TSG108 Opening Actions

Welcome to the TSG108 Opening Actions thread.

STOP - Please do not continue reading this thread until you have completed at least 80 to 100 turns in your game.

This thread is used to discuss the game once you've started playing through your first 100 turns. Apart from normal decency, the only posting restrictions are to please not post videos until the deadline is finished and to use the spoiler tags for screenshots. Here you can post questions related to the game and share your achievements/anger/frustration/victories while you play. Please remember that we are running a family friendly site, so express anger or frustration with this in mind.

Please use this thread to discuss your goals for the game and your opening moves through the first 100 turns. Anything after that should be posted in the After Action thread once you have completed your game.

- Describe your opening strategy choices. How did terrain and/or neighbors affect this?
- What Social Policies did you choose and why?
- What Wonders did you build or miss?
- Did you found a religion? If so, what belief choices were made?

Terrain affected my early strategy a lot.
I moved the settler 1 SW and built on the river forest hill to give myself 1 extra hex of space with a planned city next to the NE mountain, and a planned city on the lake next to the mountain to the east. And then my warrior finished slogging slowly around the lake and met 3 CS and I realized just how tight my expansion room in that direction was.

Build order was worker, scout, monument, settler, granary, warrior, GL-shrine, NC, settler
I teched mining first so my worker could cut trees right away.
Went full tradition, took the 10% growth pantheon. Not sure if I'll actually grab a religion. I'm at the point where I could try to build Hagia and maybe grab one that way.

Built my 2nd city on the lake next to the mountain to the east, and then learned that you can't send cargo ships across a lake. oops, there goes that awesome plan of two cities on opposite ends of the lake feeding food to each other. While working on my 2nd settler, zulu encroached a bit on the site for my third city, but it was still workable. Then as my settler started walking there, another zulu settler appeared out of the forest to the north and settled right next to (but of course not actually on) the spot I wanted.

So that meant it was time to get sidetracked by a war. told Zulu to stop settling so close, he said screw you, so I denounced him. Then he denounced me, then he asked about my puny army, so I said he would pay for that, and I paid Attilia to declare war on him, waited about 8 turns for my CBs to finish (and for his troops on my borders to start walking towards Attila) and then declared war, burned the two annoying cities, made him pay for peace, and put a city next to the mountain.

But of course that distraction, meant one of my slowest trips to Education in a long time. We'll see if I can catch up now that I have the space I wanted.

strake said:

Built my 2nd city on the lake next to the mountain to the east, and then learned that you can't send cargo ships across a lake. .

Click to expand...

Did the same: mad:

golem said:

Did the same: mad:

Click to expand...

Same here... This is why they call it training game.

Well the game is truly intense so far! Currently on around Turn 95, & have already fought a war against the Zulu, & witnessed a war between The Huns & Russia & Greece vs Babylon! Oh, & talk about BARBARIANS!!!!!

Feeling massively cheated though. I missed out on The Great Library by literally ONE TURN, to Nebuchadnezzar. The reason I feel especially cheated is I had 2 turns to go to get it then, without me changing anything, I still had 2 turns to go after I processed the turn. Feels a bit lame to me!

I did manage to get the Mausoleum though!

Money has been proving an issue, in spite of me building Paper Makers & having access to silver.

Aussie.

Difficult start,

I went 1 SW with settler, saw nothing I liked and the silver so I proceeded to move 1 more SW on top of silver. Settled t3. 1 stone resource but nothing more, kind of bad start.

Did monument, worker, settler settler settler. Full tradition. Bought a few scouts. Settled 2nd city nexto faith natural wonder to south west, third city to top right nexto mountain and finally one city further away to south, i.e. south east of faith NW.

Got early dow from alexander and huns at maybe turn 50-60. I stole workers from alex protected city state. After that I also got DoW from Russia and Shaka so it was sortof a mess. Did ok though even without units, no lost cities, just some lost production and two rushbought archers.

Got ToA, GL around t75 (kinda late was a gamble) NC, HG. Education came somewhat late because start pos, turn 112.

The start was quite a challenge.

Moved my starting warrior to the hill, saw nothing of interest so I settled without moving. Three barb camps were nearby, all harassing my development. I had to tech archery early, built and bought archers so my worker could actually improve some of the tiles. Build order was roughly monument-scout-granary-worker-archer-GL(philosophy)-archer-NC. The barbarians prevented me from even trying to settle more cities early on, so Shaka settled Umgundlovu (sp?) near my coveted spot with copper and incense (and of course, one tile away from the mountain with the wheat tiles just out of reach).

