NC CLXIX: Pacal of the Mayans

[Izuul]

Noticed something odd with the map

Spoiler :

When i traded maps with Ramesses and Darius two roughly 4x4 squares were unfogged on another continent. I guess these leaders were relocated in the world builder, but their map knowledge from their original starting locations was not removed?

@FlyingSwan

Spoiler :

That would be interesting. Darius will go Free Religion later as soon as he has access to it so i won't be able to get shared religion or shared civics bonuses with him. I might still be able to get his vote through other bonuses, but it would not be quite as easy. Sal and Ramesses will definitely vote for me provided they aren't 2nd in pop and run against me. The situation on the other continent will play a large part in how easy/difficult a diplo win will be here. I could probably fight some heathens on the other continent and make it work, but doing it without going to war at all would be more difficult.

 

[Framesticker]

Stopped after some work. Emperor/Normal

Spoiler :

SIP was a no brainer for me


I sent the warrior up north to scout while teching for Agriculture. Pyramids seemed kinda... meh with this leader and start so Masonry wasn't an early priority.

Soon we met up with the 1# wonderhog in the entire universe


Not an easy guy to hang out with. He did found Budd though (and as he seems to be the only one around) we can likely get it from him and get him to Friendly easily.

Found a good cottage site


It'll have 5-6 good cottages before Civil Service and more after Biology
Finding marble at the southern tip of the continent made wondering up even more inevitable


I also found a city down there and revolted to Slavery to whip the Settler and the Oracle. I took Metal Casting for some trade leverage.
We have BW and are working on IW to try and expand towards the northern Gems and towards Ramsess. I see no reason for early war but IW may make me change my mind.

Next update soon!

 

[Framesticker]

To 250AD

Spoiler :

So we kicked things off by settling that double Gem blocker city and revolting to Budd so Ramsses was automatically pleased


The seafaring barbs of the world apparently were disappointed with my decision and came to seize control of the empire


It's a good thing I have MC for Tries but the city was working scientists off the Sheep so I didn't whip it for now. Revenge is best served cold.
We sent a Scout to Egyptian territory and found out this guy is around


And he's Buddhist! Let the religious-love tech frenzy begin!
After this nice pickoff


We made our governing ways a little more civilized


This bad boy popped up too


God this BAT thing is good.

Finally getting revenge and getting a good control over the southern seas of Maya:


And making some more trades:


I also somehow picked up this gem


And settled some more cities




The second one is a tad weak but I guess that's what you get with this land quality.

Things are looking well - I'm the tech leader and no one is plotting war yet. I think teching up to Lib and then going for some Rifle frenzy against the Egyptians are a nice fun choice. What do you guys think?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

@Izuul

Spoiler :

Noticed something odd with the map

When i traded maps with Ramesses and Darius two roughly 4x4 squares were unfogged on another continent. I guess these leaders were relocated in the world builder, but their map knowledge from their original starting locations was not removed?

Yep I moved them so we had the proper colours of Civs near us and forgot to fix that. sorry.

 

[bdubbs]

Hello! First time poster here. I looked through a hand full of the NC threads and they seem really helpful so I thought I would sign up and jump in. I've played this map out to 3000 B.C. on noble and I'm a little stuck on where I should go from here.

Spoiler :

So I know a decent bit about the map, I took a peek at worldbuilder. I'm in a stage where I'm still really not sure what makes a bad/good/great city site so I can live with cheating on that for now. I decided to SIP, running a cottage economy on all those FP's seemed like a sound and simple choice.

I researched ag, mining, quarry, roads, and I am currently 2 turns from pottery. I worked the oasis from the start, but when my borders popped my city automatically started working the unimproved stone, and I let that continue because it got the worker out 3 turns earlier than the oasis.

After my worker came out I farmed the wet corn, and just finished quarrying the stone. I built a warrior second, which came out slow because I worked the corn, then oasis, and didn't work the stone until size 3, and that's where I'm at now.

