Need help : Emperor Shaka has poor land...

Hi to all!

This game I'm currently playing is giving me headaches.

I'm playing Shaka on Emperor, Big and small map, standard settings except no events.

The thing is the land around my capital is kind of crappy, with a huge patch of desert and lots of plains.
I'm blocked on the South by Sitting Bull (so no Impi rush I guess...) and some jungle. There are some good potentials city spots under this jungle, but I'm still a long way to IW. Besides JC is near, so he might beat me to them.

Far to the West, the land seems much more promising, with floodplains, rivers and both happy and health ressources.
The trick is that these spots are really a long way from my capital, and Mansa Musa is over there, so if I want them, I'd better hurry before he settles them and runs away in techs.

I'll have a settler ready in 3 turns, and another a few turns later.


So...

2 questions :
- Is it worth it to settle this far even though maintenance is gonna kill me?
- If it is, what is the best way to recover? (I've already built the GW, so I'm leaning towards espionage economy, is that OK?)

Screenshots and save attached.

Thxs in advance.

I dont have much experience in running an EE, so I can't say anything about that. For the land situation, if you have another neighbor besides SB, who's protective, I would try to kill him with something. Not axes, but maybe something else. If not, I would definitely go for the land, as land is power.

I think that you are seriously underestimating the quality of your land. Sure you have some deserts, but you have plenty of food, 2 early resources and with a strong production capital and stone, that land can prove to be pretty good. You have explored a lot, but early exploration should focus on your immediate area, there may be more goodies in the fog! The nearby islands are worth checking out too.

Your first city site I don't like, instead I would have gone for the coastal plains hill, with a second site to claim copper and clam (or other way round perhaps). Settling south of the jungle will bring crippling maintenance costs and huge logistics problems for your workers, its not worth it.

EE I don't think will be effective. It relies on having strong techers nearby, an attribute Sitting Bull is not know for and we don't know how far other AIs are away.
Also I don't think the GWall was necessary at all, there are 2 nice choke points for handling barbs, and the local area shouldn't prove too difficult to fogbust.

To Ghpstage : initial save below

I'll answer to your comments later as I have to get back to work right now.

Ok, I'm back sooner than I thought!....

Ghp, I'm sorry, but I do fail to see the "beauty" of this land.

I agree that I ruined the copper + clams spot (and no, there's nothing else in the fog at this spot) but the point of this city was to make a good production city (which it will be after CS), block SB and claim the copper. Maybe it was too much for a single city, I'll admit that.

Now, as for the food, I don't see "plenty of food" as you say.
I do intend to settle the corn NW of my capital, which will make a good commerce city, and Clams + crabs (East) is okay I guess.

But :
- What should I do withs Cows + Fish + Rice in the West? It's ruined by all the desert around it,
- I don't think of plain cows as food (they're only +1F),
- I have no other rivers i.e. no farms,
- There's no food near the phants.


I'd very much like to see you (or anyone else for that matters) try this map and show me what I'm missing, cause it sure seems that there is a lesson for me in there.

Will you?

I played to 100 AD and here's what I did:

Three points where I would disagree with how you seem to be approaching this.

First, scouting - you've scouted WAY off to the W and the SW, but there's these important gaps in your scouting closer to home which might change where you decide to settle.

Second, your city placement seems to keep "killing" good resources so that no cities can work them despite them being under your control. Examples: The cow and the clam to the south that Ghpstage mentioned; the Fish and the Rice to the west; the fish to the southwest - I'd settle on the ivory; possibly the sheep to the west depending on what else you might discover up there in that shroud.

Third, Great Wall. Really, really not necessary on this sort of start. Easily defensible terrain (narrow and fairly linear); ready access to copper; a superb anti-barb UU. Plus this start could have really benefited from Pyramids instead.

Looking forward, I think Caste System and scientists is the way to go with this game. Most of the city locations can't work more than 4-5 actual tiles before they start having to work garbage, but it's not hard to arrange for at least 8 surplus food in almost every city with these resources.

