ALC Game 31: Greece/Pericles

Round 0: Move the Scout
Round 1: 4000 BC to 2360 BC (41 turns)
Round 2: 2360 BC to 550 BC (52 turns)
Round 3: 550 BC to 275 AD (33 turns)
Round 4: 275 AD to 1090 AD (43 turns)
Round 5: 1100 AD to 1540 AD (48 turns)
Round 6: 1540 AD to 1765 AD (45 turns)
Round 7: 1765 AD to 1902 AD (59 turns)
Post Mortem

Introduction

The idea of the All Leaders Challenge is that games are going to be played with each of the Civ IV leaders. With the help of all the posters who participate, an attempt will be made to make the most of the leader's unique characteristics: traits, starting techs, unit, and building. Aside from the leader, the other game settings are (mostly) kept constant for the sake of comparison. I will post the saved game files, screenshots, and status reports here as the game progresses.

Everyone is invited to offer opinions and advice, and to make your own attempt at playing the same game. But if you do play a "shadow game", I kindly request that you refrain from posting spoilers--i.e. any facts or even hints about the map, opponents, and so on--before I'm there myself. I'm trying to play the game as authentically as possible.

In this ALC game I’ll be playing as Pericles of the Greeks. Before we start the game, a more detailed discussion of Pericles is in order.

Traits

Creative: gives us +2 per city and double production speed of the Theater, Coliseum, and Library. The useful things are the early border pops, which can be incredibly convenient in the pursuit of strategic resources and land blocking, and the quick libraries which cannot be undervalued. The theatres can be cool if we find ourselves in a situation where we want an early Globe for a head start on massive whipping. Coliseums are bland, but Odeons are significantly better. And since they're cheap we might actually see some get built.

Philosophical: increases the birth rate of great people by an incredible 100 percent. And it also doubles the production speed of the ever important university. Philosophical is an awesome trait by itself as it allows us to get double the amount of great people we normally would for the first few thousand years, but join it with creative and it's excellent. The fast library + the fast great scientists mean that very early academies and bulbs are open to us. If any leader was designed to have a few killer GP farms it's this guy. That being said, I want to caution people away from relying exclusively on specialists. Just the way that it's bad play to avoid specialists and only build cottages when financial, it's bad to avoid a few good cottage cities when philosophical. Overall Pericles has an excellent combination of traits and I'm really excited to see what we can do with him.

Starting Techs: Fishing and Hunting

Hunting and fishing are both pretty situational technologies. Hunting is nice to have if we get fur, ivory, or deer in our capital's cross, but otherwise it's kind of lame. Fishing is a little better, as it leads to sailing which allows trade routes on the coast. Obviously, if we start on the coast, fishing is great to have, but if not it's only mediocre. So, while the traits are superb, the starting techs are not. But we'll wait and see what the map looks like before we get too low on either of these techs.

Unique Unit: Phalanx

The Phalanx is an axeman replacement that gets an addition +100% versus chariots. As chariots are the only thing that can threaten the axe, the Phalanx is a great unique unit for early rushes. Unfortunately, they do require copper or iron. So unless we get lucky with our strategic resources, a Phalanx rush might not happen. But if copper is nearby except to see some early AI decimation.

Unique Building: Odeon

The Odeon is a replacement for the coliseum. It has not only the normal benefits of +1 and an additional +1 per 20% rate but also an extra +1 and +3 . It also opens up two artist specialist slots and gives yet another +1 with access to hit singles. Construction is a pretty useful tech too. Especially if we decide to rush one opponent with phalanxes and then a second opponent with phalanxes and catapults. As war weariness might become a problem in this scenario, some cheap happiness might be very welcome.

Starting Position

In this ALC game, I'll be playing as Pericles, leader of the Greeks. I'm playing the game using the Beyond the Sword expansion pack and its latest patch. The difficulty level is Immortal, the map is Fractal, and the speed is Normal. I’m leaving all the boxes unchecked except for huts and events, both of which are off. All victory conditions are enabled. If you have any questions about why I picked what I did, feel free to ask.

Here is a more detailed look at the initial game settings:



And, finally, here is the starting position:



Have at it!

No replies yet? Surely people must be busy over the weekend! ^_^

Bengie... please provide us the save! ^_^ Resource bubbles would be nice too if you don't mind turning them on.

In my less-than-expert opinion, I think moving the scout 1NE first makes some sense to me. Maybe you could just settle 1E on top of the sugar and still claim 8 grassland hills! Did I count them correctly?

Hopefully the scout will reveal another food resource to the east though to feed the hills. Later on, you can probably put windmills on some of these to offset food deficit and some commerce at that!

By the way, I love playing as Pericles. Cheap libraries and cheap universities at the same time? Sign me up please! ^_^

Gwaja said:

Bengie... please provide us the save! ^_^ Resource bubbles would be nice too if you don't mind turning them on.

Click to expand...

Meh. The attachment feature still isn't working and I'm not too technologically savvy. So you can just watch for now. . Don't worry though. I'll keep the 4000 BC save and as soon as the upload feature is working again I'll attach the save for people who want to shadow.

Sorry about resource bubbles, I just forgot. . But we've got 3 sugars and that's it.

