CS-2 - The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire

[chriseay]

Good point on Africa, Chriseay. Not entirely sure how possible SE Asia and Australia are pre-Galleons, but a southern foothold at least opens the door. The Asian congestion surely is less than the European, so its another area to give ourselves a fighting chance.

Given all this talk, how desperately are we going to be beelining for State Property?

I think, given the correct open borders, we should be able to reach anywhere on the map. At least anywhere that isn't Australia or America. Possibly those too.

State Property =

 

[shinku]

Also, will some Africa Land be free ? On the top of my head, I can think of Egypt and Mali starting there, with a rather large desert in between.

Anyway, all that has been said sounds like a good plan to me. Can't wait to put my filthy hands on the save

 

[Gaspar~]

Well, pretty sure we can reach anywhere on the world island, but question is what will be available to settle by the time we get there. Pretty sure Africa will have something on either the western or southern coast if we get there early enough. Egypt starts on the far northeast, Mali in Central Africa iirc. SE Asia I fear India or Japan will get there before we do. Anyway, nothing like a good old fashioned landgrab.

 

[Akuma-sama]

Lurker's comments:
Oooh! This is looking good
Question: Have AI from every nation been picked? 'cuz seeing an Asia occupied by the mongols, the russians, the chinese, the Japanese and the Indians... well, you have your work ahead of you getting through THAT diplomatic mess!
And America (the land), too; I understand that America(the country) got removed, but that leaves the the Incas and Crazy Monty to worry about...

And how about trying for a Domination win?

 

[chriseay]

Lurker's comments:
Oooh! This is looking good
Question: Have AI from every nation been picked? 'cuz seeing an Asia occupied by the mongols, the russians, the chinese, the Japanese and the Indians... well, you have your work ahead of you getting through THAT diplomatic mess!
And America (the land), too; I understand that America(the country) got removed, but that leaves the the Incas and Crazy Monty to worry about...

And how about trying for a Domination win?

Actually, I took out the Incans and Aztecs too. I wanted to make it about colonization, and there is no way to do it other than removing them. On Asia, the leaders are those that were included with the map I used. My only changes were the civ removals and taking Elizabeth out and making us Victoria.

 

[MasterShake]

are you guys going to conquer India like your real life counterparts?

 

[Eggs]

Here are my turns :


2400 BC – turn 1:
Frederick adopts slavery (has BW)

2360 BC – turn 2:

2320 BC – turn 3:
Caesar adopts slavery (has BW)
London grows to size 5
Galley done
Start Warrior (will take 2 turns)
Move Settler onto Galley and move Galley NE. Do not move warrior onto galley yet to keep London happy for 1 more turn. Galley will only need 1 turn to get to Norway from it’s current spot anyway.

Put the new citizen from a dye to a coastal tile, The Wheel will now be finished in 3 instead of 4 turns. Worried about our +9 food and how far away Bronze Working is.

2280 BC – turn 4:
Load up warrior (leaving London unhappy)
Move Galley with settler and warrior 2 NE
Decide to move further next turn since I see no food but it still looks promising

Do a little calculation: if we work our 5 improved landtiles (wheat, horse, stone, cow x2) we will have bronze in exactly 22 turns and will reach 8 pop (3 unhappy) in 11 turns and 9 pop (4 unhappy) in 18 turns (if we don’t build settlers and workers, which we will).

Don’t like all this waste of food, but there’s not much I can do. Working a coastal tile instead of the wheat will only cut 2.5 turns off of bronze and we’ll only have 2 unhappy ppl to whip. Probably not worth it. I leave everything as it is, will be a great whip.

