Gazing at the stars from the thick jungle

Welcome to my first Writeup of a game, besides the countless "Please help me, I kinda suck" threads I've started over the last few years. Thanks to all the friendly and helpful people on Civ4anatics, I've become a much better player, so hopefully by writing about how a fairly successful game went, I can give a little back too

The game is from G-Minor 197, with these settings.

Victory Condition: Space Colony
Difficulty: Prince
Starting Era: Ancient
Map Size: Small
Speed: Normal
Map Type: Rain Forest

The leader we start with is Zara Yaqob.



Usually pretty strong when managed by the AI, definitely one of the better ones in my opinion. He doesn't have a strong early UU, so not great for early warfare, but what he does have going for him is free border pops from Creative, in addition to a host of half-cost buildings, many of which will come into play in a big empire in a space game: Library, Courthouse and Factory.

Four leaders had to be part of the game, Shaka, Hatshepsut, Hannibal and Mansa Musa, and I chose 3 more to fill the map with max AIs. As mentioned by Seraiel and WastinTime, this means more land is cleared of jungle (around each capital), and the AI will help to develop more of the land (for us). Some AIs should also be closer, which helps with early rushing, if you want to do that.


The Opposition

• Quite a balanced AI in my experience, that can tech well on the back of the Financial trait
• Bit of a warmonger, but not among the worst

• Very strong early UU in the War Chariot, so I love to use her myself
• In AI hands a bit of a religion and Wonder nut that tends to be weak-ish

• Everybody's favourite tech trading whore!
• Will trade away techs as soon as he researches it, even monopoly techs, as long as he doesn't build a wonder that it unlocks (therefore trade such techs early, before he can start building the wonder(s)
• Capitulates easily, and is a great target for peace vassaling so you can direct his research towards whatever you want
• Almost always a great techer, due to Traits and a good UB that helps him out. He can be tech leader with only 3 cities

• A dangerous unit spammer
• At Prince it should be fine, but at high levels ending up next to this chap is not the most pleasant sight

In addition to these "must have" AIs, I included 3 more, to fill the map with the most AIs we can have on these settings according to Hall of Fame rules: 7.

• Another weakling, which is even more of a religious nut than Hatty. Tends to found early religions and spam missionaries
• Can tech pretty decently, so not a bad guy to have around
• ...of course, you can kill him easily too, if that is your fancy

• Little experience with facing Roosevelt, but like all American leaders he is a bit weak, so can easily be overpowered in the beginning

• On recommendation from Seraiel I included Peter
• He is of the more warring kind, but also techs well usually, so can be a good meatshield and trading partner if you get on his good side

The Start



As far as HoF maps goes, this isn't fantastic, but it's not bad either. Double gems for early commerce, and double pigs for food, plus a banana-hill that can serve for food post Calendar, and more early on. It's a -poor start, however, so settling in place is out of the question. There does appear to be a floodplain further north, included with SIP, so the one 1E of 2nd gem cancels it out in that sense. But I also suspect there are desert hills or at worst mountains in the north, so I want to move 1S. This has some repercussions.

• More by not settling on and "wasting" the green hill
• Two floodplains, though both options will have this from what I can tell
• Loses the Fur, but this can be easily grabbed with a later city, and it's not that much (for Buro boost)
• Loses some river-tiles in the north, but this doesn't appear to be an issue since some of them will be lousy desert tiles. Also gain some others in the south
• (This is a BIG one) By settling next to the river 1S, the capital will be able to build a Levee, which is a big -boost when multiplied with Buro and multipliers. Space games are long games, and stuff like this matters. Freshwater (from the lake) isn't enough, you need to be riverside to be able to build a Levee.
• So in summary, moving 1S will give the capital a good deal more without really losing anything of importance. Not a great cottage spot, but it will be cottaged anyway

Didn't have any saves for a while, but think this is how I moved the scout, before settling 1S (always move the scout / warrior first, so you can reveal information that may impact on the settling decision). It's a case of moving to see what you may miss out on by not SIP, or finding out what you may gain by moving. Then use the initial unit to scout around your capital for future city spots, and locate other AIs. Of course this is very basic information for people in this sub-forum, but there it is



Looks fine enough. No big surprises, but a decent enough helper spot 2S of the 2nd gem, that would grab 2 floodplains. Not a 2nd city candidate though. Only 5 riverside cottage spots (plus 2 gems) in the capital, but it's okay. Two "dead" tiles in the desert and mountain, which isn't great for a capital, but you play with the hand you're dealt.

