LotR7 -- Passive Culturalists

The problem I have with this game is that it doesn't seem to involve much new ground or surprises. Assuming you don't get clobbered early, it is absolutely winnable under the variant rules if you go totally ICSing, and absolutely not winnable at the other extreme of no city overlap. The question just becomes how densely do you want to build to have a good shot at winning before somebody else launches, with a lot of busywork and handicapped warring between that and the final verdict.

Don't let me stop you from having fun with it, though. :)
 
Inspired in part by this thread, I did manage to win a Deity 100K victory as India on a standard pangaea (60% water) with 6 opponents without attacking a single enemy city. I was on a bulbous end of a U shaped pangaea, which allowed me to incite constant warfare among the AI civs in relative safety (by always allying with my southern neigbor). I also employed the somewhat marginal RCP technique for the second ring of cities around the Palace and FP, but overall had generously spaced cities (about half benifited significantly from hospitals). Pillaging with explorers and infantry was absolutely devestating, and caused a formerly strong civ to starve all of its cities to size 1, sell every single building in its empire due to bankrupcy, and yield 4 cities in peace negotiations. By the end, India had almost half of the culture in the world and was still increasing in cultural supremancy while the other civs continued to spend their production fighting wars.

Of course, your game will be much more difficult if you end up in the middle of a continent (limiting expansion and making warfare dangerous) or with terrible land. Having 7 opponents will obviously also cut down on the amount of land gained during initial expansion.
 
T-hawk,

I am hoping that we can avoid ICSing, but know that we won't be able to do it with no overlap.

What will be a bit different (at least to me), is the no attacking AI cities (I didn't have time to play that Epic). Even in Charis' cultural game with the Arabs (on Emperor), where everything was geared towards a cultural victory, we still needed to take down one of the other AIs.

Zwingli, are you going to get PTW sometime? (perhaps by purchasing Conquests...). It'd be interesting to have you participate in a few Epics...

JMB
 
Having played LK45 is was enough of a head ache to make anyone think twice about this game, but I think you may have a legitimate use for the spanish conquistador if it wasn't so darn expensive. Commercial and Religious (like Z's India) may be a nice combination without having to use Babylon.

Good Luck !
 
Re civ choice, I'm easy, but when the choice was initially put forth, I thought: "We should try Spain..."

In any case, I think Arathorn has already decided on Babylon.

JMB
 
Sorry this got delayed. I've been incredibly busy until last night.

Anyway.... With a dry, hot start, I expected to be in the middle of the desert, but we get this instead....



A river, floodplains (well, desert is hot), and a fair few bonus grasslands. No bonus food, but, well, you can't have everything!

Warrior, warrior, granary pre-build. Zulus are actually pretty close, as we met a scout in like 3800 BC. And they already had both bronze working and CB, so they'd been popping huts like mad.

Met Scandinavia in the SE towards the end of my turns. I manged to get WC and some gold from them for CB, but they popped Mysticism from a hut shortly thereafter. Their expansionist trait is working well for them....

I don't know if the Zulu and Scandinavians have met yet or not. If not, they probably will soon, but we might get to sell a tech at monopoly at some point....

I got a bit of exploration done in 20 turns. There are some reasonably nice lands around. We want to settle as many as possible. With no settler factory, though, it might be semi-difficult. Blockades/aggressive settlements might be big-time required.



Save file http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/lotr7-3000bc.zip

Roster:
Arathorn
JMB -- UP NOW
Skyfish -- on deck
Gothmog
Bam-Bam

Arathorn
 
I see it, and will try to play tonight. I'd better reread the rules before playing though...

Arathorn, is there any reason you didn't settle 1-tile E, SE, or S?

JMB
 
The only variant rule is this: We are passive and can never attack an enemy city directly -- no bombarding, no attacking, nothing. We can attack units in the open, pillage, declare war to our heart's content, but no attacking cities. Ever.

Settling E, SE, or S would have left the capital with only 2 or 3 flood-plains tiles instead of the 6 that it has. Even if Arathorn forgot to use them, staying put with the capital was a good move - giving up coastal access to those three water tiles is worth 3 flood plains.

Oh, and look at that tremendous valley to the west - cattle, two wheats, and plenty of bonus grassland. I sense an every-turn worker farm developing there eventually...
 
Yep, worker farm to the west. Definitely, if we can claim that. It's very high on my priority list. Block the Zulus off from it, too. Not sure it's worth walking our first settler all the way over there, but maybe the second.

I wanted the FP tiles -- and was hoping for a wheat up there. The coast cut us off from a fair bit of useful land. I debated the opening settle a fair bit. Moving E/SE would lose the FP. Moving S is even worse, losing the river!

As for using the FPs, I'd rather have 2/2/2 in the early going as opposed to 3/0/21, since 3 is the most food you can get from a FP in despotism. Eventually, yes, we'll want to irrigate them, but for now, they're just a disease risk with very little corresponding help in growth rate. Until the granary was built, I think the bg are a better option. If I'd've started on the FP immediately, we'd still be size 3, only have one warrior/explorer, and be much further from the granary. They're definitely worth developing, though.

Also, T-hawk, I don't consider FP bonus food. Yes, you can reach 5 fpt, but working 3 FPs for 0 shields means you have no chance of getting the 7.5 spt you need for a settler factory (before a govt change, anyway).

Hmmm...I just thought, though, with all the good tiles around Babylon, we can make a 5-turn settler factory. Grow from 4->5 working 3 FPs and a bg for 6 shields in two turns. Then, work one FP and 4 bg for two turns to get 18 more shields. Then, work two FPs and 3 bg for one turn to grow to size 6 and get enough shields for the settler. So, fpt is 5/5 and then 3/3/4. It can work, with very careful MM. I'd say go for it. Get it set up after the first settler is out, I think.

