Lonely Hearts Club, BtS Edition, Chapter LXXVII: Qin Shi Huang

[ecuwins]

Welcome to the 77th edition of the Lonely Hearts Club for BTS. In the Lonely Hearts Club we explore strategies to cope with one of the most dreaded situations in Civ IV ( possibly the main reason for reloads after the military collapse one ): starting in isolation....

Our next leader is Qin Shi Huang of the Chinese Empire

Spoiler:

Traits: Industrious & Protective
Not too bad. Surely you will be building wonders, right? Even if it's only for the fail gold. Protective May be useful for Rifles, though.

Techs: Agriculture & Mining



Unique Building
The Pavilion
A Theater with a +25% to culture modifier. Booooo.

Unique Unit
Cho-Ko-Nu
A Crossbowman with an additional first strike, and the unit causes collateral damage. A pretty good unit in the right situation, this not being one of them.

The Start

Spoiler:

For those who are new to total isolation, you may want to take a peek at r_rolo1's guide, You, Yourself and your shadow : Some lessons on isolated starts. Also, the LHC Bullpen.

You will find the zipped saves below. Choose your level then choose your level (more precisely) then choose your speed and get underway. For Monarch+, don't forget to add Archery to the barbs. No huts & no events are selected.

Suggestions for updates are:

Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.

Checkpoint 2 - first contact - when we have met all the other AIs. At this point we can discuss our strategy to get to this point and our plans for dealing with them.

Checkpoint 3 - when we are committed to a victory condition (or at least think we are).

Checkpoint 4 - Victory (or defeat).

Finally, a thank you to r_rolo1 and all those that came before him in this series' initial run and to TheMeInTeam for the map creation guides, and to everyone else who co-hosted this series. Enjoy!

[vicawoo]

Imm, Forgot to WB archery, and went monarchy. Very slow, I really should refuse to settle all cities past the first 3 until very late.

Spoiler:

[i_imperator]

well exams are halfway through, so i will post/play this when im finished them, sigining in gonna try Emperor, monarch is rediciously easy for me these days

[TheMeInTeam]

Immortal/normal

1925 "diplomatic" victory.

Spoiler:

Piece of cake. Settled SW for coast to whore glh and lucked onto an extra plains cow while retaining corn/other plains cow. Not a bad move at all though it loses fresh water.

I built Gwall, GLH, mids while using a 2nd city to pump settlers all over the place. Swapped slavery + rep and tech was a breeze.

Somewhat unorthodox I decided to be lazy + maybe get some tech trades and made a colony using the eastern island (louis). Annoyingly he turned out to have our only metal, only coal, and only oil derp. Of course, he took forever snagging a barb city so I used my master powerz to take the coal using culture. I traded for iron using spare resources until I stopped needing it (after building some frigates basically). Oil turned out to be unnecessary.

Anyway I went straight to lib before bothering with astro but the AI tech pace was so gimped by my wonderspam (I also got great library trololol) that it didn't matter. I did rub mehmed the wrong way so I spammed walls/castles/3 units per city but attack never came (murphy's law applies to civ). They were recycled via upgrade into offensive units. DoW washington ~1700's AD with rifles + arty + a few machine guns (saved trees for health and then went SP + shops + lumbermills). Took a city and sat in it while his cannons, cavalry, and rifles all suicided on drill machine guns and a few drill arty (hey, whatever, I needed the extra D from my collateral immune guys). DRILL CAT WILL KILL YOUR FAMILY! He capped without me needing to take another city. From this point on I just gave cities back so my vassals could do something for me with 1 exception.

That was basically game over. I used that foothold to ship another set of arty/rifle over and DoW mehmed. He goes into wash borders, shredded by my arty, I take one city and another vassal. Caesar was bigger and had infantry so I had to take 3 whole cities off of him lol. I gave him rome + another back but kept avar the tundra hell city since it had uranium. No need for oil then!

The whole time, elizabeth was going culture. She had #2 and # cities ~33k when 6 subs loaded with tac nukes + some infantry on galleons showed up outside her borders. This was 1921; she was dead the next turn. Cyrus followed shortly after as her little colony.

Hatty wasn't too far from culture either (#3 city ~28k) but by this point all of my vassals but JC had nukes. I had 12 nukes and could average more than 2 per turn. I had just captured UN, and decided that it was the best way to conclude a blown game.



The mightiest empire, conquerer of the world :

[joedoe21]

Haven't played a LH game before. Let the games begin! I'm only up to checkpoint 1. Would love to hear your thoughts on my proposed city locations. I've heard overlapping can be a good thing (something I hadn't considered much before when doing city placements).

I'm playing Noble. If I win this comfortably I'm definitely moving up to prince/monarch as I haven't really had much of a challenge yet in my Noble games.

Checkpoint 1 - when we have explored the island and are aware of what resources it has. Its not so important when this is, but this is a time to discuss city sites etc. Don't look into a checkpoint 1 spoiler until you have reached this point yourself.

Spoiler:

So far I've researched:
AH - Wheel - pottery - BW

The Map:


Top Half:


Bottom Half:


What do you think of my city placements? I might put that pink city location on the desert which I probably should but thinking getting access to the pig might be a good idea.

[ecuwins]

joedoe, your dotmap looks fine.

Spoiler:

The inland city should come late, post civil service for sure.

[joedoe21]

Thanks ecuwins! More city location help below and other questions

Spoiler:

So I discovered the piece of land to the east. Here's my proposed dotmap:


Thinking maybe I'm building too many cities at once?

When does a city start getting upset about no defense? size 3?

How do you know when you should cottage or farm on a river tile? What questions should I be asking myself?