We started with Mining and Hunting. Mining is excellent for those gems, but first priority is always to improve the food, so Animal Husbandry it is. Worker first, as in 99% of cases (give or take ). It's possible to warrior rush on this level, but it's a risky game, and I'd like to know where the AIs are first, so I don't waste turns doing stuff that will have absolutely no benefit. It's a high risk, high reward kind of gambit, but since I don't have that many promising starts I like to play them more "sensibly" instead, with smaller risk that gives a bit more wriggle room strategically. So worker first it is, then we'll see what the scout reveals, and if AH shows horses nearby.

(W)Horse!

Animal Husbandry comes online...





Good thing I didn't start with warriors as I wouldn't have a worker for quite some time to improve a stronger option.



With Roosevelt to the south-west on flatland(!), it's time to try out a approach. Nice spot too, and another marble, in addition to the one north of the capital, that you see in the last screenshot. Have met Mansa too, but for now I'm unsure exactly where he is. Good omen to meet him early though, as it means he is close.


Capital city micro a little later, when some improvements are done and horses hooked up.



"Not working any of the pigs, are you crazy man?!".

It looks dodgy, and perhaps it was, but it wasn't random. I've already whipped out a barracks, so the chariots get a promotion out of the gate. Chariots only cost 30 however, which means they are lousy to whip as you can't double-whip them. But with 10 per turn they get produced every 3 turns, which isn't too bad. Could have whipped out a (cheap) library or another worker, with overflow into a chariot, but other than that it was fine, and it got out chariots at a reasonable pace, while at happy cap.

You can see I have already mined the banana, as it's a 2 tile, and the worker is now on the green hill ready to improve it.

You can also see that I'm beelining Alpha. Haven't even teched Agriculture yet, as I quite frankly don't need it.


First blood

Only have one chariot in place, but he and a warrior invade American lands and steal a worker. Then I pause a turn without attacking instantly with the chariot, so the warrior can clean up if the RNG is evil and the chariot loses.



^^He doesn't, and Washington falls. A little healing, and then moving south to New York, which Roosevelt has already founded. It has also grown to size 2, so it won't get auto-razed.




The Chariot has now captured two cities. Well done, well done

But what is this...? India to the south-east?

"Welcome to India, stranger"



"I see you brought some horses. We have them too, though we are still in the breeding stage. They are very good for ploughing the fields, right?"

^^ Two warriors, eh? Interesting.

*puts pinky finger in the side of my mouth*


The city is on a hill, but better to strike fast, before Chariots appear. I have Alphabet now, and from the tech screen I can see Gandhi doesn't have Archery, which would be a horrible sight on that hill. Perhaps a little difficult to see from the screenshot, but Delhi is a double Holy City, because Gandhi has founded both Hinduism and Judaism.



One of the warriors ventured out of the city, to his doom, because when I loaded this save there was an injured Chariot on the pig tile. There was another Chariot ready to attack the city, but thankfully it wasn't needed.

1840BC, we have captured 2 capitals and have 4 cities, and still well short of the first GG

Forgot to ask Gandhi from what direction he had met Hatty. Shame. I took a chance and ventured further east, hoping she would be in the blackness over there. She wasn't.




The Scout have located both Mansa and Shaka now. I'm sure they'll get on a like a house on fire.

Very nice writeup!

