Washington (IC) Immortal Cookbook

[Dhoomstriker]

Continued from the last message...

Spoiler :

Turn 50 We're finally almost done our first Settler. I hope that this delay in getting Work Boats pays off!


Turn 57 Montezuma shows up in a Work Boat and Stonehenge is completed by someone.


Our Veteran Lion Tamer goes poking around Sumeria's borders to see what he can see. A Worker is spotted but disappears the next turn, so peace is maintained.


A couple of turns later, though, a prize too juicy for me to pass up appears right before my very eyes!



Turn 67 has Montezuma poking around our shores with a Galley. This turn also sees Judaism being founded. Montezuma shortly turns out to be the founder of said Religion.


The Oracle was built and the following turn, Gilgamesh converts to Hereditary Rule. Coincidence? I think not. The Wonders screen confirms that he did indeed build The Oracle.


Right at the deadline, Judaism spreads to our lands. It had also spread to Gilgamesh, so I chose to convert. That means that all known AIs (just Montezuma and Gilgamesh so far) share a common Religion with us.

I also made peace with Gilgamesh on this turn by giving him a completely barren piece of junk City on an Ice island to the north-west of our starting area. Haha, what a sucker, that City will likely help to crash his economy. That'll buy us at least 10 turns of Peace, after which we'll have +2 positive Diplo points for Shared Religion.


Here's an image showing the status of our empire on T100 at 1500 BC.


Summary of our Status at 1500 BC:
5 Cities
4 Monuments (we have the Charismatic Trait, remember, so that's +1 Happiness per Monument)
2 Granaries (one more will be completed in 2 turns)
1 Lighthouse (in a City that has 2 netted Seafood Resources aka the capital)
5 Workers
1 Work Boat (trapped behind Montezuma's borders)
4 Warriors (in position to spawn-bust for Barbs)
1 Galley

Techs: All first level techs except for Hunting, plus: Sailing, Pottery, Animal Husbandry, and Bronze Working. Writing is approximately 1/3rd complete and needs about another 14 turns to be completed, at our current tech rate.

We share a Religion with both Montezuma and Gilgamesh (Judaism)

Montezuma has 4 Cities

Gilgamesh has 4 Cities, but one is a total stinker of a junk-pile that we gifted to him for Peace.


Positive aspects of this saved game:
- We've expanded nicely and another Settler is on the way
- We've got a lot squares improved, such that most citizens are working improved squares
- We have Pig, Wheat, and Fish connected
- We share a common Religion with all of the AIs that we have met
- Gilgamesh knows Writing, so we might eventually be able to get Open Borders with him, if he'll forgive our earlier war transgression with sufficient time
- Gilgamesh has been weakened by losing 3 Workers early on and by accepting a middle-of-nowhere junky City in our Peace deal
- We have a map of most of the circumference of Montezuma's continent. It looks to be HUGE, by the way!
- We have Pottery and Cottages are starting to be built
- We've started to Pasture the Horse Resource, so we'll be able to start building Chariots in about 10 turns from now
- Montezuma owns The Great Lighthouse, so it is at least potentially capturable at some point in the game. That is, if you think that you can handle a war against Montezuma!


Negative aspects of this saved game:
- We have a -3 negative Diplo modifier with Gilgamesh for having declared war on him
- We don't have Writing yet and it will be a while before we get it
- I had to make Peace because Gilgamesh was sending a stack of Vultures and Archers our way
- If we want to declare War on either of Gilgamesh or Montezuma later, we'll likely anger the other one of those two, due to the shared Religion's positive Diplo modifier. Then again, Gilgamesh will probably use his Oracle's Great Prophet to found his own Religion, so this situation could be temporary
- Only 1 Cottage has been fully-built, so more will need to be built before our economy starts to become viable
- We don't have Copper and I don't know if we have Iron because we don't yet know Iron Working
- Pretty much all of the early Wonders have been built by the AIs

 

[vranasm]

@Dhoomstriker

Spoiler :

And you say you usually play on emperor? I am feeling dumb right now...

the thumbnails would be better covered with spoiler...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@vranasm

Spoiler :

@Dhoomstriker

And you say you usually play on emperor?