Built GL t54, and after finishing NC and settling a second city west to get some ivory and more truffles I decided peace was not an option in the long run. Nobody liked me too much and I'm not comfortable having the Zulu near me. So, since I already had an army of sorts (five archers, a ballista from Belgrade, allied through barb camps and some lucky quests) and my warrior, I decided to go for composite bowmen and eliminate the Impi-threat from the north.

So I moved my army close to the 2nd Zulu city, around t96 Shaka came asking what's going on, so being honest by nature I told it was time for his cities to join my empire. I lost the the ballista and the warrior immediately, but got a spearman from Valletta, built two more composite bowmen, patiently killed of his units and took his 2nd city t106 (puppeted it, should have razed it and settled on a smarter location. I guess I'll have to annex it at some point). I didn't want the diplo hit from wiping him out completely, so I let his settler go (he settled north of Beijing, but didn't take any tiles from Beijing, since some third ring tiles were already taken and i bought the 6-iron tile), and took Ulundi t115. I decided to farm some xp's from his last city for three bowmen, and sent the rest to fight barbarians. Money was and is an issue, couldn't buy enough workers and build-times are long plus there's a lot of other stuff to be built. I can't annex Umgundlovu (spelling ? again) anytime soon, King AIs are too poor, and Nebby took Great Wall before I realized I could have built it a long time ago.

Catherine was wiped out by Attila very early. I was glad to see the Huns pretty far away, but I was mistaken about the distance factor.

After teching to composite bowmen and engineering (why? is a valid question), I went for universities. I built a shrine and took desert folklore t140, at first my plan was to ignore religion altogether, but old habits die hard etc. I'm not sure if I can get a religion, two left and I get 12 fpt from my pantheon. And, are there any useful beliefs left if I actually manage to get one? We'll see.

Attila sent a force up north, and he seems not to target the CSs between us. Alex dow'd me t146, just as I got my chu-ko-nus, but my units are so far spread out (big bad mistake) I'm not sure if I can keep Shanghai. Attila will probably follow suit soon enough, but I got some ballistas blocking his rams from landing too close to Beijing. I really hope my two unpromoted chu-ko-nus can hold off Alex from Shanghai while my wandering barb hunters head back home to be upgraded and defend the Chinese way of life.

Definitely not going to be a fast victory time (if I manage to win at all), but a fun game, seems really challenging for a King game. TY for the designers

T122 Secularism

While the start doesn't look extraordinary, people have a tendency to underestimate forests. So my plan is to get a early worker and speed up my start with all those juicy chops. Also since there are no ruins, scout first isn't very useful.

T3: Settled north next to mountain. Build worker first and research mining to speed things up.
T15: Worker Chop chop chop
T19: Monument
T22: Scout
T23: Scout
T23: Capture Babylonian worker
T28: Granary
T29: Capture Zulu settler
T33: Archer
T34: Shrine
T37: Archer
T43: Settler
T44: I get Bronze Working and notice I had actually settled on a 6 iron tile !
T45: Desert Folklore Pantheon
T47: Shangai settled east
T50: Settler
T53: Archer
T54: Guangzhou settled west
T58: Spearman
T69: Temple of Artemis. I buy everyone's embassy and see that the GL is still not being built. I guess Raging barbs take its toll on King AI.
T79: Great Library
T87: NC
T91: Settler
T94: Nanjing settled in the south
T96: Water Mill
T98: Finish Tradition... awfully late with no cultural cs :/
T101: Writer's guild
T107: Religion enhanced (can't remember the creation date).
T111: Hanging Gardens and Petra (eastern city)
T113: Education
T121: Renaissance
T122: Oracle + Secularism

Glad to see I'm not the only one struggling with the map. Settled t6, way SE, on Gems between mountain and lake. Lots of jungle there so should be a decent science site.

Second city SW of the Silver, on the lake, t48. Again lots of jungle.

Got Pantheon on t49, Sacred Path for 1 culture per jungle tile culture coming in abundantly now.

On t72 settled Guangzhou way north in truffle land. Unfortunately Shaka DOWed shortly after and managed to capture Guanghzou, but I'm currently building my army to take it back together with the city he planted ingeniously one spot away from the mountains, between Incense and Copper!

So I did get Guangzhou back in a peace deal t124.

Unfortunately this city is now suffering from a bug where the city center doesn't yield any food or production (should be 2 food, 3 production), effectively crippling the city.

Anyone know how to fix this?

I don't think you can fix it, it's a known bug when accepting cities in peace deals during the AI turn :/

Damn. I did the peace treaty in my own turn though. Guess I'll have to send a food caravan to get this city to grow at all, and do without the 3 shields

Capital on the lower side of river on the bank of lake.
I settled 2 new cities north and west of capital (east was ZULU, trying not to get in war, though failed in effort).I have a lot of truffles in my territory. I think ( not explored whole map ) I have got monopoly on this resource.