I like that you explain very clearly what you are doing and why, and this is a prince level game. This makes it a very good resource for new players to study how to beat lower levels. And probably also a valuable resource for more seasoned players with a rusty space game, like me... Keep up the good work!

Egypt says "Hello"

After much and ultimately pointless traversing in the South-East section of the map, we locate Egypt further West. It's not all bad, though, as we now have a stream of Chariots.



The Chariot in the west will capture the worker on T0 of the war, and then be in position to attack Thebes on T1, while the rest move towards Thebes. Hatty has gotten access to Archers, but it's on flatland, so we should be fine, especially with 11 Chariots flowing into the area.



Two Chariots died attacking two archers, and two others cleaned up. The first Chariot had Combat II, so would have had pretty decent odds, but losing two Chariots to kill two Archers is the best one can realistically hope for, unless the RNG is overly kind.

After taking Thebes, I waited a long, long, looooong time, hoping Memphis would pop to size two, so I could capture it without it getting auto-razed. Did the same with a barb city. Unfortunately it never happened, and I actually don't think they could increase in size, due to health issues and lack of improved food, or even 3 tiles to work.

Capturing 3 AI capitals by 1200BC isn't normal procedure, so this was a good start




The Oracle

Meanwhile, back in the capital:



Have had enough Chariots for a while, so the capital double whipped a Library with max-ish overflow into the Oracle. It's even working a food resource now! From what I recall we traded for all up to Priesthood, plus some worker techs and general backfill, while I self-teched Alpha, Math and CoL, in that order.

You can see four cottages are up, including on the two FPs, but I need for the Oracle, so for the time they're not working towards Towns. Still no Granary as other goals have been more important - war, research and Oracle - but it's coming soon

Didn't take a screenshot of it, but you know the drill. Oracled Civil Service 3 turns later. When loading that save I was met with a Alt+M message in war fonts:

"ORACLE. REMEMBER TO CHANGE TO BURO!!!"

Click to expand...

Not without reason either. Because in earlier games I have forgotten to make the change instantly. Not so much with Bureaucracy (I think), but with the Pyramids and Representation, because you don't get a popup screen then, and it's so bloody easy to simply forget to make the change. You can see those errors by checking out the logs of my other games

Always a little unsure what to do with the free missionary with a new religion. Can be nice in the capital so it can build more monasteries. In this case, however, I sent the Confucian missionary to Timbuktu since Mansa didn't have a religion yet. Soon after it spread to some other cities in that area, including to Shaka. This had a nice long-term diplo effect, so it was a good choice I think. Later on I got a GProphet which built the Confucian Shrine, so Shaka and Mansa helping to spread Confucianism got me more 'free'


Overview 1120BC



Here is a shot with cultural borders, for overview purposes. Shaka and Mansa next to each other in the North, and the cities I've captured along a NE to SW axis. Eventually I set up a wall along this section, and begin to backfill the interior.


Dotmap with food highlighted 600BC



Since this is a picture so far zoomed out, I've only highlighted the food resources, so there is less clutter. I've dotmapped quite heavily here. Most cities were founded in these locations, but I made some changes near Egypt, some out of necessity.

As you can see, there is a lot of food on Rainforest maps, and most cities will have excellent food. There also happens to be many rivers, so I could be very sloppy with roads as they would still get auto-connected to the trade network, and as mentioned when discussing SIP or not, later on these cities will get Levees, which greatly boost their output.

Do note that there is food in the bottom section of the map too, but it gets hidden because there is supposed to be a toolbar there, and despite hiding the user interface, the icons still stay hidden because they would normally be underneath the game's toolbar.

PS: I don't think they will starve in Russia!

Also notice the mountain range west of Egypt, that quite literally offers a natural protection in case Peter decides to play naughty.


Strategic Resources overview 600BC



Got Paper this turn, in 600BC, so traded maps for (this is a good way to get some after Currency). This is the full map, with strategic resources highlighted. Unfortunately I have no stone, but no less than three horses and three marble.