Yes, I like to build Wonders. In Immortal and Deity games, like this one, I usually skip early Wonders, which isn't as much fun for me.

If you want, we can say that my game is one of the following kinds of games and not count it for the voting:

If there is any player who is strong at Immortal+ level, it would be great to have you post your saves to show us how it's done.

It doesn't bother me either way. I didn't really see anything spectacular from my game. I got a chance opportunity with a Woodsman II Warrior that was planning on being happy with grabbing a single Worker, whereas I grabbed 3.

Other than that, I simply spammed Settlers. To me, there is nothing else really special about my game.

For example, I'm about 14 or so turns away from Writing, which puts the game behind tech-wise compared to those who have started to build a Library or already have one in place. I don't have Horse connected and I don't even have the Gold settled, which are also things that other saves have.

One thing that I do have is few Roads and more of a focus on improvements that citizens can work. I used Sailing for early Trade Routes, saving the Workers a lot of early Roading tasks. Consider that a tip for those who spammed Roads like there's no tomorrow, while simultaneously working unimproved squares with your citizens.

the thumbnails would be better covered with spoiler...

I have no idea how to do that. If you know how, kindly let me know, but I suspect that it is not possible to do.

I am used to uploading all of my screenshots to the civfanatics servers, as I have a program that does a pretty good job of compressing the screenshots into reasonable file sizes. I saw that Moroktonos had done the same (attached a screenshot to the message that appeared as a thumbnail) and you pretty much have to click on the thumbnails to figure out what's going on in the screenshots, so I figured that it would be okay.

Again, if you know of a way to upload images to civfanatics that doesn't create thumbnails, let me know how it's done.

 

[lymond]

Dhoom - Upload images to a site like imageshack and use the insert link option to insert the image into your post -using spoiler tags.

 

[GKey]

@Bobbyboy29

Spoiler :

Love your Boston location, its going to be a great city after calendar.
Hope Gilgamesh will not squeeze a city between Boston and NY and culturally swallow Boston.

@Dhoomstriker

Spoiler :

Loved your comics stile walkthrough dude! Good city positioning (not grabbing south luxuries though), but I was still settle NY 1S, looking how shield poor this map is. With 7 FPs and 4 hills it will be your main production city. I'd even move capital there later game.
Angry Gilgamesh early game? Hmm might be interesting save.

Looks like capital positioning is a main concern here

@All

Spoiler :

Why settle in place? We start with fishery, plus SIP eliminates crab-fish site.
Settling on plain hill near oasis is better, but leaves capital without production tiles beside desert hills, which are unlikely going to be worked soon.


I still think with creative neighbor grabbing as much land as possible is 1st priority, so I like sugar city in Bobbyboy29's save (and mine ).
Plus I would prefer gold city with gold in first ring. It allows working gold ~25 turns sooner.

No one considered GLH after scouting our narrow landmass?

 

[Moroktonos]

Spoiler :

I did consider the GLH, but not knowing that we were on a penninsula, and figuring that I didn't know what I'd gain by running for the coast, but that I would definitely lose a respectable bureaucratic capital by not settling in place, I settled in place. (Americans start with AG too...) After the decision to settle in place was made, the GLH was out.

Aggressively grabbing the jungle tiles may easily have been the best move... but that doesn't mean that it doesn't carry serious risks too -- these cities are far from our capital and virtually useless until IW. Sure they'll be profitable eventually (unless creative Gilgamesh overwhelms them with his culture)... but their early economic drain may start a snowball effect (i.e., affecting which tech trades we can get, etc.) that could set us back more than we realize. That being said, aggressively grabbing the jungle tiles may easily have been the best move... there are good arguments on both sides.

Tried to get an imageshack account once... got a bunch of strange errors and never quite got around to going back... sorry if the thumbnail in my post was a spoiler...

I also enjoyed the Dhoomstriker's narrations.

Still waitin' on your save, Lymond .

 

[bobbyboy29]

@ Gkey

Spoiler :

Yeh Gilgamesh squeezing a city in between my two is a bit of a worry, but to get the right placement I figured i had to take the risk, I'll try get a library up in NY ASAP for the second border pop. Luckily Giggles actually doesn't have a city that close to boston and its border pop is a turn away so hopefully I shouldn't get too much pressure there.

