad decision in most Pangea maps as you just can't fit enough coastal cities. There are 2 fogged tiles without forests.

SIP, worker first as usual, then 2 warriors. Settler at size 3, chopped out 2 more workers, then barracks and units starting.
Teched AH - Mining - BW - Mysticism - Pottery. Found some Bronze and settled Akkad nearby, the plan is to axe-rush ZY, land looks aweful for peaceful settling but good for building an early army.
Chopped out 1 chariot and 2 axes so far, planning to start the attack with ~5 as soon as possible.

http://eqfantasys.de/Hammurabi_IC_Yoshi1.CivBeyondSwordSave

i'd mov up to the hill without thinking too much about it tbh, fresh water, faster worker, coastal access (which is already pretty much spoiled through the fact that the blue circle showed up) ... even if every tile in the east was mountain, the start with such a cap is nice. being AGG, a hill city can withstand most barb attacks until you've finally managed to gain access to metals - even though it's pangea, so not too much barb action after all. a scouting workboat is even nice for pangea, you never know the map layout. when boxed in by toku it might take long for you to get to know the other leaders. finally, there's nothing wrong about coastal traderoutes - again, you don't know the map layout and who are your neighbours.

Agenda:
G - grass
P - plains
H - hill
F - forest
sea -

I am not sure if tile NNE has forest on it.

I am not thrilled by SIP that much. Plain cows + wheat make our cap food average, and no food resource in the fog (NNE forested?).

This + coast makes that blue circle more tempting. Sea food resource will improve our cap dramatically. So we risk losing 1(2) turns, which will be compensated by settling on PH and we risk losing SWW resource. If there is no seafood we will at least see the area and decide. In worst case we lose 2 turns - not that big deal IMO. Worth a try.

First warrior move? N or SW? Not sure if warrior N will reveal sea, but it will reveal that mysterious NNE tile . To be decided.

Build order roughly (regardless of start location): worker > warrior (repeat until size 3) > worker > settler.

Tech order roughly: AH > Mining > [Fishing if needed] > Mysticism (border pops) > Archery (Bowman UU) > BW (might move earlier to chop forests)

Click to expand...

Man, if there is sea food it should change build/tech order IMO. Sea food starts without fishing are always hard for me, but I leaning to if there is seafood so we tech fishing while making warrior and switch to WB when Fishing is in, worker after WB (cap size 2), then finish warrior.
Tech Fishing-->AH-->Mining-->BW.

Kossin points that NNE might contain strat resource and I tend to believe him but:




That means we'd better move settler NNW instead of NWNW.

My vote goes for move warrior 1N and then decide about settling.

we will get at least 5 forests if move 2N2W, and at least 7(8?) forests if move 2NW; + hammer from settling on PH

There's a hole in the trees. Compare to the tile 1W of it in the fog, you can see trees on the whole tile.

Move the warrior north to see if there's deer/fur then settle on one of the PHills in the north-west.
Tech fishing if there's seafood, otherwise AH- Mining- BW.

I recently started playing Emperor level so if the above is foolish let me know.

No, that's pretty much it for the opening. Obviously SIP or settling one of the PH is the choice to be made here.
Only thing I'd say is maybe consider Mining>BW after you're done with AH/Fishing, don't blindly pursue it, consider your needs at the time. I'm not saying it's not the right path here, I'm just saying to not fall into tunnel vision

One extra turn for deciding our Settling location
If we're already planning to move the Settler, then we won't settle any sooner than Turn 1.

If we are also willing to spend 1 further extra turn exploring, and be willing to settle on Turn 2, we can send the units in the following directions to get a lot more info about the squares that would still let us settle with the Wheat and Cow available to us:
Turn 0
Warrior: NW GRiv For
Setter: NW PWheat, SW some kind of Forest

Turn 1
Warrior: NW some kind of Forest, to scout for possible Seafood Resources
Setter: To any of at least 12 locations that will get both the Wheat and the Cow, although most of those locations will require us to settle on Turn 2. Yes, you will lose a turn compared to taking a random guess, but you'll have a well-informed decision for settling.

If you just guess and don't like where you ended up, you might also not like your next guess, whereas if you plan to settle on Turn 2, then you can have a lot more information available to you for making the decision.


Or just do what others suggested and either settle in place or move to one of the two Plains Hills to the NW + NW or NW + N. I was just trying to give another possibility of how you could leverage the use of one extra turn.


Victory Condition
What kind of a game are we going to try for here? About the only Victory Condition that I'd like to know that we'll be chasing after before settling a capital location is a Cultural Victory.

Other Victory Conditions can do very well with poor capitals, but you want a solid capital for a Cultural Victory game, if you can at all help it, since your capital will likely produce you one early Wonder and will almost certainly be one of your Legendary Cities.

Also, if we're going for Space, it would make us favour a Riverside location. Otherwise, Levees really shouldn't come into play if we're playing a "best ball" type of game and pick the best saves to play from, since the other Victory Conditions will likely be well on their way to being won (or lost) by the time that Levees are becoming available.

I'll play for any Victory Condition, but I normally like to choose before the game starts. Here, I'll leave it up to popular opinion and won't cast a vote, but would prefer to at least hear some opinions on which POSSIBLE Victory Conditions to play for and which Victory Conditions we will ignore.


Worker Steal?
We start with a Warrior instead of a Scout and it is Pangaea, so there will almost certainly be an opportunity to steal a Worker.

Will the AI be too close to us for us to risk it, though? You'll need to win a battle or two (preferably defending from a Forested Hills square) if you want an easy Peace, and if they are close, our capital might get assaulted before they are willing to talk.

Maybe we should leave it up to "if you see an opportunity, it is up to you if you want to take it," but I'd also be willing to listen if people say "no, please don't do that in this game."


Chariots? Axemen? No Rush?
Would anyone be strongly opposed to an early rush? I'm favouring doing one (although it won't happen in the first 50 turns, our settling locations could be affected if we want an early war by chasing after short-term gains like Resources in the 9-square radius of our second and third Cities).

Maybe you'd rather leave the option of a rush open, but would prefer not to settle short-term-only Cities and would prefer to have Cities settled so that they have good fat crosses? Weigh-in with your opinion.


Chariots = possible because we start with The Wheal and are likely going to research Animal Husbandry soon for the Cow. Of course, no Horse = no Chariot rush

Axemen = possible because we get Combat I Axemen and are likely going to research Bronze Working soon for all of the Forests. Again, if we don't have Copper, we won't be making Axemen

No Rush = possible because we could feasibly chop out some Settlers and peacefully take over some land, while the Normal Game speed works slightly to our disadvantage in a rush compared to Epic


Forest Policy
Does anyone object to clear-cutting our Forests? If not, then I'll probably chop most of the Forests as soon as I possibly can.


Tech Path
I will probably wait until I hear what others might like to pursue as a Victory Condition (and if no one gives feedback, then I'll just pick something and go for it all-out), but I'll almost certainly research sometime within the first turnset (or at least aim to start research on, if there isn't time to finish):
Animal Husbandry
Bronze Working
Mysticism