By now it has finally dawned on me that those pesky cities, Memphis and Cherokee, is not going to pop to size 2, so I better take them out before Archers get amassed. Thankfully the barb city is still only populated with two Warriors. At some point these get magically upgraded to Archers, and later Longbows, and yet later Rifles (yes, I've seen that happen).

On top of the screenshot you'll see that Education is queued up, but that research has been turned off to save gold to complete it. I've just popped a Great Scientist in Delhi, which is on his way back to Aksum to build an Academy. Since research is turned off anyway, this delay doesn't matter. Getting another GS to partly bulb Education will therefore take a long time, so I intend to fully self-tech Education once I can afford it.

The capital has at long last got its Granary, and is now building an Aqueduct in preparation for building the Hanging Gardens, which is good on this type of map due to few health resources and lots of jungle. It's also nice to build once you have many cities, because each city gets one more pop. Due to that, I actually postponed finishing it so a soon-to-be-settled city would instantly get pop 2, for easier whipping of the granary. Every little bit helps

elitetroops said:

Very nice writeup!

I like that you explain very clearly what you are doing and why, and this is a prince level game. This makes it a very good resource for new players to study how to beat lower levels. And probably also a valuable resource for more seasoned players with a rusty space game, like me... Keep up the good work!

Click to expand...

Thank you for the comment. I was starting to wonder if I posted this in the wrong forum. Always nice to see that the work put into threads like this is appreciated

Pangaea said:

Thank you for the comment. I was starting to wonder if I posted this in the wrong forum. Always nice to see that the work put into threads like this is appreciated

Click to expand...

Ofc, your work is appreciated. Even the funking lurkers, who're too lazy to even register at Civfanatics and who read everything, but leave nothing, appreciate that someone invests time on making them better players.

I just didn't comment, because I had no questions yet. Settling 1S was a good choice, wouldn't have thought of that probably. Chariot-rushing with 2 Chariots is somehow lol, but then again, the whole Prince level somehow is lol. Unbelievable, that many players even struggle at Noble, but then again, not everybody has Deity experience like us.

Following with great interest, finally someone else making a decent writeup so that I can be on the reader side .

Seraiel said:

Ofc, your work is appreciated. Even the funking lurkers, who're too lazy to even register at Civfanatics and who read everything, but leave nothing, appreciate that someone invests time on making them better players.

I just didn't comment, because I had no questions yet. Settling 1S was a good choice, wouldn't have thought of that probably. Chariot-rushing with 2 Chariots is somehow lol, but then again, the whole Prince level somehow is lol. Unbelievable, that many players even struggle at Noble, but then again, not everybody has Deity experience like us.

Following with great interest, finally someone else making a decent writeup so that I can be on the reader side .

Click to expand...

Thanks. Hopefully many others are reading and learning something, even if they don't comment.

Rushing with a Chariot and a Warrior is LOL-worthy, and it's certainly not something I would advocate on Immortal or Deity. Unless one wants to quickly re-roll I guess

Everybody starts somewhere, though, and when I started out I was probably a builder type too, and I do recall struggling at Noble or whatever I played early, losing a space race to China on Earth 18, and getting dogpiled on some map, where I got 3 cities or something. Civilization 4 is a complex game, but like with all things when you achieve some mastery over it, it becomes easier and you tend to instinctively "know" what are good decisions and what are bad ones.

550BC to 1AD

Cease fired with Hatshepsut earlier with the hope of Memphis growing, but it really is time to put her to bed.



The log includes the attack on the barb city Cherokee too. Not so lucky with the RNG there and it took two turns to take out two lousy Warriors. Two warriors in Memphis too, so she still hadn't managed to produce an Archer there, and they both died, and Memphis was burned to the ground.

Since that happened anyway, I took a closer look at the dotmap, and decided to place a new city 1N of the old. This would later become a pretty darn good National Park city, although it lacked a river for and Levee goodness. It has 3 pigs, 2 rice, 1 sugar, marble and copper, and 12 possible Forest Reserves - although 3 needs Jungle to spread.