So, granary while working what we're working. Start irrigating FP next, while a settler is produced, getting up down to size 4. Then start the above pattern.

Arathorn
 
Hey stupid question but are we gonna upgrade to 1.27f and when ?
 
Not a stupid question at all.

Maybe. And if so, when we do.

Looking over the changes, the only one I really care much about is the end of the infinite shields while mobilized exploit. Since nobody uses that anyway (at least I would hope not!), I'm happy to stay with 1.21 for a while. I think current GOTM stuff is that way, so it's easier for most people. What's the Epics schedule? Any other input on that?

I'm guessing save files are incompatible between 1.21 and 1.27, but has anybody tested for sure?

I hadn't even realized there was a new patch out, until today. I'd like to stay 1.21 for at least a couple weeks. Then, we might re-evaluate.

Arathorn
 
The new patch affects mostly MP games and as you know I play PBEM games so for me the move to the new patch is absolutely certain at one point.
However I would also rather wait for a little while for reasons I cant mention here... :D
 
3000 - Looking closely at the map, it appears that the Zulu have a city to the se of their warrior. I think Arathorn's 5-turn settler factory will take a lot longer to set up than my turns... So, I'll finish working the tile we are currently standing on and then move to the floodplains.

2950 - I don't think we should bother continuing min sci on Mysticism seeings as the Vikings already have it. Swap to Alphabet.

2900 - Our granary completes. Rather than dropping out capital to size 1, I decide to produce a couple more warrior/explorers/mp.

2850 - So much for the min science run on the Alphabet... I think the Vikings and Zulu already have contact and have already met someone else as they (the Zulu and Vikings) both have Alphabet, the Wheel, and Mysticism.

2800 - Not much.

2750 - The Zulu begin the Colossus.

2710 - Not much.

2670 - The Vikings begin the Oracle.

2630 - Not much.

2590 - :eek:, both AIs also have IW and Masonry. We are really falling behind quickly...

2550 - We spot a purple (Viking) border to the southwest in the jungle (it appears to be unexpanded), and a red border to our north (hopefully there will be a trading opportunity...). The Zulu currently have 5 cities and the Vikings 6. A settler is currently being produced in Babylon (now size 4). We are currently working the unimproved bg tile (Babylon will grow in 5 turns and produce the settler in 3), but you could swap to an unimproved floodplain. I think the former choice is better (and have left the game set up this way) because 1) we need to claim some land soon or we are going to lose out and 2) once the fp tile is improved, Babylon will recover more quickly. With how cramped we are, I think we probably want to send our first settler towards the wheat-cattle location, but if anyone else has any other thoughts, feel free to comment...

I wonder why we keep getting rather cramped starts...? (this game has much more room than LotR5, but, from the look of things, I don't think we'll get to claim much more land than we did initially in LotR6)

Here's the save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/LOTR7PC2550BC.zip

Good luck Skyfish!

JMB
 
OK the situation is dire: swapping Babylon from unimproved bg of food 2 to unimproved fp of food 2 does not relaly help the situation the settler will be produced before the growth to size 5
:(
We actually need all fp tiles irrigated which will take quite a long time with only one non-ind worker. Actually 14 turns :sad:
So after long pondering I decide to work 2 unimproved fps and 2 improved bgs which will time pop growth to 5 and settler coming out in 5 turns, we are only producing 2 extra food atm so that will actually gain time on growth of Babylon.

Also I am a bit surprised we did not start a Poly min science gamble ASAP in this game, running min science
on Alphabet does not make sense and we have too many units, I nix reasearch !

1-2510bc : Exploration towards Purple border continues..Romans met and they have all techs except Masonry, no deal possible though...
Our worker starts irrigating the fp.
2-2470bc :exploring
3-2430bc : exploring
4-2390bc : Settler produced with babylon going back to size 3, Flood plain is now irrigated, we have +3 food.
Babylon seton Temple, to wait for other fp to be irrigated.
5-2350bc : Worker irrigating other fp. Settler moving towards site along river.
6-2310bc : exploring
7-2270bc : exploring
8-2230bc : exploring
9-2190bc : Ur founded on river with bgs and cow : it can later share the cow with the wheat site if we have time
to settle it, we might not go for ICS but we will need a dense build.
Now that we are relieved of unit support, finally a trade opportunity : 100g and 1gpt to Zulus for Masonry.
Romans do not have Masonry so I hesitate a long time about which tech to do the 2fer and unwillingly go for Iron Working instead of Alphabet, and that because without being able to take cities we might want to rush for this strat resource to settle with our next settler, it would definitely make our lives easier.
Iron Working from Romans for Masonry, 16g and 3gpt.
The only reachable Iron source (from what I can see) is in deep jungle...
10-2150bc : Worker finishes irrigation of 2nd flood plain and moves on to the 3rd flood plain, roads can wait right now, Temple is due in one and Babylon can then go on to Settler and follow the Arathorn plan *once* the 3rd flood plain is irrigated which will be in 4 turns.
No change on the diplo/tech front.

We're really crammed and I dont see how we can turn this around but hey what do I know ? I had the same feeling in RBP6 and LotR6... :lol:

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads5/HammerOnThem_of_the_Babylonians,_2150_BC.zip
 
Got it but can't play until tomorrow.

Dense build here we come!
 
:hmm: looking again at my picture I realize the city spot isn't marked after all. I think the next city should go one tile south of where the settler currently stands.

Also, not sure why Babylon is building a spear and not a settler - though we will need at least another cardboard cutout.

bam-bam is up but haven't heard from him in over a week?
 
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