Mansa Musa - Inland_Sea - Deity

Links to played posts

Round 0: Inspecting your surroundings - T0
Round 1: The second city - T1~T46
Round 2: Securing enough land - T47~T81
Round 3: Final slow expansion - T81~T115
Round 4: Control - T116~T143
660AD overview - T143
Round 5: The pen is mightier than the sword - T144~T157
Round 6: Preparations - T157~T166
Round 7: War with Russia - T167~T185
Round 8: Brute force - T186~T230

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Felt like civving a bit today (first time in a while!).

I'm in a hurry now so I'll only post the minimal info for now and continue in the week(s) to come.

Settings, random leader picked Mansa Musa (Fin/Spi, Min+TW, Skirmisher, Mint)


Start


I've played up to 1000AD+ already (quite sloppily past the 50 first turns) but feel free to comment on how you'd play this at any point in the playthrough.

About the save... a long time back (like a year ago), I made a bunch of random games on deity and saved them at 4000BC. This is one of them, it will be uploaded tomorrow likely.

I guess it is time for me to play Diety more than 1 or 2 times a year when xotm is on that difficulty. I will follow this to learn. So did you settle on wine?

^^___ Yep, I will follow this game too. Add another very interested lurker to your list here.

I would move warrior 1N1E to check if there is plains cow etc. If not, I would settle on wine. If yes, I don't know what I would do..

I don't fancy settling on the wine unless the warrior reveals something great from the grass hill. Wouldn't want to risk losing something good on one of the 3 hidden unforested tiles N/NW just for a little bit of extra commerce. The wine'll be nice enough with a farm on it.

Go, go, gadget Lurk!

So, the peanut gallery is supposed to guess what is the best way to proceed? Very well!

I prefer SIP, myself. Research bw to whip the first worker in. Agri next, chopping a second worker in. Go for either pottery or AH, depending on copper?. Go for skirmishers next.

Hard to argue against BW here or in most starts really. If there's more food to the north I would also get pottery early and cottage the two floods (sometimes with Mansa pottery straight out the gate is a strong play but that doesn't look ideal here). Plenty of cottageable tiles anyway even if the floods get farmed.

Thinking about the map, one part about inland sea I like is there are no "rush starts". The civs tend to be well spaced around the ring, and even if you did take someone out it just frees up space the other side for the next person to get stronger. Also there are no cosy corners so everyone will have to deal with barbs - this gives Mali an advantage (as always on deity!)

PS. Looking forward to the game - Kossin's write ups are always interesting

Kossin starts a thread, get ready to learn everybody! (This is the only good thing about there being no SGOTM at the moment)

As following your Hatty game you played around last chistmas promoted me from a prince to a solid emp player I exspect you to take me to the next level

I would move the warrior 1 NE and, in case he doesn't reveal anything useful, settle the wine.

Alright, Kos!

Yep, settling wine does look strong. Plus, it may pick up more FPs. However, only if the Warrior reveals nothing up north.

For those of you new to all things Kossin, I highly recommend that you follow this game.

Htadus said:

I guess it is time for me to play Diety more than 1 or 2 times a year when xotm is on that difficulty. I will follow this to learn. So did you settle on wine?

Click to expand...

Yes.

yatta77 said:

^^___ Yep, I will follow this game too. Add another very interested lurker to your list here.

Click to expand...

Glad to have you aboard.

Noogai said:

I would move warrior 1N1E to check if there is plains cow etc. If not, I would settle on wine. If yes, I don't know what I would do..

Click to expand...

1N1W maybe... I didn't though, I will explain next post.

Kid R said:

I don't fancy settling on the wine unless the warrior reveals something great from the grass hill. Wouldn't want to risk losing something good on one of the 3 hidden unforested tiles N/NW just for a little bit of extra commerce. The wine'll be nice enough with a farm on it.

Click to expand...