Academy, 400BC

In 400BC, Louis Pasteur arrives in the capital Aksum, all the way from Delhi, and to great fanfare builds an Academy.



The long-running theme of not working food continues However, here you can see there are ample reasons for it, as I instead want to grow the riverside cottages, in addition to working tiles for the HG. It's still slow going, not least because I don't have access to Stone, which quite frankly is a huge pain in the arse when the aim is to build Stone-Wonders like HG and Pyramids, and of course Oxford. I like to double up HG and Mids in the same city btw, because both produce Great Engineer points. It's not that easy to reliably get GEs, but it helps to have 4 'passive' GE , in addition to 3 more from an Engineer from the Forge, once we get access to them. Of course this is hardly a workable strategy on higher levels as the Pyramids will go early, but on Prince it has worked out well enough.

With the Academy built, the now 10-city empire is making slightly over 200 at 400BC. Still don't quite have enough gold to push through to Education at full tilt, so research is turned off until we can. The AIs are still so far behind, however, so tech trading is still possible despite not teching anything myself. Trades mainly come from Mansa, and I've been a bit fortunate with his choices, so have been able to get Calendar, and he is currently researching MC, so I'll get that soon.

As you can see from the double trade routes, I've got Currency too, which I self-teched. It's always a good technology to get early, as it unlocks so many opportunities for generating Against low level AIs you won't get much gold by selling techs, but every little bit helps, and as they tech slowly, you can sell a fair few techs.

A little quirk with this game was that it took forever to get Monotheism. The reason is probably simple. Gandhi researched it first and founded Judaism. But he is dead. With the main benefit of teching Monetheism gone, founding the religion, the AIs probably don't target it. It's not exactly something I want to tech myself either, so it took quite a while before I was able to switch into Organised Religion. But then I don't really want to waste a turn to single-switch civics either, unless it's Buro or Slavery early on, so it wasn't that big of a deal. If I remember correctly, the empire was already so big that it would have taken 2 turns of Anarchy to switch, so that wasn't going to happen before I was in a Golden Age.


Stupid barbs



Bit of a kick in the nuts as a barb city spawned in the fog, despite being covered by fogbusting (unfortunately barb cities can still spawn, if the tile itself is fogged, even if your fogbusters are covering said tile), just when a settler was en-route to settle this luscious floodplains area. He was going to, and ultimately did, settle SE of the iron, so the city would be able to work the gold -- one of the changes from the earlier Dotmap. We took some losses as the RNG was in the unfriendly mood, and barbs have Archers now. It wasn't actually all bad, though, because now when the barbs killed a FP, the new city would 'only' have 9 FPs instead of 10, and that means 3 instead of 4 . Behind every dark cloud... Right?


Two turns later, 275BC, and Shaka is plotting. I guess Mansa and Shaka isn't going to live happily forever after then...?

Shaka declared on Mansa just a few turns later, and almost instantly took Djenne off Mansa's hands. Somehow Mansa retook it right away, though, which looked odd given the troops numbers I spotted earlier. Shaka laid siege to Timbuktu, which at this point was the only city Mansa had that didn't suck, but he got out units at a rate Shaka couldn't match, and it soon became apparent Shaka wasn't going to take him down. When the war started I was worried Mansa would get outright wiped from the map. Thankfully it didn't turn out that way, as Mansa is a very good trade partner, and being so close geographically, I wanted to peace vassal him.



In 75BC we completed the HG, and got an extra citizen in all 13 cities, like in the one above that was settled the turn before HG completed. That extra citizen is why I postponed it. Not that he's doing much with those unimproved resources, but it comes in handy later when I want to double-whip the granary.