With regards to settling in place, I think its just a matter of choice. I personally prefer the heavily cottaged bureau capital to a seafood one as that is better served to be a GP farm usually so that often means you won't get max returns on bureau or you'll have to move the cap which is a pain. Also, although we had fishing and I SIP i didn't find myself lacking worker techs early on so that wasn't the biggest issue. As for losing the fish, that just came down to a case of optimal capital placement > having an extra fish in a later city.

One thing which I did feel that settling in place lost however was the ability to get the early exploring workboat out, but I do have 2on the way now.

As for the GLH, with Gilgamesh so close and limited space I personally felt that you had to choose between REXing at him or spending hammers on wonders. Obviously though, someone managed both which was probably down to a bit of luck but nevertheless very impressive!

@Doomstriker

Spoiler :

Your write up was so amusing that I thought surely you weren't concentrating on actually playing so much as you were following the journeys of your intrepid warrior but look at that, five well improved, well established cities. Amazing job! Well done! And i'm looking forward to more great write-ups!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, I tried to give comments on everyone's games. Kindly let me know if I missed anybody.

If you don't like my comments, take them with a grain of salt. They're just my thoughts and opinions and you're free to disagree.

I also first read your reports and then looked at the saved games separately later. So, if it appears that I made a comment that you already addressed in your comments about your own game, that's the reason why I missed what you said, so you can just safely ignore such irrelevant feedback.


@bobbyboy29

Spoiler :

I like how your Cities are connected to the Trade Network.

I also like how you seem to be doubling-up your Workers to get improvements completed on time. For example, you must have used 2 Workers to connect up the Gold.

It is a bit of a shame that New York took so long to get its borders to expand. I wonder if a Forest Chop could have sped up the building of the Monument. Yes, you would have lost Hammers by chopping outside of your Cultural borders, but getting that Gold online sooner would have been worth it, since it was your second City.

That was a pretty aggressive move with placing Boston, nice work!

I also see that you have a Horse Resource connected and are building a Barracks in Washington. Am I right in thinking that your plan would be to build some Chariots in the capital next? That plan sounds like a good one, especially since you have Cities close to Gilgamesh and you don't want to tempt him into declaring war after him seeing your weakly-defended border Cities.

Nice job in scouting Gilgamesh's area to the south-west, too!

@GKey

Spoiler :

Good job on getting The Great Lighthouse. You really would have had to have beelined it in order to get it, as is evidenced by the fact that you're only researching Animal Husbandry now.

However, do you realise that the power of The Great Lighthouse is currently not being fully applied? Until you get out your 4th City, you're actually missing out on a free Trade Route in every City!!!

Given that fact, it might have been better to have settled New York in a lot closer location, which would have allowed you to get its squares improved faster and thus allowed you to pump out another Worker to Chop Forests and thus another Settler by 1500 BC. You'd probably still have been able to settle both of your blocking City and your Gold City this way.

Since New York wasn't by the Gold, it's clear that you didn't need the Gold online ASAP for tech, so this approach of getting a closer City online faster would likely have worked out well for you.

Yes, it's absolutely awesome that your game has The Great Lighthouse. What's unfortunate is that it'll take another 10 turns to see another Settler get produced, so it'll be at least another 12 turns before the full power of The Great Lighthouse is realised.

Good work in spawn-busting the area near New York and Boston. You have good coverage of those areas. Let's just hope that whatever Barb units spawn south of Washington don't decide to march into your borders.

Great job in prioritising Workers to get your Cities online. Unfortunately, though, New York has been building a Worker that hasn't been able to make use of the Expansive Trait's bonus on Worker production.

Anyway, getting The Great Lighthouse makes for a nice game, and I think that it would be fun to play it out, but the lack of a 4th City in your game is a really pronounced problem, as it nerfs a lot of the early value of The Great Lighthouse.

Let's hope that Gilgamesh cares more for his brothers and sisters of his faith than he cares about somebody encroaching on his borders.

@Fierabras

Spoiler :

Your Cities are well-connected and appear to be mostly working improved squares. Nice work!