My options are looking like
1) Settle a new city. This was my first thought. I was planning on using the worker to road up the stone and corn which will take a few turns and will delay my ability to throw down cottages on my fps. At size 3 I can get the settler out in 9 turns which will give me a chance to get a cottage down before my city grew to size 4. Or I can build worker settler so I can road towards my next city site.

2) I can start working on the pyramids, road the stone and corn, and mine the nearby hills. I'd also make bronze working my next tech so I can do some chopping and adopt the whip.

3) Build a barracks, settle a second city, research bw, and start building those UU's to take egypt out real quick. Since I'm on noble difficulty I could probably take egypt out early, but since I'm planning to do that eventually anyway I might as well let Rameses build a few wonders for me first.

I'd also like to ask where you guys would recommend I place my second city. I was thinking near the dry corn to the northwest made sense, but to do that it seems like you have to take a decent chunk of desert hills and a couple desert tiles. There isn't much food around the map which is making it a lot more difficult for me to tell which is a good spot, as I haven't had much success running cities that don't have at least one workable food tile. I know there is a great city location with a bunch of food just south of the capital, but I'd rather settle towards Egypt first.

Thanks for the read! I'll post screenshots as I get deeper into the game, but since I'm still only running one city so far I didn't think it would make much of a difference yet.

 

[Framesticker]

1930 Space

Spoiler :

All in all not the best date but I did go a little lazy and stopped conquering after Ramsses. I think some major learning points from this game are:

• Just because you're FIN doesn't mean you need to cottage every grassland tile
• Never neglect Marble if you have it
• Blocker cities are more important than anything really

Very enjoyable. Cheers!

 

[WelshGandalf]

100AD Emperor no events...

Spoiler :

SIP. Seems nice enough for some cottages and such. I didn't choke Egypt - I was way too conservative. Settled 2 cities north of the starting one, one on the peninsula north-west, one south, 2 on islands and two on Saladin's landmass 9 in total. Tech ing around 70bpt at break-even. Would be better but I'm currently building the hanging gardens and ToA (well if you are going to give us stone AND marble...).

Got stonehenge, because early stone. Oracled MC -> built Colossus. Got two great prophets, settled them both. Alas I was too late with GLH, it finished before I even started it, but Colossus + FIN helps lame island cities too. Have teched to currency, traded monarchy, asthetics is on the horizon. Really struggling for happiness (gold, forge and lots of warriors is all I have), and then I read this thread and remembered about the UB. Doh!

 

[Gumbolt]

@Sinsyne

Spoiler :

I skipped great wall completely. Build 3-4 warriors and went for GLH instead. Not played a perfect game but I have 12 cities at 25ad. Spammed island cities. I missed out on the double gem city. Bit slow on tech too. I did spam settlers heavily early on from capital and another city once GLH was built. Stonehenge could of been useful but I went for GLH instead.

Probably should of tried for mids sooner. Happy to take some fail gold now.

Probably should of handled tech side a lot better here.

 

[Izuul]

@WelshGandalf

Spoiler :

I think building SH was a mistake. Personally i think it's ALWAYS a mistake to build SH, but here your rationale for building the wonder seems to be limited to "because stone" which is a pretty weak argument. SH is a weak wonder and between that and the Oracle you polluted your GPP pool so badly that you got 2 early prophets which is definitely not too good.

I think the thing that makes SH tempting to less experienced players is that they think all of their cities need border pops ASAP. This just isn't true. Many cities can be settled to get all crucial resources in the first ring, and sometimes other cities like the capitol can pop borders and provide access to resources for other nearby cities. When neither of these things is possible and you really need an early border pop, just whip a monument. If the city can wait for the border pop, then a library or random religion spread, or something like that is often better than the monument which has no function aside from culture. The one exception would be with a CHA leader. I still wouldn't really recommend SH, but you can be more liberal with monument building since they also provide +1 happy.

If you want to tech Masonry here and go for a multi-wonder gambit, i think the strongest play would've been putting some hammers into SH for fail gold to help fund research, settling the marble (maybe right on it) with 2nd city, and building the Oracle first then teching Fishing and Sailing and building the GLH. The GLH was definitely the strongest wonder on this map, and that was evident within the first handful of turns.