Also finished Education in 75BC, which meant I could finally whip away some unhappiness with Forge-overflow into Universities -- which would later be whipped in several cities as they are a pain to build otherwise, being so expensive. Without Stone, Oxford wasn't going to get built in a jiffy, but the sooner I'm qualified to build it, the sooner it can get done.


Unsure about picture limits in posts, but as I intend to post overviews of all cities at 1AD, I'll end it here and continue in the next post.

1AD - An Overview

1AD is a good time to take a time-out and see how your Empire is doing. Typically you want to make 200 by 1AD, which you typically need Civil Service and Bureaucracy to achieve, plus the near-mandatory Academy.


Empire / World map

First an overview of the world, showing cultural borders, since showing all resources when so zoomed out makes for a great deal of clutter.


The mountain range roughly in the centre of the map means I have some natural protection against Shaka's expansion, and buys me some time before needing to expand into that area myself. Settling that far from the capital is expensive, so I postpone it as long as I can, preferring instead to settle the areas closer to home. Would have been nice if the capital wasn't kissing the edge of the map, but hey ho.

I've REXed to 13 cities, including the 4 that were captured. When turning on research, the Empire is making 322 at 1AD. It's only breaking even a little under 40% , though, which isn't critical, but it also means I should probably be a little careful with too fast REXing beyond 1AD. We need to fill all the land, though, because land is power. Organized is probably quite useful here, actually.



You can see from the overview picture that basically all cities are busy building infrastructure: granary, forge, library, university, plus another settler.

It's also worth to point out that upon getting Education, research was shut off again. It will stay shut off until I complete Oxford, which will take quite some time. Right now the capital is building the viciously expensive non-Stone Pyramids, and after that it needs a University and then it can build Oxford, once four other universities are built in other cities.

I recall not being entirely sure what technology to queue up at this point, but as research is shut off, it doesn't really matter too much -- another advantage with binary research. The AIs typically tech Machinery fairly fast themselves, but this is Prince and the AIs are slow as snails, and I need it on the path to getting workshops that are actually useful. Plenty of time to make a call on that later, however.

We have lots of Marble, which means ample opportunity for failgold down the road. A big goal is to build the MoM, and with Marble that should be easy enough. Also have enough on Mansa to know he isn't building it in his capital, who I got Calendar from earlier. At this point Mansa is busy building units anyway, to make sure Shaka finds himself in a quagmire, unable to do more damage in Malinese lands.

New York, the Confucian Holy City, is building a Confu-stery so it can build missionaries outside of OR, if I want to do that at some point.


I'm leaving tomorrow for Easter, it's late, and I need to hit the sack, so need to break off the report here. But if I have time before leaving I'll try to get up an overview of all 13 cities, or at least the main ones. Otherwise it won't be for about 10 days, when I come back from the road.

excellent work so far both in game and the write up; 3 capitals from chariots is insane and something I would have never contemplated; which I guess is why I could never get a decent date, of course getting horses in your cap really helped my question is would that be feasible even on prince level with horses outside your cap so that you have to settle a second city first?

I'm looking forward to hearing more. I have lots of questions.
Why Alpha before Oracle, doesn't that slow you down? If you get Oracle around 1000 BC, one of the AI will usually tech Alpha for you.
1 S for the capital would have been my choice too. The levee is critical.
I'm working on a gauntlet game now as well. I'm at 1 AD with 8 cities, stone and marble hooked up and Mids built in the capital as well as Oracle. Cap has very good hammers but not much commerce 1 gold, horses (of course) and 4 pigs. 5 cities are building uni's now with whip waiting for when the slowest is ready. Like you I'm saving all my gold until Oxford is in but I have stone so it should be quick.

I took Berlin and Timbuktu using 3 chariots with no loses, picking up 3 workers on the way. Didn't like taking out Mansa but he was close to Berlin and only had warriors.
I'll post more detail later. It will be really interesting to compare as I have fewer cities but faster tech. Academy was up in the capital 1 turn after Oracle (debated saving it for bulbing Edu but opted for the building instead.
Got lucky with 2nd GP who was GS as well, so I bulbed most of Edu and finished it about 150BC. I was slow teching MW while waiting to see what GP would pop. At 1 BC I'm slow teching Machinery which as you point is important for getting the workshops humming along.

