NC CLXXV - Bismarck of Germany

Shuffle, medium sea level, temperate climate, 6 random AI.

In each scenario file you can select your level of difficulty, but that doesn't give the AI the right bonus techs by itself. Use the Noble save for all levels at and below Noble. The Monarch save gives all the AI Archery. Emperor adds Hunting; Immortal adds Agriculture; Deity adds The Wheel.

For players on Monarch or above, you should add archery as a tech for the barbarians (if you don't, the AI will capture their cities very early). This cannot be done in the WB save file and must be done in Worldbuilder as follows:

Note: The standard saves have no huts and have events turned off. If you want tribal villages and random events, choose the saves with "Huts" in their names. If you want huts but no events, select the Huts saves and use Custom Scenario to turn on the option that suppresses events.

[quote]There are no hard and fast rules here: fun and learning are our primary goals, but we do suggest that you update your progress at various points in the game, using the Spoiler feature of the boards. You can post as often as you like; here's one suggestion:

[list]
[*]4000 BC (starting thoughts, no spoiler required for that discussion)
[*]1000 BC or so (how you decided to progress up the early tech/build paths, which AIs you have met, where you're thinking of putting cities, etc)
[*]500 AD or so (after establishing some cities and a possible plan of action)
[*]1200 AD or so (mid-game, Lib race, wars or peace, or whichever happened or didn't, met other continent if applicable, etc)
[*]1600 AD (or when you have decided on a course of action and a specific victory condition)
[*]End of game (Victory!!! or defeat, no shame in losing, especially if you tried a higher level. Learning is what we focus on, not fastest win or biggest empire)
[/LIST]

This is just a guideline. If you're trying to improve your game, then posting more frequent updates, in as much detail as you can manage, is the best way to get suggestions from other players. If you come to what seems like a major decision and you want some advice, post an update, regardless of what game-year it is.

We also welcome players to ask for specific game advice, as we have a number or stronger players who lurk and help out with solid tips, and of course, we help each other. Replies to specific questions should also be in spoilers, with a simple "@" in front of the person the answer is directed towards.

Special Thanks go to Bleys and TMIT, who really made this series a great one, r_rolo1, mapmaker extraordinaire, for his maps for most of the series, and all of you for playing.[/quote]

I ended up settling 1SE, which turned out to be a good decision, IMO. Popped two huts, both of them gave me gold. Met Justinian on T15 - he came in from the south, so he's somewhere beyond the jungle belt down there. Also found two elephants, but they're out of reach until IW is in. The worker finished the farm on the corn 1 turn before I finished BW, and I had moved him 1E to start a chop. But then that copper came up, so I ended up losing two worker turns to move him over there to mine it. Sigh. Also decided to get TW knocked out next to hook it up.

Two candidates for city number 2, for which I'm going to chop out the settler. Both of them require me to research another tech (Fishing or AH) before I can work the food. I'm leaning toward the orange cross, since Fishing is cheaper, plus it gets me another copper (and the hammers). The blue one may move, depending on what my scout finds on the north coast. But it's on a PH, with a few other hills that could be mined.

Since I don't see marble nearby I'd rule out the Oracle, but being IND still gives me a shot at it, if I go straight to Alpha and hope to backfill some of the religious techs.

Usually marble should play no role in your decision to go Oracle or not, even if you are not IND. If you want to Oracle something good, there's rarely an opportunity to tech Masonry and hook up marble before you build it anyway. The Oracle is a very cheap wonder, marble doesn't save you that much. Typically you would get PH to start the Oracle, then build it while teching the final tech you need to Oracle whatever your target tech is. And the worker turns you would need to build a quarry+road can instead be used to chop, for even more hammers than the marble would save you.

Orange cross looks like a very good location for 2nd city.

the modification to IMM+ provided one extra challenge I didn't think of at first. But I'm sure you can handle it.

It is deceptive, it looks like it might be a good idea to move from the coast, but this really is a GLH map imo.

Settled the north coast of our continent, build the glh, great wall and got failgold for the great pyramids. We lacked happy resources, so war was the only option. Pascal was friendly, but the Byzantines weren't as much, so chose them as a target. Axe+Catapulted through a lot of his territory. Might make a temp peace in order to get some techs out of him.