Personally i skipped the Oracle too and just focused on the GLH and then rapid expansion onto the islands and other coastal sites, but on Emperor you could probably get both by going for Oracle first and GLH 2nd.

 

[Sinsyne]

@Sinsyne

Spoiler :

I skipped great wall completely. Build 3-4 warriors and went for GLH instead. Not played a perfect game but I have 12 cities at 25ad. Spammed island cities. I missed out on the double gem city. Bit slow on tech too. I did spam settlers heavily early on from capital and another city once GLH was built. Stonehenge could of been useful but I went for GLH instead.

Probably should of tried for mids sooner. Happy to take some fail gold now.

Probably should of handled tech side a lot better here.

Spoiler :

Yeah GLH city spam is probably the approach most suited to this map with a financial leader. As said, I just didn't feel like repeating my previous NC Hannibal game.

1948 space

Spoiler :

A very uneventful game, never left the starting continent, never went to war(declared on Saladin and Cyrus after launching just for giggles so I have something to do while the ten turns count down).

Only hostile action before that was when I sent a dozen privateers to harass Hatsheput and Cyrus, plundered fishing boats, starved down two cities and sunk 31 ships before they were finally wiped out.

 

[Izuul]

Immortal 1420 UN Diplo

Spoiler :

This wasn't a pure diplo win, i did have to go to war with Cyrus, but i did want to play this game without backstabbing any of my Hindu friends, and i was able to do that without issue.

I kind of lost focus for a bit after my 1 AD update so my planning and micro was rather poor, but I did Lib Communism in 920 AD while starting to build an army of cuirs and galleons. I immediately switched into Slavery + State Property + Theo which would be my war civics. All cities started on units except my capitol which began work on the Kremlin. I wanted that for rush buying the UN later, and it also helps with whipping units.

Spoiler :

I declared war on Cyrus in 1050 AD with 15 Cuirs (12 on the ground and 3 more on a boat 1T behind). He was still 2T from Machinery at the time and his situation really highlighted just how big the gap is between Immortal and Deity. Here was an AI with 17 cities, but he clearly hadn't been able to keep up with his expansion in other areas as his tech was horrible, many of his cities had little or no improvements, and his army was so spread out that he couldn't muster more than 3-4 defenders in many of his cities. A deity AI in this same situation would've likely been very scary.

Spoiler :

It wasn't long before Cyrus was completely wiped out. I kind of overestimated how long the war would take so i really could have focused a bit more on tech and a bit less on units and maybe gotten Mass Media a couple turns earlier - oh well.

Spoiler :

While i was teching to Mass Media and fighting Cyrus i was strategically gifting my buddies techs in an effort to steer them towards researching certain things that i wanted like Chemistry, RP, Constitution, and Demo. This was largely successful until right at the end where Ramesses and Hatty both got Demo on the same turn right when i really needed it, but both immediately started building the SoL so neither would trade it to me!

Spoiler :

I had to tech Demo in 2T myself, and then switch into US to rush buy the UN in 1350 AD. I built it in one of Cyrus' cities that still had ~8 forests left to chop plus some decent hammer potential. I also used the end of my golden age to monkey around with civics and religions until i was able to get Darius, Rammy, and Sal all friendly at the same time just to ensure they would all vote for me. A short time later i won the election with quite a bit of room to spare.

Spoiler :

One little tip for anyone that doesn't already do this... If you are conquering land late in the game where the cities won't be out of revolt for a great deal of time before the game ends, do not hesitate to pillage cottages! These can give a large amount of gold to help fund research. One mature town can provide upwards of like 80g!

Fun game, thanks for the map!