Good job in getting Boston's borders expanded over the Gold already. Boston, however, doesn't appear to be working an improved square. I'd suggest trying to get a Grassland Farmed there whenever you can. The goal will be to be able to work the Gold plus at least one other square that allows for positive Food growth.

Hmmm, a Chariot already, not bad! I guess that comes as a result of settling New York by the Horse.

The north-west is not spawn-busted though. Perhaps you are hoping for Barb units to appear, so that you can get experience with your Chariot. If that's not the case, then it would be easy enough to spawn-bust the entire north-west with just 1 unit, by putting him on the Grassland to the W + W of the PWheat. Certainly, one of the smaller-sized Cities could do without its Military Police unit for a while before said City grows.

You have Open Borders with Gilgamesh but don't have any Foreign Trade Routes. It would probably help if you could either build a Road to Gilgamesh's area or even better, scout along his Coast until you unfog a Coastal City.

@Quaren

Spoiler :

Nice work in beelining Writing and then using the beeline effectively by building a Library and starting on your first Great Scientist!

Good work in getting New York's Gold online quickly by placing the City near to it, as well as supporting the Gold + City Growth with a Grassland Farm.

I also like where you put your Boston, so that you can use the nearby Rice square and Grassland Hills square.

It appears that Montezuma has Corn for trade, which you might want to get in exchange for your Pig, if you don't plan to settle your own Corn for a long time.

I see that you have a couple of Workers near Philadelphia, which is a City that got settled where a Forest existed. Did you manage to Chop the Forest before settling the City?

Gilgamesh appears to be a bit of a Religion-hogger in your game, with both Hinduism and Judaism.

Good job in spawn-busting. However, your eastern Warrior could probably stand to move 1 square south. Where he's standing right now, he's preventing a good chance at Forest growth from occuring, from the nearby adjacent Forest squares.

Good idea in using a pre-established City like Boston to create a Work Boat for you, presumably for Philadelphia, while Philadelphia focuses on building a Cultural building for a border expansion.

@Vranasm

Spoiler :

That's quite a well-improved capital that you have there, nice work!

Since you're at your Happiness cap in the capital, it might be a good idea to put 1 turn worth of Hammers into a Monument and then whip it, coming out Happiness-neutral. You could then use your Food-based squares to grow back to Size 6 quickly and then work the Mines again. That way, after 15 turns have passed, you will have a net +1 Happiness and can grow the capital so that it can work even more of the improved squares there.

I like how you've started to build Cottages in New York, but it appears that you chopped a Forest to the NE of there and forgot to reassign the citizen.

Unfortunately, it appears that Gilgamesh has expanded quite aggressively in your game, so it's going to be quite a fight for land!

I feel your pain and frustration with the loss of the Fish by settling in place. Kossin, we really should be able to trust the map designer to be able to settle in place and not get a bad result from doing so!

Great job in teching and in prioritising a Library!

Also, excellent work in keeping your number of Workers high!

I see that you pre-Roaded the Horse before the Settler got there, nice idea!

@Gumbolt

Spoiler :

Good work on getting Cottages online. They will definitely make for a great investment.

I see that you settled Boston on a Forest. Did you manage to Chop it before settling there?

Nice work on getting a Library up and running.

As was mentioned, it is a bit unfortunate that you settled Philadelphia on top of the best production square in the area. I wonder if Barb protection was really needed, what with a spawn-busting Warrior in the area plus Gilgamesh's borders being so close. It seems that you know how to do a good job of spawn-busting, based on the placement of your Warriors.

Good job in getting most of your Cities connected to the Trade Network. Still, Boston isn't connected, even though it has a Road MOST of the way there, so if you don't research Sailing next (i.e. before Aesthetics), you might want to but a priority on finishing up that Road connection.

You could probably afford to Farm a couple of the Grassland squares around Boston, using the Lake for Fresh Water. That way, you'll be able to support working the Gold and still grow the City.

I like that you are getting Granaries in your Cities, to take advantage of our Leader's ability to build them twice as quickly.

@Moroktonos

Spoiler :

Nice work on the teching front in getting to Writing. You're the only one so far that I've seen Open Borders with all of the AIs that you know. Hopefully, you'll get lucky and the Religion that Monte and Gilgamesh share will spread to you.