Plan for tech is Music for the GP and then what's needed for Guilds, Astro, Lib (for scientific method and then Communism for SP. Any comments on the tech path would be appreciated.

I'm running Rep, Slavery, OR at the moment and will switch to caste when some workshops are up and I get some forges whipped.

I'm making 230 BPT at 1 AD, Oxford came in at 350 AD and BPT is 218 from the whipping lost.

Got bogged down with warring with Washington, but his capital is mine now and he has 3 small cities to turn over once I get some troops back on line.

Machinery is in and I'm just picking up music.

I would have been tempted to leave Delhi and get a free shrine or two, but you probably did the right thing. Your army was right there and Gandhi did not have archers yet.

Shame Mansa was so close, you don't want to attack him.

Great write up so far Pangaea.

I look forward to seeing how you played out the late-game when you get back from Easter holidays.

The transition from science into production+science has always been something that I struggle with in Space games.

Great write-up, Pangaea--well formatted and illustrated. (I'd wondered where you'd been hiding as haven't seem many posts from you on S&T). Pretty amazing what chariots can accomplish at this difficulty. Enjoying following and looking forward to more.

Perhaps others can answer this question for me/us. When you were waiting for those 1pop cities to grow to S2 before capturing them to prevent autorazing--is it not the case that even a 1pop city, provided it has had a border pop from culture, dpes not get autorazed upon capture? It seems like I've read/experienced this before.

ShiVvV said:

Great write-up, Pangaea--well formatted and illustrated. (I'd wondered where you'd been hiding as haven't seem many posts from you on S&T). Pretty amazing what chariots can accomplish at this difficulty. Enjoying following and looking forward to more.

Perhaps others can answer this question for me/us. When you were waiting for those 1pop cities to grow to S2 before capturing them to prevent autorazing--is it not the case that even a 1pop city, provided it has had a border pop from culture, dpes not get autorazed upon capture? It seems like I've read/experienced this before.

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Cities must have been size 2 once, then they don't get autorazed. Culture has nothing to do with that, a city can have a borderpop and still get autorazed, if it never were size2 or larger.

A good workaround that many HoF players use, is to disable city-razing when starting the game. Ofc, disabling that option has the disadvantage, that one cannot raze any civ throughout the round, so conquering the land, razing the bad cities is not possible with this.

I think the border pop used to work, but I think it was patched out.

Seraiel said:

Cities must have been size 2 once, then they don't get autorazed. Culture has nothing to do with that, a city can have a borderpop and still get autorazed, if it never were size2 or larger.

A good workaround that many HoF players use, is to disable city-razing when starting the game. Ofc, disabling that option has the disadvantage, that one cannot raze any civ throughout the round, so conquering the land, razing the bad cities is not possible with this.

Click to expand...

I've only played with the latest version of BtS since I came to the game so late, so don't know what worked before. But as of right now, the city must have been size 2 at some point, otherwise it gets auto-razed, as the others say.

That's a decent workaround I suppose, though on this map it would have sucked a bit too, as there were at least three cities capture-razed that were on the edge of the map, and I wouldn't have wanted to keep any of them.

Back from holiday now, so will work on some updates again

It's time for an overview of the 13 cities at 1AD. Naturally most are little developed so far, but hopefully it will be useful nevertheless

Capital: Aksum



Size 14 and working all the best tiles, plus a non-riverside cottage. Also running an Engineer specialist to speed up the Pyramids a little bit, and get :gpp: for a Great Engineer, as those aren't the easiest to pop, and this city may be my best chance due to double-up of GE points from the Hanging Gardens and later on the Pyramids. Despite having Calendar, the Banana is still mined because I needed more than extra . Plus, I had forgot about it


Washington



Besides the resource tiles, it is working some riverside cottages while building the MoM. It's a good city, and later on I change plans for it by building the National Epic here and farming some tiles. Ideally I wanted a NE-NP city with lots of jungle tiles, but it's probably just as good to split the :gpp: production, and I should have built the NE earlier than I did. It has plenty of with three food resources, and is running an Engineer to help with MoM.