2240 BC – turn 5:
Warrior done
Start #2 settler
Move Galley 1 more turn NE. Unload warrior and settler to the hill to the north. We find silver, nice
Move Galley 1 SW

2200 BC – turn 6:
What the hell, we meet Cyrus of Persia
The Wheel done
Quarry on the stone done
Worker starts road

Work coastal instead of stone because I don’t think we can afford earning even less beakers

Move warrior and settler on the silver, we’d like to see if there is a food source nearby
Move Galley along Norse coast to help look for food




2160 BC – turn 7:
Move warrior and settler NW to the spot with the blue circle, blue circle means a good chance of a food resource!
Aw, it’s a whale, was to be expected of course at the Norse coast

Move galley along Norse coast to take settler and warrior further along it, since they can’t move further east without going all the way around the mountains

2120 BC – turn 8:
Road on the stone finished
Start road on the cow in between London and the stone
Move Galley along coast and load up warrior and settler

2080 BC – turn 9:
Move Galley NE
Notice that the hill south of the Galley is 8 tiles away from London, I seem to remember that that is the limit for the cost increase
Warrior to the hill south of the Galley to see if there is anything on the land
Deer! Will require hunting but still a food source
Settler follows and I move the Galley one more NE just in case
No food source so our settler will settle where it is now or to the SE
It would be able to work the forested deer tile for now and will have silver and whale later, would be awesome if something else pops up from the tiles we can’t see yet

2040 BC – turn 10:
The warrior moves 1 SE and a whole lot of tiles open up, unfortunately not a single resource, but we can see that we will be blocking off the southern part of Norway and Sweden when the borders expand
Our settler founds York where he is and starts working on a warrior (feel free to change this)
A fur pops up right out of reach, along with a lion



Move Worker to the dye and Galley back towards our homeland


London now looks like this:




The near future:
Our settler and mysticism will be done in 1 turn and our stone is hooked up so we can start on Stonehenge next turn
Our worker can either chop (don’t think we need the forest for anything else), move north to improve tiles for a city there (if we move our new settler there which I think would make sense since there doesn’t seem to be much more to be found in Scandinavia), or be picked up by the galley and brought to Scandinavia (although there’s not much to be done there atm)
I moved the galley back west with scouting Ireland in mind, but do whatever you want with it
On second thought I think building a workboat right after Stonehenge and using that to scout Ireland and then work the fish in the north is probably better
Although settlers and workers first will keep us from feeding unhappy people as long as possible
It is worrying that other civs have had Bronze Working for 10 turns now and we haven’t even started it
We should probably carefully micromanage our wheat, stone and coastal tiles, also to start growing unhappy people right in time to pop the last unhappy one when we can whip them

 

[shinku]

Best with the save

Nice turns there Eggs, you showed some good MM, I think I'll afford it too since it's only for 10 turns straight

We might want to put another city in Scandinavia to seal off the Denmark passage (looks like it's connected to the continent) and deny the land to the AI.

By the way, Chriseay said you were up for 20 turns, so if you want to play 10 more, go ahead. If not, then that's a got it for me !

 

[chriseay]

Best with the save

Nice turns there Eggs, you showed some good MM, I think I'll afford it too since it's only for 10 turns straight

We might want to put another city in Scandinavia to seal off the Denmark passage (looks like it's connected to the continent) and deny the land to the AI.

By the way, Chriseay said you were up for 20 turns, so if you want to play 10 more, go ahead. If not, then that's a got it for me !

I wanna second the good turns! More MM than I'm usually up to doing, but if you want to, please be my guest. I'm sure soon we'll have all too many units and cities to do that everywhere.

Shinku is right, I figured since Gaspar and I played 20 this round we all can for the first round, then go down to 10. If you guys want to go to 10 now it's fine though.

 

[Eggs]

Hmm I'll have the compromise and do 5 more right now.

I just thought I'd do 10 for now to make sure I didn't mess up too much .

 

[shinku]

Ok, I'll grab it tomorrow then

 

[Eggs]

Next 5 turns

Barely anything happened other than the foundation of of Nottingham. I felt slightly bad for stealing that from you but you'll get to finish stonehenge, improve both Nottingham and York (worker in York will finish in 7 turns I think) and last but not least whip and go after the bronze .


Pre-turn:
Change York from Warrior to Worker. Waiting until growth will not speed up worker production (there are only a hill without forest and coastals) and our UK cities will have more important things to do. We might also have copper here but not in the UK and it’d be nice to be able to hook it up without having to hurry our other worker over here. If we having copper in the UK but not here we can chop a couple of axes or a lighthouse, mine the silver and mine the hill.
I think we can take the risk, the Worker will ‘only’ take 12 turns.