I see that The Great Lighthouse and The Pyramids have both been built in your game. I also don't see Stone or Marble anywhere nearby. What is your reasoning on researching Masonry? Are you trying to get to Monotheism for Organized Religion, in anticipation of receiving a Religion within one of your Cities?

Great work in building a ton of Cottages in the capitol and having worked a bunch of them! Is there any reason why you aren't working the Flood Plains Hamlet in favour of working one of the Flood Plains Cottages?

That's a nice armada of Workers that you have there! You've done a nice job of connecting up Resources and in improving land. Certainly, even citizen is currently working an improved square, while it looks like you have Workers improving further squares so that when your Cities grow, they'll be able to immediately work additional improved squares.

I have to ask, though, do you have an aversion to Fish Resources? I am a bit worried that you will fall short on the amount of locations to settle.

Nice work in connecting your Cities and your Horse Resource up with Roads.

You still have a lot of Forests available--some of them perhaps could be culled so that you can quickly chop out a couple of more Settlers and grab some of the remaining land to the south, before Gilgamesh scoops it all up.

@Norvin Green

Spoiler :

Wow, you sure have saved up a lot of Gold! I hope that you have a good plan for spending it!

Good work in teching and in starting on a Library.

Your planned City locations seem like pretty decent ones. I wonder, though, could you perhaps move the planned location that is 3S of the capitol 1 square further south? That way, you'd save one more Desert Hills square, still get Fresh Water from the Oasis, and not really miss out on any squares that another City doesn't have in its fat cross. Of course, perhaps you wanted to distribute the work of growing Cottages for the capitol, in which case where you plan to put the City can work nicely.

That's rather fortunate--you have Gilgamesh's Religion in two of your Cities. You are definitely well on your way to making Gilgamesh your good buddy, and he also only has 4 Cities founded, so he's not quite the monster that he is in others' games.

It's good that you're building a Road to your next City, to get it connected.

Once New York grows to Size 2, I'd suggest that you pump out another Worker, using the Plains Hills square and the Expansive Trait to get that Worker out quickly.

Do note that the Desert Incense square is going to be in the fog-of-war, even after you settle your third City. That square will be spawn-busted by the Worker that is working around Boston, so you should be okay, but you'll need to do something about the situation once that Worker is done with its business near the northern parts of that third-City-to-be. New York, for example, doesn't need a Warrior to be Fortified in it anytime soon, and thus that Warrior could go westward a bit to help spawn-bust.

Since you have Open Borders and are working on Sailing, it would be a good idea to get a unit to explore along the eastern Coast, to reveal one of Gilgamesh's Coastal Cities, for the future Foreign Trade Routes. Perhaps that would be a much better use for New York's Warrior, which could actually trade off duties with the Warrior spawn-busting SW + S + S of New York, who could in turn trade off duties with the Warrior spawn-busting further south, who would then do the Coastal exploration.

@drlake

Spoiler :

Yeah, that is a nice boost with the Copper. However, you wouldn't have gotten it if you hadn't have been dilligent in placing down a lot of Mines, so good job on that front!

I am a bit concerned that you are working unforested, unimproved Grassland squares. I can sort of understand in Boston, since you could whip a bit faster by growing to Size 2 using such a square, but New York really has no good reason to work that kind of a square. You should probably be whipping away that population point, preferably on a Granary after putting in 1 turn's worth of Hammers into said Granary.

You've really grown your capital quite nicely. With a Library soon to be completed, it'll probably be good to hire a couple of Scientists and then perhaps build a Worker or a Settler, since you're at your Happiness limit there.

Good thinking in building a Work Boat in a City that is already set up, like New York, potentially to be used in a City like Boston. Since Boston's borders will have to expand before the Fish can be netted, it's not a big deal that the Work Boat from New York will have a fair bit of sailing to do.

Actually, you still have a lot of Forests that can be harvested, so it wouldn't hurt to start Chopping some of them once you've finished connecting the Copper up to your Trade Network.

I see that you have a square that is temporarily being spawn-busted by the Worker that is on the Grassland Cow square. However, you might want to move Boston's Warrior 1NW onto the Grassland Jungle Road square and Fortify him there. That way, he'll spawn-bust the fogged Plains Forest square that exists to the NW + N + N of Boston. It is nice that you have Warriors defending your Cities, but if an Archer spawns in the middle of your empire like that, your improvements could easily get pillaged before you can get your Axemen online.