New York



Courthouse already up here, as it's quite expensive on maintenance. Building a Confu-stery so I can get out some missionaries outside or OR. It's actually the only Confucian city so far, and I'm not yet in OR. Sometimes auto-spread seems to be turned off :|


Delhi



A nice double-Holy City from Gandhi, but without a Shrine as he died too quickly. Think it was the right move to kill him, though. Intended to make it a cottage-ville, but they didn't get developed all that much due to needing to run two scientists somewhere, and the choice fell on Delhi. Well on the way to the 2nd GS.


Thebes



Apart from a serious lack of , this is a wonderful city with great cottage potential, so the natural choice was of course to cottage the bejeezus out of it. Some were already in place when we bolted in, like the poor plains cottage. Running an Engineer instead of the plains cottage, and the University will be whipped. IIRC, I waited until it could be 4-pop whipped, as there was no hurry, and I didn't exactly want to whip away a host of well-developed cottages.

You'll notice that despite having a courthouse, maintenance is rather expensive due to the distance to the capital and the city's relatively large size.


Gondar



City #6, but only the 2nd we founded ourselves. It effectively blocks off Mansa Musa, and should make it easier to peace vassal him down the road due to bordering tiles. Pretty good cottage spot with some FPs, and Fur and Spice to add to the . Will get a University.


Lalibela



As you can see from the note, Peter wasn't a huge fan of expansionist Ethiopia. Triple-food and some more cottages here, and it's one of relatively few cities that aren't riverside for later Levee goodness. Still has +2 from the lake, though. I detest spy specialists, but it didn't exactly have anything better to do, and I'm just waiting to whip the Forge. Pre-workshops, can be a real problem in Rainforests.


Addis Ababa



Only city producing a settler at the moment, and currently working 2 unimproved (but un-jungled) Spices (one plantation is done next turn).


Yeha



Working a terrible unimproved tile, but there aren't exactly any great alternatives right now, and I'm waiting to whip the Forge, so another hammer does some good in this case.


Debre Berhan



Granary and Forge is up, and a Library is next.


Adulis



The Granary has just been double-whipped, with decent overflow into a Forge, which will be whipped when possible.


Qohaito



A barb city busted a FP for this city, but that also means it only gets -3 from 9 FPs instead of -4 with 10 FPs, so it wasn't the worst thing in the world. The Granary will be double-whipped next turn, when the city grows to 4. Forge lined up next. With so many FPs, the city will naturally become a commerce city, heavily cottaged.


Matara



Last city, and the one I postponed the Hanging Gardens a little bit for. Here too the Granary will be double-whipped at size 4, with the Forge lined up next. Can't recall if I changed the Forge to a Courthouse or not, but you can see it's expensive in Maintenance already, and I'm losing money on it.


Workers and Military

One thing worth pointing out, that you perhaps noticed from the screenshots above, is that I still haven't hooked up metal, which means I still have access to warriors. Should perhaps have built more, but we do have 9 as city guardians/military police.



14 workers for 13 cities is on the light side with so much jungle to chop, but it will be improved. As you see, we're very light on workers in the south-west part of the Empire.


Religions



Despite founding Confucianism, we only have it in one city -- which is partly why that city is building a Confucian monastery. The free missionary was sent to Mansa Musa earlier, so 14% comes from auto-spread in Mali and Zululand, and missionaries they may have trained. We have however converted to Confucianism, because Shaka requested it, and it was probably a decent choice given the religious situation at the time anyway.

Peter has bulbed Philosophy, but unfortunately isn't too keen on sharing the knowledge yet.