Any thoughts...
Wonders : Pyramids, Library. and working on many more
(At war with 2 civ's , met them all)

AbraK: Any thoughts...
Wonders : Pyramids, Library. and working on many more
(At war with 2 civ's , met them all)

What Acken said: chopping down forests is a big production advantage in the early game.

What a bunch of penniless cantankerous fast-breeding neighbours! No one has any money for trade, I've had four war offers and I'm sure I'd have been attacked if Valletta didn't keep giving me state of the art fighting units.; plus little settlements are popping up everywhere.

I thought the start was okay because cutting down forests meant extra hammers to speed up the Great Library, so much so that I was one turn from finishing Calendar when my free tech arrived, so that's delayed National College.

My second city is on the 6 iron between the truffles by the mountain. My third for ocean access is south by the pearls. I have a Great Engineer struggling through the jungle to get there to build the Colossus, because no one has any money!

I have the engineer because I finished Liberty, plus opening Honor to farm barbarians for culture. Most of my neighbours are completing the Honor tree so I expect soon to be attacked from all sides.

My religion has Tithe (money again) and Pagodas for balanced culture, happiness and religion. No other religions yet so the missionaries should have an open field.

Because roads are so important with all this forest and jungle, workers are particularly important. There might still be time to build the Pyramids. It's turn 100.

I ended up settling on the hill next to the mountain on T3. Lots of camp based resources around so I decided early my pantheon would most likely be Goddess of the Hunt.

SP Order:
Open Tradition > Oligarchy > Open Honor to kill barbs for culture > Legalism > Landed Elite > Aristocracy (should have opened this one earlier). I probably should have gone Monarchy over Landed Elite too.

My early idea of having a peaceful game quickly went to shambles as I discovered the majority of Civs on this planet were going to be troublesome. I don't think I fully adjusted as well as I should have.

I had all these truffles and no-one to trade a decent amount of gold with or Truffles. I was able to liberate one of Babylons workers which ended up in my first and possibly only friend in the game (for now).

Near turn 100 Shaka DoW on me. I had Archers scattered around killing barbs for culture but thankfully had enough to defend. I hadn't cleared nearly enough forests like most seem to have in this thread so that extra defence may have saved me.

I thought the Huns were coming up to attack me around the same time but they went to Babylon thank goodness. Think I'm going to be needing that UU asap! Not sure if I should delay Education to get it or not though.

Tech Order:
Pottery > Archery > AH > Trapping > Writing > Mining > The Wheel > Calendar > Philosophy > Masonry > Construction > Bronze Working > Drama and Poetry > Horseback Riding > Currency > Civil Service

Open Build Order in Capital
Scout > Monument > Granary > Archer > Archer > Worker > Shrine > Paper Maker > (buy) Archer > Archer > Settler > Caravan > Water Mill > ToA > Archer > NC > Colosseum

I was able to steal a couple of workers. Liberated a few too for happy CSs.

T69 I built my 2nd city to the west near Babylon on the desert hill to get extra 2 Truffles and Elephant.
Paper Maker > Granary > Circus

Religion
Goddess of the Hunt - to my surprise I was first to it. Babylon was going Piety and they were still way behind

GL was taken by an unknown turn 57.

Upcoming plans
Shaka and I have made a peace treaty and I was able to take all his gold and a lux resource for it. Awesome! The Huns have denounced them so I will do that so Huns leave me alone and prob will need to take out Shaka otherwise they'll be a problem all game. If I can remain friends with Babylon and the nearby CSs I should be fairly well protected.
I might risk it and go straight to Education now. Maintain 2 cities then get the UU and take out Shaka.

Also considering building a city near that lake for horses and silver (from memory). Not sure if taking Shaka's cities will be all I need though. Thoughts?

Questions
If a CS is Angry and you get -20 for stealing a worker or 2 for example, do they ever get over it? Hong Kong is still at -20 resting state. Even though I've been doing quests for them and haven't trespassed in a while.
Did you chop the forest before building a camp on the truffles/deer?

Lessons Learned
Need to adjust to Civs on the map. Can't go peaceful/non military with Shaka/Huns/Greece around. Luckily I survived the first wave. Raging barbs map probably helped me as I was building units mainly to kill them.
Should have built a worker earlier for early chops/lead. My first worker was way too late I think.
You can't chop a forest on truffles with a camp unless you want to destroy the camp.

Bit late to this one, hope to finish on time!