Gwaja said:

In my less-than-expert opinion, I think moving the scout 1NE first makes some sense to me. Maybe you could just settle 1E on top of the sugar and still claim 8 grassland hills! Did I count them correctly?

Click to expand...

Our current BFC has a grassland hill to the southwest and then two forested grasslands to the west. Then the northwest has three empty grassland tiles as far as I can tell. So I was thinking about sending the scout 2N1W so we can see all three of those tiles. In my experience with starts like this it's quite possible one of them has corn. And if not, that's also good since then there's a high probability of copper. Which is leading me to liking settling in place (never thought I'd say that about a riverside grassland hill).

Gwaja said:

Hopefully the scout will reveal another food resource to the east though to feed the hills. Later on, you can probably put windmills on some of these to offset food deficit and some commerce at that!

Click to expand...

Moving the scout eastish is also a possibility. I'm as of yet undecided. Let's get some more votes coming. Windmills are a possibility, but that would be much, much later, like post electricity. For now, farms + mines will do just fine. And with this much green around another city can work some cottages.

Gwaja said:

By the way, I love playing as Pericles. Cheap libraries and cheap universities at the same time? Sign me up please! ^_^

Click to expand...

I know right! Pericles must have been one smart dude.

I agree with the 2N1W scout move. It seems fairly likely that there is some sort of food resource up there. But if there is, I think settling 1NE might be your best bet. Having a 3 food capital is huge in the early game and you will still have a solid 5 grass hills. Just my 2 cents.

Settling 1E on the sugar looks the best overall for food/commerce/hammers. The city tile would be 3F2H and once Calendar is researched, you would automatically get the happiness bonus. Farming each sugar would give 5F once Biology is in. That start looks fantastic.

You can also upload the save on zshare etc.
It looks nice game, probably I'm in. And thank you for the interesting briefing at the beginning!

Here's hoping for a happier time than the last game.

Gwaja, you seem to have a liking for settling on sugar. Sweet tooth? Perhaps we should call this the "Gwaja Gambit"? JFTR, for my part I'd SIP (agree there should be food out west).

Resource bubbles on! SIP looks fine tho.

Jester Fool said:

Settling 1E on the sugar looks the best overall for food/commerce/hammers. The city tile would be 3F2H and once Calendar is researched, you would automatically get the happiness bonus. Farming each sugar would give 5F once Biology is in. That start looks fantastic.

Click to expand...

I'll farm the sugar until Calendar is in. But once I have Calendar I plan on putting plantations on all of the sugar I don't settle on. Sugar is a pretty good resource for trading. So hopefully I can trade my two sugars for two other happiness resources I don't have. An extra two happiness in all of my cities is better than 2 more food in the capital.

TheMeInTeam said:

Resource bubbles on! SIP looks fine tho.

Click to expand...

Okay. I moved the scout as planned. I turned on resource bubbles. And SIP is looking good, but obviously I'll wait and see what everybody has to say.

Turn 0: Move the Scout

Our scout finds this pleasant scene.



Settling in place looks just dandy, but so does 1NE. Either way I'd build a worker -> warrior x3 while researching Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry -> Mining -> BW.

Obviously I'm open to all ideas. So give me your settling ideas, teching ideas, ideas for a late night snack (easy mac?), and anything else you've got to say.

http://hotfile.com/dl/110030984/543afbe/ALC_31_4000_BC_Save.CivBeyondSwordSave.html

I'm posting this for Benginal so that we can all play along

I'd still definitely SIP, hoping to find metal in one of the hills to the south.

settle 1NE
cows, corn, grass hills.
cottage sugar

edit:
btw this start really looks like overkill ;-)

settling 1NE is 9 riverside visible tiles, with 3 very probably more. The only problem how to get this city to size 12+ at 1AD ;-)
and 1 NE of course reduces the need for farm on the sugar for irrigation. You have the 1happy cap after calendar right away and you really can just leave cottages on sugar (making them better FP)

^^^yep...hate settling on riverside GHs as they are good tiles. Sugars can remained cottaged unless you absolutely need them for trading. strong start indeed

lymond said:

^^^yep...hate settling on riverside GHs as they are good tiles. Sugars can remained cottaged unless you absolutely need them for trading. strong start indeed

Click to expand...

Trading them for a resource or 6+ gpt makes them easily compete/beat cottages though.

TheMeInTeam said:

Trading them for a resource or 6+ gpt makes them easily compete/beat cottages though.

Click to expand...

I'm sure you are correct, but what if this city is an Ox/bureau cap?

Wow this has got to be one of the best starts I have seen.

I don't like settling on riverside grassland hills, but I kinda like settling in place here.

Good luck, I'd say 1NE for most of the reasons stated above. Pericles is the king of the early Oxford uni (cheap libraries and uni's, early library+ phi for power bulbing). It's like his unofficial UB. With a start like this, seeing how early you can get oxford and how much of a difference that can make is a really good exercise.

This is a very flexible start IMO. You can SIP for a serious production cap or you can settle NE for a strong cottage bureau cap. I may try a strong hammer cap because I'm really accustomed to the cottage spammed cap.

actually, the best production cap might actually be 1E...just sick really