 

[WelshGandalf]

@Izzul

Spoiler :

I'm somewhere between Emperor and Immortal in quality but I usually end up playing Emperor as it's more relaxing, that's more what I'm after than a challenge most of the time. SH fits nicely into this mindset, it lets you micromanage a bit less as you don't have to worry about those early border pushes. It also worked out very well with little island cities with seafood two tiles away (not that I was thinking that at the time I built it). It takes a long time to get to size 2 so you can whip a monument.

I was being a bit flippant with my "because stone" comment - I also thought, hey we start with masonry only one tech away, and with stone & marble, masonry certainly isn't a bad choice. And building wonders is fun.

Also I thought great prophets were considered one of the best to settle? I was quite happy with them, though I do know the power of well-timed GS bulbing. I don't think I even ran any specialists at the start and still got some great people.

 

[JSS]

Deity up to 600AD

Spoiler :

I settled on the stone, settled my 2nd city on the PH down to establish a nice settler production site. Beelined Sailing/Masonry and built the GLH in my capital. Managed to get it rather safely around 2000BC.

I think I was quite lucky in that a barb city spawned in the corn/gems spot and Ramesses destroyed it with his WC when a settler finished in my southern clam/crab town. I had 2 workers improving the corn/FP site northwest from Mutal. I made them road to that site as soon as possible, and beat Ramesses to the site by a couple of turns. I settled on the rightmost gem hoping to eventually grab the clam and the 2nd gem, fighting Rammy's culture. Luckily he's an easy fellow to deal with and border tensions are of little concern. Just after my 4th settler was finished, I whipped another one in Mutal and was able to box Ramesses in, claiming a coastal site next to the corn.

From there I expanded into 13 cities, beelining Optics. I managed to get very few trades from Ramesses/Darius/Saladin, but was able to somewhat backfill after meeting the other AIs.

I've only generated one GM, no other great people, but I'm sure I can still win the Lib race. The overall tech pace is quite slow, and I'm making ~340 beakers at break even. Only one AI has Philo (he also has Paper, so there's a slight possibility I might lose anyway ), but I'm trying to be optimistic here. I can generate 1 GP, possibly a scientist (~70% odds) in my NE city to help me bulb Education one time.

It's been long since I last played a serious game, so I'll probably manage to lose this one, but I'll try my best not to.

Oh, I traded my stone for some fish-like resource to Rammy in hopes that he's build the mids for me to capture. Sure enough he did, but they're not of such high benefit at this stage of the game anymore. I'll probably try to lib Scientific Method or Communism if Saladin doesn't get too close to Lib. From there I'll decide which way I go about conquering the AIs, depending on which techs they're close to at the time.

I didn't get a religion spread to me until somewhere around 1AD. All of Christianity, Buddhism and Judaism spread at the same turn (lol), but I didn't switch to any of them because Saladin was in Free Religion (swpaya), Ramesses was in Confucianism (oracled CoL), and Darius didn't have one. Afaik. Ramesses weighs religions heavily, so I didn't want to risk having him attack me because we already shared borders and I was still expanding.

Tech situation:

Spoiler :

Overall view:

Spoiler :

EDIT:
I put spy points on Saladin, and he's teching Astronomy and is 11 turns from it. I can (probably) lib Communism here. Fingers crossed.

EDIT 2:
Forgot Scientific Method requires Printing Press... I think I'll have to settle for Sci Meth or if someone gets too close, a lesser tech like Nationalism.

 

[pandamancer]

IMM 1595AD Cultural/Espionage Victory (you sure love these days pandamancer!)

Spoiler :

Not really a good win date, just wanted to try culture wins using spy mission.

The first difficulty I encountered is where to settle the capital. I am torn between settling on stone or settle 1S of the stone. I decided to go settling the stone, because I would be needing early for wonder spamming.

Went for GW/Oracle/GLH/Parthenon/MoM/Sistine/Taj/Hermitage + Christian/Jud/Hindu/Confucian Cathedrals! Ramses is performing poorly.


WTF! Strange thing happened after trading maps


Pop out 2 GSpys, one settled and one SY (I think the better play should be infiltrate and SY). Pop out a GP now, no worries will burn him for a GA


Seriously another one!