An EE could work, but... you don't have a holy city, your only nearby neighbor isn't a good techer, and Sitting Bull actually tends to be fairly active with generating EPs himself (which means you're unlikely to get a good EP discount off him).

Don't get me wrong, the land is not going to win any awards, but I wouldn't exactly call it poor.
Your capital screams 'Pyramids' louder than any i've seen in a long time, and the local region which has food but generally poor tiles strongly supports this.

I played to 1AD so far,
My play here wasrushed and sloppy.... after losing the Warrior I sent 1000 or so years ago to a barb I still haven't explored the west at all, I crashed to 1BTP for quite some time, I forgot to improve a corn resource for a number of turns, among other things.
But despite all that, i'm in a decent position. I have the mids, 8 cities with a 9th en route, have a GE settled and an Academy, am roughly at tech parity, pretty much guaranteed to get GLib and the artist from Music and am second in score to a very out of character AI that launched a suprisingly effective war.

Theres a lot more potential in this land than I got out of it, maybe someone else will try.

First of all thx for all your advice.

Now,

- Your point about my scouting is fair, and Ghpstage made the same. I guess I always fear that there might be a great spot somewhere that the AI may grab before I do, and so I turn out scouting near THEIR territory rather than mine. And that's bad.


- The GWall : another point that Ghp already made. The thing is I went Masonry before BW, cause the Gwall usually is built fast, so I didn't know I had access to copper before I started building it. Guess this was another mistake on my part, especially given the land with lots of chokepoints.


- Now concerning the "killing" of ressources, I'm not entirely convinced. You mention the copper + clams site, but that really seems like a terrible city spot. First of all, there are 3 tiles to work (Copper, Grass Hill and Clams) and then that's it, only junk tiles. Secondly, the city will be very slow to grow : you need a monument to work both specials, and a workboat to work the clams, and chopping won't do you much good. Third, it's not even a good specialist city.
So how is this site better that the one I chose? (I'm really asking, it's not rhetorical)

As for the others examples, it's true that Fish + Cow + Rice will be a good GP Farm, and the further city sites I just put a spot there to remember I wanted a city "around there", didin't put much thought in them, so you're probably right about them again.


- Final point, all of you seem to believe that this map "calls" for the Pyramids.

Plus this start could have really benefited from Pyramids instead

Click to expand...

Your capital screams 'Pyramids' louder than any i've seen in a long time

Click to expand...

In order to have a chance to actually build them, this requires an early Masonry, so you would have to make your mind pretty early.
On what basis would you take the decision to go this way? Is it just because of the stone?


Again, thanks for the feedback.

GLH is a pretty viable option. Just have to pick a spot to build it in though.

Bebekija said:

- Now concerning the "killing" of ressources, I'm not entirely convinced. You mention the copper + clams site, but that really seems like a terrible city spot. First of all, there are 3 tiles to work (Copper, Grass Hill and Clams) and then that's it, only junk tiles. Secondly, the city will be very slow to grow : you need a monument to work both specials, and a workboat to work the clams, and chopping won't do you much good. Third, it's not even a good specialist city.
So how is this site better that the one I chose? (I'm really asking, it's not rhetorical)

Click to expand...

The copper clam site would make a decent low level city so its not a total loss. The main reason is that you don't want to waste good tiles, and especially food resources, and in a situation like this where good tiles are rather scarce, then making use of all of them is even more important.

- Final point, all of you seem to believe that this map "calls" for the Pyramids.

In order to have a chance to actually build them, this requires an early Masonry, so you would have to make your mind pretty early.
On what basis would you take the decision to go this way? Is it just because of the stone?

Click to expand...

The nearby land favours specialists due to food being available but relatively few tiles worth working, and as the capital has some serious production as well as stone theres no harm in getting the Pyramids to boost those specialists. Also, theres little competition for land once Sitting Bull is blocked too.