@lymond

Spoiler :

Your capital is in a nice location. Even though moving there wasted a Forest, you have the potential to make good use of the Hills squares to the west.

You've done a good job in working some Flood Plains Cottages, too.

I'm not a fan of New York's location. On the Desert Incense or on the Plains Hills square could have netted you more supporting Flood Plains squares and/or the Grassland Cow. As it is, it's a very Food-poor location for a second City. That said, it is good that the Plains Hills square is workable, since it's tough to come by production squares on this map, but you will have to work a couple of Grassland Farms just to support it, without slowing growth to a crawl.

Wow, The Great Lighthouse was built extremely late in your game, just two turns ago! Probably in games where people went for Sailing early on, Montezuma or another AI like Gilgamesh piggybacked off of this Research (and then another AI piggybacked off of Gilgamesh's Research) and thus it was more likely to get built sooner. I'm not sure about this "put one Hammer into a Wonder trick," but I am certain that if an AI doesn't have the relevant tech, it can't even START to build a Wonder. None of the identities of the Wonder-builders are known in your game, which means that capturing them early enough in the game to matter is not going to be likely.

Boston is placed in a way that lets us work the southern Grassland Hills square, which others have been pairing with the Grassland Rice square. That's a reasonable compromise approach--you still get to use the Hills square, without having to settle in the Jungle. It does mean one less potential City site, though.

Nice work on the tech pace. With Writing in the bag, it means that you have Open Borders with the two known AIs.

Now you just need to backtrack to Sailing instead of researching Aesthetics (that sounds a lot like Gumbolt's game, actually--do you two play succession games together or something? ). Either that or build a long Road to Gilgamesh, so that you can get some Foreign Trade Routes going, to fully take advantage of early Writing.

 

[Moroktonos]

^^Awesome of you to put so much time into reviewing everyone's save !

Spoiler :

Hamlet was the governor's fault... caught in the Screenshot, but not the save. Masonry... oops -- meant to save up cash for deficit research (considering the round was so close to over, and that there were a number of respectable choices regarding what to tech next [Sail, IW, Aesth, Math]. Oh well. At least it's a prerequisite for Monoth. and Construction, as you pointed out.)

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Dhoom - Upload images to a site like imageshack and use the insert link option to insert the image into your post -using spoiler tags.

I was hoping for more of a "local" solution that leverage's the civfanatics' website. For example, I've seen some people with links to a number of uploaded "Images," linked underneath of their Post count. I have no idea how to upload images that way, but perhaps using that functionality would let me put the images on the civfanatics website without the thumbnails appearing?

@GKey

Spoiler :

Loved your comics stile walkthrough dude!

Thanks! I got a little nervous around the time of capturing the Workers so our "Warrior Hero" went silent for a time there. Otherwise, the time spent making the screenshots actually gave me more time to think about the game and plan my moves, instead of rushing through the game like I normally do.

Good city positioning (not grabbing south luxuries though),

There is still time to settle at least the Gold, if not also some of those Calendar Resources. Gilgamesh only has 3 Cities, plus the junky one that I gifted to him, and we have another Settler currently being built in the capital.

I found that I didn't immediately need the extra Happiness from the Gold, thanks to the Charismatic Trait, so I first went for City locations that I could get online faster.

I also felt that I'd delayed settling the Horse City for too long so I put that one down instead of going for the Gold Resource. I really wanted to settle the Horse City 1N of where I did, on the Desert Incense, so that we'd be able to Mine the Plains Hills square instead of sitting on it, but I felt that I'd delayed getting Horse online for long enough as it was, so I settled where I did to get Horse within the City's initial Cultural radius.

but I was still settle NY 1S, looking how shield poor this map is.

That's a fair point. At the time of settling the City, I was toying with the idea of building The Great Lighthouse myself, so I figured that I would settle on the Plains Hills square for the extra bit of immediate production. But then, many of the World Wonders started scrolling across the screen as having been built while I was just learning Sailing. So, I gave up on my pipe dream.

With 7 FPs and 4 hills it will be your main production city. I'd even move capital there later game.