[ecuwins]

^ It depends on your plans. Some people like to sit back and just do the Lib thing. Others go for quick Astro.

[Smilingrogue]

Monarch, Normal Speed, 350 BC.

Spoiler:

As soon as I saw Industrious and isolated, I figured I will go for a culture victory by spamming wonders. Was very disappointed when the starter island had no wonder boosters. It's turn 100 and the Great Lighthouse is still on the table. I am new to normal speed setting, is 100 turns too late to go for it?

I have seven cities and planned for total ten on the starter landmass which I should get before 1 A.D. I will have currency soon. Is culture victory still viable if I run artists and land Sistine Chapel?

Off topic, is it just me or has it been quiet around here lately?

[ecuwins]

Checkpoint 1 - 2760BC

Spoiler:

Teched AH > Sailing with the plans of building GLighthouse in my second city while the capitol builds Pyramids.

The settler is headed right between the fish and horse.

425BC

Spoiler:

Went Math > Currency > now MC. Settled south to the fur.



The north



Popped an Engineer, whoops. So I settled him.

[Grashopa]

Immortal/Normal 550BC

Spoiler:

Here is my go at the start. GLh and Pyramids came in at 950 BC. I settled the stone before building... I got both my first two cities to happy cap and worked the lake tile and 1 cottage which was enough to get me BW and writing by the time I finished the pyramids. I just finished my libraries and am starting to research towards currency.

You can see here I build warriors while growing the capital and spawnbusted the island early.



After currency I'll get MC and try for the colossus... Then hope for the music GA? Caste/pacifism would be nice I guess.. CS for farms.. You could cottage everything and have a good rush buy later as there are a lot of tiles..

[i_imperator]

Domination 2026AD
Emperor, Normal, No Vassles

Spoiler:

Ya that finish date is a bit redicioulas, However i was still able to pull off a win. I pretty much settled 1NW so i could maybe get the colossus and Great lighthouse combo. I missed out on lib thanks to Elizabeth. But i manage to get the ship movement bonus from circumnavigation. The AI's had two blocks of religions, Hatty and Elizabeth were jewish, and JC, Memhed and Washington were Hindu. Toku deicded to stupidly become toaist, so hatty and Julius to dow on Japan. Conquering him completly. JC had alot of issues with Memhed with Washington, but he seemed to be well able to deal with them.

I decided i was either going for domination or diplomation victory when i realized that i needed to take out Elizabeth.So i teched to marines, destroyers, carriers and fighters took out all of her key coastal cities, took peace for a bit so i could rebuild. I was able to end liz's cultural victory, but the next threat was hatty, who had an enitre cointent to herself. So i had to rebuild a larger force and pretty much did the same strategy. My ships were able to bombard and take two cities pretty much every turn at the beginning of the campaign. After i took the key cultural cities and some other coastal cites i decided to make a peace deals, and then redclare with reinforcements. After Hatty I ended up making my next target as memhed. His land allowed me to take the win.

[Grashopa]

smiling

Spoiler:

If you cottage up and get 2 religions you can easily still get a good culture time at that point. With just the sistine/artists I think its slower but still still a good time. Wonders don't make a good culture time - 3 good commerce sites with some hammers for the religious culture multiplier make a good culture time. With GLh your big coastal cities should also have great commerce after astronomy. Though I don't know anything about the monarch level timings.

[ecuwins]

Grashoppa

Spoiler:

I was wondering if anybody would settle the island early on. And wow, you got it in time to help with the mids

I'll probably use the stone for Oxford and maybe Kremlin.

[shakabrade]

Played this a bit 3-4 days ago. Overwritten the save by Masochistic Toku, but I call this a win anyway.

Immortal/normal up to 50AD

Pictures say more than thousand words:

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

10 cities 50AD, 3 on island for +2 trade routes, cities will get big in next 20 turns because of Hereditary Rule and will generate a lot of income. There's a lot of production available so no way I could lose here.

[Grashopa]

Shaka

Spoiler:

"cities will get big in next 20 turns because of Hereditary Rule and will generate a lot of income. There's a lot of production available so no way I could lose here."

Yeah it is definitely a strong start. Would have liked to see your game. I was going to play again earlier, but being anal I couldn't decide what would be the best way to finish off the game. Early ADs could see some different looks. Maybe TMIT has some earlier pics

[Grashopa]

ecuwins

Spoiler:

"I'll probably use the stone for Oxford and maybe Kremlin."

I'm guessing Oxford in the capital? I'm wondering how hard I want to push for early Oxford. And I 'm still thinking about cottaging every tile and trying Kremlin rush buy. There is enough tiles, but I don't know how to judge it when I have pyramids.

I also feel like with pyramids and GLh here the start is so strong you can attack well before Kremlin, heck we both could probably field cho-kos with the production we have assuming two GS putting NE in the capital to speed up the 3rd great person.

[Grashopa]

I'm

Spoiler:

Going with cho-kos just for fun. We'll see. Will only have 1 GS for astro after popping a GE on machinery. The delay shouldn't matter though with all the whip production and forge+PS.

[ecuwins]

Emp/Normal

Checkpoint 3 - 700AD

Spoiler:

Got Optics in 350AD and wasted no time meeting the other AI. Traded a bit and started on Civil Service.

Here I have CS down to one turn but am waiting for a GS to throw a bulb in Astro.



Still only five cities

Checkpoint 4 - 1942 Space

Spoiler:

I haven't done space in forever, and this seemed like an easy map to go for it.

Won Lib, took Nationalism and build Taj. After Lib, went Rifling for defense as I still had single warriors in every city.

After Rifles, on to State Property and then Factories. Lots of Wealth and Research building went on.