Actually, I moved the settler first from inspecting the start (not that it can be done without the save).
Farmed wine is OK but I find myself often strapped for worker turns and 5/6 worker turns is quite a bit which could be used for something else.

Um the Muse said:

Go, go, gadget Lurk!

So, the peanut gallery is supposed to guess what is the best way to proceed? Very well!

I prefer SIP, myself. Research bw to whip the first worker in. Agri next, chopping a second worker in. Go for either pottery or AH, depending on copper?. Go for skirmishers next.

Click to expand...

Yay for skirmishers My new favorite UU.

Kid R said:

Hard to argue against BW here or in most starts really. If there's more food to the north I would also get pottery early and cottage the two floods (sometimes with Mansa pottery straight out the gate is a strong play but that doesn't look ideal here). Plenty of cottageable tiles anyway even if the floods get farmed.

Thinking about the map, one part about inland sea I like is there are no "rush starts". The civs tend to be well spaced around the ring, and even if you did take someone out it just frees up space the other side for the next person to get stronger. Also there are no cosy corners so everyone will have to deal with barbs - this gives Mali an advantage (as always on deity!)

PS. Looking forward to the game - Kossin's write ups are always interesting

Click to expand...

Yea, I've grown to like Inland sea as well. It can be unpredictable but they are usually fun games. I'm a bit tired of ramming-my-head-against-a-brick-wall starts.

Barbs, depending on AI proximity and RNG, are either a petty nuisance or a real bother. They weren't so bad here but I still like my skirmishers.

I'll get to techs later.

bobbyboy29 said:

Kossin starts a thread, get ready to learn everybody! (This is the only good thing about there being no SGOTM at the moment)

Click to expand...

One has to keep busy until the next SGOTM, no?

Bockwurst said:

As following your Hatty game you played around last chistmas promoted me from a prince to a solid emp player I exspect you to take me to the next level

I would move the warrior 1 NE and, in case he doesn't reveal anything useful, settle the wine.

Click to expand...

Glad to hear! Hopefully I can show you a few more tricks this time around.

lymond said:

Alright, Kos!

Yep, settling wine does look strong. Plus, it may pick up more FPs. However, only if the Warrior reveals nothing up north.

For those of you new to all things Kossin, I highly recommend that you follow this game.

Click to expand...

I like +2C early also. Extra floodplains was one of my bets but not the reason I moved.

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Stay tuned for the next post. I'll add the save to the OP after it is done.

kossin said:

I like +2C early also. Extra floodplains was one of my bets but not the reason I moved.

Click to expand...

You didn't do some serious camera flying for this one as well, did you?

I'd instinctively go 1S as well for the extra commerce, while you at least maintain the corn and the three hills. It at least looks more promising than the foresty north. Curious to hear what your reason was.

Anyway, subscribed.

with financial it was almost clear bet the other would be PH in near land

Inspecting your starting location

There are many things to check in the starting location sometimes. Other times, it's clear that you SIP to avoid losing out on some resources. You know the drill by now, don't you?

If you aren't too familiar with Inland_Sea, please have a look at The Complete Guide To Map Creation. It is very well put together and will give you an idea of the shape of the maps if you are not used to them.

I left the default 'flat' option so the first spoiler is of interest. The sea will be in the middle of the map and you cannot cross East/West or North/South. This means that in most cases you will only have 2 direct neighbors, which is pretty similar to most maps actually. Also, all watery units/wonders are close to useless because there's not much to do there. You may fit a few coastal cities but due to starting locations most civs will get their rough share of the land so you can't go crazy with the GLH here.

OTOH, there are a LOT of rivers thus commerce is rarely a problem... but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take advantage of it!

So about the start.

As seen on the starting screenshot, we're way up north. I spotted 2 things supporting this, can you find them? There's even a hint on the starting picture (re-posted below)
Starting picture (hint)

Evidence A

Evidence B


Now, with access to the save, you can do even better: there are only 3 tiles north of the settler.