Actually, one could get even 1 MORE Grassland Hills square by settling on the Plains River located SW + W of the Plains Wheat.

Sure, you'd miss out on a couple of Flood Plains squares and you'd have to dedicate the Wheat to said City, but it would probably make for the best Heroic Epic location within the land area available to us. It's still a buildable location in your game.

Of course, if you'd planned to save the Wheat for the spot where you put your capitol, say, to make it more of a Great Person Farm, then it's a no-go location. But, for a Great Lighthouse game, it could work well, as it would allow for yet another Coastal City to be fit in to grab the Flood Plains squares.

Angry Gilgamesh early game? Hmm might be interesting save.

Well, to be fair, it's an angry WEAKER Gilgamesh. He also shares the same Religion... at least for now. Who knows what will happen when he spawns a Great Prophet?!

No one considered GLH after scouting our narrow landmass?

I considered it but rejected the idea since I got my second City way too late and saw other Wonders being built in rapid-fire succession.

Where I settled my capitol, grabbing the southern of the two eastern Fish, wouldn't really have worked. Your capitol location is probably one of the few spots feasible enough to both warrant building a Lighthouse and to have sufficient production to build The Great Lighthouse in time.

Roosevelt is an even better leader for building The Great Lighthouse, as his Organized Trait gives him a half-priced Lighthouse. Still, you proved that it can be done with Washington, too!

@bobbyboy29

Spoiler :

Your write up was so amusing that I thought surely you weren't concentrating on actually playing so much as you were following the journeys of your intrepid warrior but look at that, five well improved, well established cities.

Yeah, there's more to building an empire than one uber unit running around causing chaos. Still, he did make for some entertaining screenshots, far more interesting than "oh look, I just built another Monument" type of screenshots.

What kind of sucked is that I had to use a Settler that should have been able to settle the Gold City as a "gift City" for Gilgamesh. Still, that was a reasonable tradeoff for being able to hamstring him early on and get to keep his Workers as part of the bargain. I consider it to be a short-sold investment that had to be paid off at a later date.

@Moroktonos

Spoiler :

Masonry... oops -- meant to save up cash for deficit research (considering the round was so close to over, and that there were a number of respectable choices regarding what to tech next [Sail, IW, Aesth, Math]. Oh well. At least it's a prerequisite for Monoth. and Construction, as you pointed out.)

Yes, we will indeed need Construction if we are going to make any headway in a war against Gilgamesh. Actually, the sooner, the better, before he gets Longbowmen, if at all possible.

If you plan to beeline Construction before getting Alphabet, then it's actually a solid move to piggyback off of the AIs' research on Masonry, instead of researching Math early and letting them piggyback off of YOUR research.

With a common Religion with the AIs, it would make sense to adopt it, so surely, the Organized Religion bonus would be good to get, too.

Again, though, it depends upon whether or not you'll research Alphabet or be able to trade for Alphabet--if yes, then self-teching these techs might be best put on hold. If no, then go ahead and piggyback of the AIs' research for the win!

Awesome of you to put so much time into reviewing everyone's save

Well, it's nice to have comments on everyone's game centralized, as it's hard to put together all of the separate comments in their proper context unless they're about your own game. Hopefully, this way, it'll make voting a bit easier, as people can easily compare the games and also get an idea of some of the possible next steps to take, should they choose to vote for a particular saved game.

 

[GKey]

@bobbyboy29

Spoiler :

@ gkey
As for the glh, with gilgamesh so close and limited space i personally felt that you had to choose between rexing at him or spending hammers on wonders. Obviously though, someone managed both which was probably down to a bit of luck but nevertheless very impressive!

Was it just luck?
In my game Pyramids went like ~10 turns before I finished GLH which is unusual, right?

As have been mentioned already AI cheats: it knows when you start building wonder and might avoid it. Byline wonder tech and put hammer into wonder really early will cause AI postpone this wonder.

That was exactly what I did: started GLH as soon as I could and whipped second settler during process. That way its possible both block Gilgamesh and pull GLH same time.

@Dhoomstriker
Great job with these comments, dude! I hardly believe you play emperor so far. Might be too easy!