Techwise, the war and my expension crashed the economy. The Maya's are getting ahead, but I'm hoping to pop a great spy which will help matters.

Four cities founded, but the problem is I'm up against the happiness cap just about everywhere, and I need lot more techs before I can use the few resources I have. I got Alpha in, and traded with Justinian to get Mysticism and Archery.

My game plan now - try to get at least one more city founded, tech to Masonry and go for the Pyramids to get into Representation. Berlin is putting out 12 per turn, so I can build them in about 21 turns, speed them up with chops and a whip. It looks like war with Justinian is going to be necessary, too. I'll have some horses in a couple of more turns.

Yeah, I see what you mean about this being a GLH map, now that I've uncovered more of the continent. If I were to do it all over again I'd have SIP'd Berlin and kept the coastal position. The one thing about this map is that having Hunting as a starting tech is just about useless, and there's a lot of other techs you have grind out.

I SiP more often than not - it usually takes a fairly compelling reason to persuade me to do otherwise, so I read the pre-game discussion with interest. Was thinking about moving inland, perhaps even to the east river, and so used my inital scout moves to suss that out:
As this revealed no more resources, and a fair bit of brown land, I went SiP after all. North coast looked pretty good, so with a coastal cap I immediately started thinking GLH. Initial techs were Agri-BW, and once BW was in I was about staying SiP.
After farming the corn, my worker had mined the hill as it was the only tile I could work. So not only 2 coppers in BFC, but one of them was mined one turn after popping it!
After BW I went for GLH techs, so Fishing-Sailing-Masonry. Wheel-Pot after that. Wheel was needed, but probably should have done Writing first. Not much cottageable land near the coast, and with the dire lack of happy resources, granaries weren't a priority.
Decided that my second city, Hamburg, would get the GLH. With no seafood, Berlin had less need for a lighthouse. And Hamburg looks like a potential GP-farm (not great, admittedly), so a couple of GM points going in there each turn is no bad thing. Berlin instead went for the GW, chopped quickly so that it was done before the GLH in Hamburg, ensuring that my first GP would be a Spy.
The empire in 2640BC, the turn the 1st settler was done and I revolted to Slavery. White dotmap for cities, red spots are fogbust locations. Check the awesome settling suggestions my PC gave me :
Built GW and GLH in 1680 and 1440BC respectively. After that I rexed coastal cities. Also got into a war with Justy, because I couldn't resist this:
Might not have been the best idea - took a while to get peace. He sent a mixed stack of 6 units (chariots, archers, axes) at Munich. Lost two warriors, garrisoned axes took care of the rest. After that he offered archery for peace. I had a stack of 5 axes/spears investigating his territory, and the same turn he attacked Munich I pillaged the iron E of his cap. To get onto that tile I'd killed an axe who was escorting a settler the previous turn, so I guess I slowed him up a fair bit at least.
The empire in 1AD: 8 cities, kind of looks like more from this screenie - Pacal's are all lit up too because my GSpy infiltrated him. Was at a real bottleneck here, you can see that most cities are building research as I limp to currency. Soon got resolved - currency itself, ofc, but also my scouting galley to the west soon met De Gaulle, Hatty and Hanny, meaning lots of intercontinental . Should have scouted that direction waaay earlier, dammit! . Happy situation also improved during the same turnset: Calendar also opened up some resources, and settled an inland city for the phants to the south. [EDIT: looking again at the 1AD screenie, I realise I'd already settled that city by that point. So it was 9 cities, not 8.] Pacal sent me a bunch of missionaries so I became Hindu. Growth at last!
Here's the current empire:Teching compass because it's the only thing nobody else has. Harbours will be nice too. Chopping the GLib in Hamburg. Failgold would be OK too. Missed MoM. My main worry at the moment is an imminent DoW from Justy, who is twice my strength. Need to shore up my border cities. Hoping he'll hold off until Pacal researches construction, which I have spies waiting to steal, so that I can rush some WEs. Thinking about sending the GM in the galley W of Munich to Hannibal's territory for a ToA-mission, but a bit worried that it might not make it through Justy's borders if the war starts soon. Don't think there's any way to avert it:That dude is p**sed!