Gifting Uxmal and Chichen Itza


Opened up a spreadsheet to compute my acquired spy culture. It took a while and the micro of spies feels like ordering one unit at a time (like Civ 5 )

Just when I thought the capital should be the first to hit legendary... apparently I am wrong. It lagged behind by 12 turns

Time to finish the game


Victory!

 

[yyeah]

@ JSS

Spoiler :

Wow, you look great here. Can u tell me more about tech path you choose ?
I retired from this map becouse well early i had only 1 trade it was drama xD ( drama indeed).
I went Asthetics, Literature i couldnt trade even alpha for asthetics... they all love each other and trade like crazy i wonder is it any possibility to win this map by conquest/domination.
Looking forward how you doing there.

 

[JSS]

@ yyeah

Spoiler :

I think what got me in a better position to succeed, even with play far from optimal, was that I got lucky being able to grab the gems/clam spot and block Ramesses off with a city northeast of it with my 5th city. This was all after having built the GLH, too.

My otherwise bad play aside, the GLH in my opinion was the correct big picture decision. Prioritising the Aesthetics with marble in hand has its upside too. It gives you a couple of techs to trade around + The Great Library and a Great Artist. The benefits of GLH, however, are much stronger in a map like this. With almost all of your cities being coastal, and AIs being on other continents, the GLH starts giving a lot and early, and the benefits keep on growing as the number and population of cities grow.

I played on a bit from the save I posted. Unfortunately, I purged my temporary save folder. I only have the save I have attached in my earlier post to continue the game if I choose to. However, the game is winnable from here. How the game progressed:

- I was first to lib, but I had to take Economics when Saladin (iirc.) was able to research it. My play was too focused on expanding in the expense of running enough Great Scientists. Also, due to the very late spread of religion to me and none of them being convenient, I delayed Pacifism for quite a bit.

- I pre-built a lot of trebs on my way to Steel, and then wiped out Ramesses and Darius in a quick sequence. I think I left Ramesses an island or 2, and Darius 3 cities on the ice.

- Soon I also got Rifling and Artillery, and started a war against Saladin. Didn't notice until I declared that he had a defensive pact with a 21-city Cyrus on the other continent. Saladin was easy to kill. Where I left off, I had captured his capital along with about 5 other cities and was in the process of cleaning up his island. I could have managed to fend off Cyrus too.

- I had built the Sushi, but spreading it was just beginning. My plan from there would've probably been to make peace with Cyrus and head for space. Maybe invade Hatshepsut to stop him from going culture (not sure if he was a threat or not) too if I got the chance.

Re. your question on my tech path, I don't remember it exactly. I think the beginning went something like this: Agriculture -> Fishing -> Sailing -> BW -> Masonry -> Wheel -> Pottery -> Writing -> Alpha (not sure if I got Aesthetics first and traded for this) -> Currency.

 

[yyeah]

Yea, you probably right glh heres a huge boost and best choice + 2 ... gems well xD.
I went for Mids and that was bad choice . Good that i wasnt trying Oracle becouse some1 took it in deity 2045bc as well that AI was faster then me in GLB (400bc).

 

[Seraiel]

@ pandamancer:

Spoiler :

You neither need most of the wonders you built, nor any Cathedrals. Did you already read Kaitzillas writeup of an espionage victory in the HoF?

 

[pandamancer]

^ Apologies for being gone for a month. The world still needs me

Spoiler :

Yes I skim through Kaitzilla's writeup (err... a single post to be exact). I am aware that the three legendary cities are all espionage assisted (it is not clear though if he used "spread culture" on enemy cities with lots of wonders or simply some created dummy cities). He also won without even reaching Nationalism. I do believe Pangaea maps helped his meet many AIs early; and thus, improved his research here...did his also stole from them?

 

[Seraiel]

@ pandamancer:

Spoiler :

Kaitzilla is a she?

He described his tactic in detail btw.. He founded crap-cities just to gift away and bombed them 1-2 times with a GA to have enough "seed-culture" .