2000 BC - Turn 1
Borders expand
Traderoute established between York and London (+1 commerce each)
Mysticism done
Start Bronze Working (8 turns)
Settler done
Start Stonehenge (7 turns)

Move settler to dye-tile
Realize we can’t chop yet
Move worker to deer
Send Galley off to Ireland

1960 BC – Turn 2
Greatest civs: Cyrus is in #2 place, other places are all unknown, not so much of a surprise since all other civs are packed in Europe

1920 BC – Turn 3
London grew it’s first unhappy person
Road south of the sheep in Scotland
Settler to that same square

I think I’ll go with the upper city on my dotmap instead of chriseay’s, because chriseay’s would have 5 ocean tiles whereas my city would only have coastals (1 vs. 3 commerce).
Besides, if you look well, you can see that we can fit a city in north and one in the south of Ireland, which means my yellow dot will probably also turn out to be right .

1880 BC – Turn 4
Louis adopts slavery (get’s bronze)
We have 5 turns left to Bronze and then 1 in revolt
I decide to run 2 turns on the stone tile instead of the wheat. This way we will delay growth into another unhappy face until the exact turn we can start whipping (realizing we won't grow during revolt). The extra hammers mean that we will have exactly enough hammers to finish Stonehenge in 3 instead of 4 turns though, although we might have to switch our coastal tile to dye on the last turn. That won’t delay Bronze though. I should have done something like this before we got our first unhappy face but then it was too much work counting .

Nottingham is founded
Start on a Workboat, we can’t seem to have too many of those
Galley has reached Ireland

1840 BC – Turn 5
Louis adopts Buddhism
Worker moves onto the sheep hill and desperately wants to improve that sweet tile
Nottingham’s trade route and the commerce from the sheep reduce the time to Bronze from 4 to 3 turns




You should probably set a citizen to the wheat in London as soon as possible without messing up Stonehenge and Bronze timing in order to start growth for whipping.
If your start micromanaging to get the timing for growth and Bronze working right, you can always set the citizens in Nottingham and York to water tiles for a turn.

Btw: the swedish pig tile has water to its west, south and east so Sweden most likely isn't connected to the mainland.
Also, I hope they won't all be friends in Europe . Isabella having converted both louis and julius doesn't sound too good. I also hope Louis won't be getting a galley to ship those archers to us too soon. Let alone axes if he has copper.

 

[Eggs]

I asked around what everyone thinks of each other: Cyrus and Frederick are pleased with each other, Isabella and Caesar are pleased with each other, Frederick and Louis are annoyed with each other. The rest is all cautious.

It is a relief that there are no american civs. That should make things quite a bit easier. A diplomatic win sounds great to me, although anything is fine by me since I've never won a proper game yet other than early conquest.

I will now look up if there's any chance we can get Louis and Frederick to declare war on each other . I have no idea if they'll hate us for it or if they require us to help them etc.

 

[Eggs]

Seems like Louis is one of the easiest to persuade to declare war on someone. We should be able to have Louis declare war on someone if we have a relation with Louis that is better than 'annoyed' (it is cautious) and if Louis has a relationship that is worse than 'pleased' with that other person (it is annoyed with Frederick).
Frederick probably wouldn't be the first we want to pick a fight with though .

Just for the record: we would need to be at least pleased with Frederick and Frederick would need to be at least annoyed with Louis in order for us to have a chance to get Frederick to declare war on Louis

 

[Gaspar~]

Nice turns. I think 15 each for the remainder of the round then go to 10 is good, we're almost through the mash enter phase. I would push the next settler as far east as we can, I'm pretty sure Finland is connected to Europe. The Ruskies are creative though, so its going to be a battle but worth fighting. Can definitely get a city in the south near the mouth of that river, won't have bonii but lots of grassland which will work well enough. After that city I'd grab Ireland before the AI can then push push push to Africa if at all possible. I wouldn't OB with Izzy till we have that Irish city though.