Since I have no clue how close the AI are, this means a city north of the capital would be stuck along the edge of the map, slicing almost in half its usable tiles. Moving 1S would only cut 3 tiles should I settle fillers up there if in need. The risk of losing out on specials is very low. There are already over 3 resources visible in the BFC (corn, wine, silk, and 2 fp's count for 0.8 iIrc). Anything up there would be overkill!

Settling the wine gives +2C... no argument there. Yes it can be farmed, but as I already said, there are usually better things to do than farm a wine tile with your worker(s). If you're realllly struggling on commerce then sure, go ahead... but I didn't expect this to be the case.

Hills: I count 4 of them, but 3 are brown.


Moving further south might hit a bit more green land.
More flood plains: where there's one (second visible in fog), there's usually more?
Sometimes.
Some resources spawn like that too: Ivory, Silk, Dye, Sugar, Fur and Wine.

But what really made me move was the following.


What! Don't see it? Go look again. (Answer below)


So that can only mean...


And here we settle!


I didn't scout north either. Nothing the border pop won't reveal in 5 turns. Better have a look at the surroundings.

I'll post the save in a minute to the first post.

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On posting format

Is there anything I can do differently to make it better?
Picture size was reduced from 1920x1080 to 1280x1280. Want smaller? Bigger?
Comments?
Anything else?

nocho said:

You didn't do some serious camera flying for this one as well, did you?

I'd instinctively go 1S as well for the extra commerce, while you at least maintain the corn and the three hills. It at least looks more promising than the foresty north. Curious to hear what your reason was.

Anyway, subscribed.

Click to expand...

Nope, flying camera isn't necessary at all 99% of the games.

vranasm said:

with financial it was almost clear bet the other would be PH in near land

Click to expand...

Even without Financial, I'd do the same. The PH's are impossible to settle without doing so almost blindly (or losing a few turns) and being certain to lose out on some goodies.

I like it...

i guess you found your HE city..now let's look for the commerce city

I wager 5 cents that you gave up horses. Although with corn + 2 FP (1 special) + 2 wine + silk, you may have already hit the number of specials necessary to normalize your initial starting position. Then again, the forest spam suggests otherwise. I really need to learn the start generator algorithm

Given your food situation, I think you'll end up working the grass hill + riverside plains hill for much of the early game but won't touch the other brown hills until replaceable part windmills (one of my favorite improvements for brown hills).

shyuhe said:

I wager 5 cents that you gave up horses. Although with corn + 2 FP (1 special) + 2 wine + silk, you may have already hit the number of specials necessary to normalize your initial starting position. Then again, the forest spam suggests otherwise. I really need to learn the start generator algorithm

Given your food situation, I think you'll end up working the grass hill + riverside plains hill for much of the early game but won't touch the other brown hills until replaceable part windmills (one of my favorite improvements for brown hills).

Click to expand...

Not a forest spam, otherwise there'd be like 8 resources! (Which means it couldn't be a forest spam).

Great opening analysis, Kos. Everyone reading this thread just gained a few IQ points.

Now I'm off to play this game.

If anything, I would go bigger on the pics, but the size now is fine.

Subscribing for self-improvement purposes. The posting format looks good to me.

One question:

kossin said:

This seemingly desert tile is an Oasis!! Instead of the usual 9-10 commerce you usually get at the start, I'll be getting 14 (8+3+3) in 5 turns!

Click to expand...

I presume this means that at size 2 you'll work the oasis and the other wine tile. It's these sort of judgment calls where I have the most trouble. The rule of thumb I've learned is to work the best food tiles early. Obviously hold in every situation. I often have a hard time deciding when it's better to get the commerce (or production) early or to grow faster (i.e. should I work the 1f wine tile at size 2 or 3?). I presume here the determining factor is the Financial trait, and that in most cases you'd pick high food over commerce. Is that correct?