Build GLH, gw and got failgold from the pyramids. Early Great Merchant kept my research going. Without any luxuries or Mids, only war remained as an option. Took on Justinian with axes, spears and catapults. Fairly lengthy war with a 10 turn peace to get some techs before I wiped him out. Next up, my stacks advanced on the Maya, by now with elephants and at some point, trebs. The French declared in solidarity, but never got to blows. This did, however, cut down on my commerce a lot, having no longer any foreign trade routes. Got Pacal to capitulate when reduced to the bottom right corner of the island. Some tech trading and bulbing kept me somewhat in the tech game, but the lib race was lost.

Yeah, so the tech race was effectively lost at this point, but militarily, I wasn't too far behind and I had by far the most cities. Moved all my troops to the west and build some taxi galleys. My invasion force landed on foreign soil and easily took the first city. However, in my greed I had split up my forces, going for 2 cities when the French coast guard appeared, they dumped some 15 units next to the thinly held just captured city and sunk most of my taxifleet. Whoops. They took back their city, but I took another one of theirs, and he was willing to capitulate. Build another few taxi's and no harm done.

Mansa was really ahead at this point, and attacking rifles with trebs, muskets, elephants, maceman and knights did not much appeal to me. Hatty was still on medieval tech and thus fair game though. The war against Egypt went well, except that Mansa joined in (couldn't really stop that. The french held on admirably though, bearing the brunt of the aggression losing only one city. By this time I had finally gotten to cannons and with the help of two great spies had managed to steal rifles and some other techs from Mansa. Mansa had nicely located his stack in the city stolen from the French. Allowing me to amass a large stack of cannons, get the jump from friendly territory and decimate him. Now fighting a two front war, I finally reduced Hatty to 4 cities out of 8 and she capitulated. Mansa thankfully proved less stubborn, and capitulated 2 turns after, just before he got infantry. Right in time for some cities to get out revolt and just put me above the limit, saving me the trouble of having to attack Hannibal.

WW2 Russia style victory, leveraging my production advantage into a win, though not very prettily.

I've built the Pyramids, the Oracle (these two both came in on the same turn, in 550 BC) and the Great Library (820 AD). I took Metal Casting with the Oracle. Pacal has built the GLH - I'm just trying to decide when I'm going to go take it for myself.

I've been in two short wars - in 75 BC I declared on Pacal to eliminate a city he had founded near my iron, in Frankfurt. I captured it and razed it, and then made peace. In 250 AD I went to war with Justinian when he started sending settlers to my south to grab elephants. That wouldn't do at all, so I gathered up a stack of axes and swords, with a horse archer thrown in, and captured two of his cities, then made peace. The one near the elephants auto-razed (I'm assuming pop 1 cities are auto-razed) but I kept the other (Nicomedia). Founded Dortmund 2W of his original site and am now making war elephants.

At some point recently, De Gaulle made contact with a workboat he had sent around (I completely missed noticing the other continent is two tiles away from the western tip of mine! ) Now I have a trireme making the rounds of the other continent; have met Hatty so far, and she seems to be doing well from what I've seen. She hates De Gaulle - maybe I can use that to my advantage.

And that's where I'm at. Pacal still has a puny army, but Justinian's is as large or slightly larger than mine, so he's clearly the bigger threat. I think I'm going to have to deal with him first. Warmongering has always been a weak part of my game, but I am getting better at it.

I have to go to bed in a couple of hours, so if I play at all tonight I probably won't do much more than build my elepult stack, get everyone in position and then go to war tomorrow after work. My original plan was to clear my continent, recover the economy, and then go for space. With the other continent so close, though, I may not be able to do that. I'm still in the hunt for Lib though - everything besides Ed is researched. I may need to backfill a couple of techs to get what I want.

Looks good to me, I see we have some similar tastes in settling locations, not to mention a similar lack of attention to coastal scouting . One small thing - see you're building in Munich. After Currency is in it's usually more efficient to build , the reason being that you're more likely to have multipliers in your cities (libraries, an academy, maybe a monastery or two) than multipliers, meaning that you get more bang for your buck by building and letting as much of your slider go to as possible.
Also on the auto-raze thing: cities auto-raze if they haven't had their first borderpop, and have never been above 1 pop. So eg if you captured a city that was 1 pop because its owner had whipped it down, it wouldn't auto-raze.