While I would love a Franco-Prussian war, I think its only a matter of time before Germany falls Buddhist as well, the borders are just too tight. I'd guess Buddhism will spread to London soon enough also, but I'd hold off on converting. The civs with room will be the powers in this game, which means the Euro civs will be weakest. Izzy and Louis in particular I'd guess will be playing a 3CC, Julius possibly too, Freddie likely not much better with 4 or so. Our scandinavian push guarantees us at least 5 whole cities, possibly 6, plus a half city or two if we want it (I suspect not anytime soon.) If we can get to Africa for another 2 or 3, we should be sitting pretty, even with the nutso maintainance costs we'll be paying.

As far as win condition, even though its a nightmare on a Huge map with this much land, any win besides domination would sort of feel like we're not meeting the spirit of the challenge. From what I've seen from the early turns I think we're up for it. If we can get the mad early push to the Americas, then we can probably get to 30 or 40% peacefully. Australia good for another bit. Taking out Europe seems quite plausible if we can drive a wedge through the Buddhist unity, but if not, I highly doubt it. My best guess is the diplomatic smart part will be getting a shared religion with Russia, then spreading that to Germany, and using them as shield allies while we bash on Louis, Izzy and then Julie in that order. If we can manage that, the game's won.

The two keys to the game as far as I'm concerned are keeping Europe from loving each other and hating us, and keeping Russia happy (I really suspect they'll be the score leader, especially if its Cathy rather than Peter.)

 

[shinku]

And ... got it !

 

[shinku]

Despot shinku the First bloodily takes the head of Britain

1840 BC - Inherited turn
Press enter

1760 BC - Turn 57
Huzzah ! We get Stonehenge, and surprisingly enough, we are right north of the middle of the map
Buddhism spreads to Nottingham, decide to wait to have a better knowledge of the diplomacy situation before converting

Sets London to build Lightouse, since it's required for the Great Lightouse, and we could use those juicy water tiles

1720 BC - Turn 58
Bronze Working discovered, we go for Hunting (3 turns) to connect the deers and the fur

And revolt to Slavery. Executioners begin to exercise

1680 BC - Turn 59
Louis is overcrowded with units. He must be preparing to invade Frederick, let's hope so
Decide to not whip the Lighthouse, let grow and chop-whip the Great Lighthouse


1560 BC - Turn 62
Hunting completes, I go for Archery - we'll need some units as to discourage our neighbours to pick on us

1480 BC - Turn 64
Meet Saladin

1440 BC - Turn 65
Archery completes, sets research to Writing as we'll need those Open Borders

1400 BC - Turn 66
D'oh, Frederick converts to Buddhism, and Judaism is FIDL

1360 BC - Turn 67
York expands and we spot copper to the NE

1320 BC - Turn 68
Nottingham completes Work Boat, begins Archer

1280 BC - Turn 69
Drop science to 90% or we'll have to sell the crown


Our lands


Notes
That wasn't some astonishing turns, the Great Lighthouse is due in 9 but should be whipped before that and will greatly help our expansion.
I think London should build a settler right after the GL, and maybe another one after that. Meanwhile, Nottingham will build our military.

 

[Eggs]

Nice

We should probably get iron asap. Getting open borders with our lighthouse will improve our research quite a bit in a couple of turns though so that makes sense too. I just hope we won't miss the lighthouse.

And I probably should've taken our Galley from York as far NE as possible, but I didn't think I'd find much more than ice and I hoped to find like 2 more resources near Ireland.

London will probably need to grow back after whipping, right?

 

[shinku]

Only if we plan to whip again, since angry citizens are just there to eat our food surplus

We can whip 4 pop in London to finish the GL, so we'll need to regrow 1 pop to be at full efficiency

 

[Gaspar~]

My gut says we're taking a risk by building wonders instead of settlers, but TGL will be really really nice if our expansion plans go off the way we're hoping. Whip as soon as it can be whipped and then settlers galleys and archers all around for until the various expansion pushes we've discussed. Researchwise I'd say Writing -> IW, then probably a push towards CoL and Metal Casting. Again I'd definitely make sure we have Ireland and Scandinavia full before any OB though.

I talk too much.