While it isn't what I did, I can see the capital, stone and not too far away marble combined with poor tiles as a good excuse to wonderspam.

shyuhe said:

GLH is a pretty viable option. Just have to pick a spot to build it in though.

Click to expand...

I did consider this, but at the time didn't think I had enough coastal production to get it. I noticed it still hasn't gone as of 1AD so I decided I will go for it anyway.

shyuhe said:

GLH is a pretty viable option. Just have to pick a spot to build it in though.

Click to expand...

This was my first thought as well. GLH + Pyramids on this map would lead to a very comfortable win imo.

SB is a terrible techer. With GLH and Pyramids, you could easily coast toward a tech lead and then take him out. Easy dom win imo.

Ghpstage said:

I noticed it still hasn't gone as of 1AD so I decided I will go for it anyway.

Click to expand...

I just looked at your save and actually it has, on this very turn!

Looking at your save convinced me that city placement was probably the first thing to improve in my play.
I never would have thought to settle the deer or the furs like you did (the furs I still don't like though, I'd rather save that corn for a city SW using that river + hills).

I get the point about the land "screaming" for Pyramids, I'll try to remember that in future playthroughs.

I'll give it a retry and keep you posted...

I just looked at your save and actually it has, on this very turn!

Click to expand...

Oh well, it was a crapshoot being so late anyway. I'll settle with failgold .

Looking at your save convinced me that city placement was probably the first thing to improve in my play.
I never would have thought to settle the deer or the furs like you did (the furs I still don't like though, I'd rather save that corn for a city SW using that river + hills).

Click to expand...

My justification was that the future riverside cottage city could feed itself with floodplain and grass, therefore I could use the corn to feed the two 4 tiles in a city that could 'improve' the lake with a lighthouse.
I don't think i've ever seen the same game played by 2 different people end up with the exact same city positioning, so don't worry about not agreeing on all of them.

I played on a little bit.

Regarding the alternate copper site...
First, reasons against.
It'll grow a little more slowly. And it will plateau early. It can work clams, copper, grass/hills, two grass tiles (either two workshops or two cottages + a specialist), and some coastal tiles. And that's it. That's enough for it to be a net contributor to your empire, but it's not the sort of site you usually make a priority to lock up early in the game.
On the other hand, reasons for.
It's coastal. Since your first city isn't, and this is a very watery map, that's a very nice feature for a second or third city (I'll be honest and admit I wasn't even thinking about this when I first compared the two sites, but I should have been). And it's a twofer - you get it plus another site to the west; I would expect the two combined to be more useful than the one site in the middle.

Depending on how I was planning on developing my game, I might go with the site you chose - if you're planning on living off of two cities for a while, your choice is simply better. And if you have lots of other great city sites available which will keep you busy for a long time, again your choice is just better. And if you were worried about your southern neighbor going on a REXing spree, again your choice is better because it locks up all the good land in that area immediately and directs their attention south. But with only a couple high-quality city sites available, a neighboring AI who you really don't want to rush (unless you're crazy like m00n - or is it crazy-good?), and no urgent need for aggressive blocking, I'd prefer to split that land up to get the extra food resources.

The land isn't that bad. Didn't check any other shadows, so here is my poor attempt to 1AD

highlights?

7 cities, place for 8th (guarded by barb axemen though)

Mids, TGW, TGL (in this order! yep... great wall after mids...), popped GE which built TGL.

Academy in west city.

Palace on the move to the west (very slowly), will be nice bureau. Capital will pump GS's for a while due to TGL and NE.

I am not that satisfied with the save since there are some AI's that hold on my neck... Hopefully outtech them and crush them eventually.
Some cities seem to be underdeveloped a bit.

random screenshots

So much land. I want it all!

If I play my cards right, I can get great library while taking the entire continent on the left.
My tech rate will be slower, but I can keep up.