Spoiler :

You really would have had to have beelined it in order to get it, as is evidenced by the fact that you're only researching Animal Husbandry now.

You right, tech order was mining-bronze working-sailing-masonry.

However, do you realise that the power of The Great Lighthouse is currently not being fully applied? Until you get out your 4th City, you're actually missing out on a free Trade Route in every City!!!
...it might have been better to have settled New York in a lot closer location, which would have allowed you to get its squares improved faster and thus allowed you to pump out another Worker to Chop Forests and thus another Settler by 1500 BC. You'd probably still have been able to settle both of your blocking City and your Gold City this way...

3rd settler will be whipped in 5 turns. (Gold online-switch to galley - grow to 5 - switch to settler - whip settler)
But that does not matter.
Neighbors!
I expect my hindu friend Gilgamesh will open borders with me in couple of turns. Which will give me 2 commerce per trade route. And more importantly Monty! OB with him will give 3 commerce per trade route (+100% foreign trade +100% overseas) - up to 9 instant commerce in each new city!

Early land-grabbing allows me establish 6 more cities which will pay for themselves with trade routs. With creative neighbor I did not want take chances. NY is going to be great city post calendar and can pump workers, working rice right now.
Yes I do need gold online ASAP for happy - I whip my +11 food capital non-stop.
Wish I could play for like 10 more turns. GLH is going to be huge on this map. Instant ~30 commerce per turn from trade routs only and more with each new city .

 

[bobbyboy29]

@ GKey

Spoiler :

Well with what you just said in mind I guess its probably not luck that got you the GLH as well as that southern city. It's probably more a reflection of experience/ skill that I thought of the same thing yet decided it was impossible yet you knew exactly how to go about it an pulled it off. That whole "put a hammer into a wonder" thing is a great idea and one I should probably do more often.

In a recent game I wanted to get the mids but it took a while between getting masonry and hooking up my stone, if I put 1 turn into them earlier would that have thrown the AI's off the track and given me a greater chance of building it later?

Also just thought of this one, is it a viable strategy to put 1 hammer into each of the early wonders not in order to build them but rather to delay the AI's building them earlier and reaping the rewards earlier?

 

[GKey]

@Bobbyboy
Yes it could help.
But keep in mind that putting hammer into wonder early makes AI postpone it, not avoid completely.

 

[vranasm]

@dhoomstriker

when you attach attachments to your message there is icon right of the happy face in the top toolbar, when you click it you can then place attachments to your message and if you place them in spoiler tags it will be there

something like that

Spoiler :

View attachment 263662

it makes [ ATTACH... number [/ ATTACH tag

 

[vranasm]

@Dhoomstriker

Spoiler :

Thanks for the kind words on my save. But I have to admit I did some things wrong and some things just didnt went my way...

For example I see you got woods II war (probably first exploring war?). Well I lost MY exploring war on forrested tile against lion or something like that.
I lost some other war for unconcentration against archer when he was on the way to spawnbusting spot and i got raped by barb archer from north since the area even after 2nd border pop of cap wasnt covered.

So 3 problems, 2 of them my fault, 1 bad luck.

Btw in Monarch Cookbook version of this start one player settled Washington 1W from initial position and that was in my book one of the best ideas I see. Since he has still great bureau cap (even stronger with those west hills) and has open that fish to east and didnt waste it actually.

@all

Spoiler :

To the jungle blockers people around made here. I think getting 1 jungle blocker is somewhat OK, but making 2 jungle blockers is deadweight. I understand the concern with number of cities. But we can be viable with 6 cities before we take some more from Gilga, or something along the lines of thinking. And I think we have room for 6 decent cities, the production will be limiting though as was said By Moroktonos

 

[GKey]

Spoiler :

Would be nice to see someone takes Gilga early, given poor production and Monty around.

 

[Gumbolt]

I would of liked to have seen a save by lymond before the round closed. No such luck yet. Great to see so much interest in the first round.

 

[lymond]

Here, I'll throw in my save so I can vote, but I don't like my round at all. Not really sure what I did wrong but my mind wasn't in it this week due to other things. Probably waited a bit too long to get out first settler but wanted to get some Warriors out for barbs. I don't like that a library is not in yet. Certainly a workable save but I doubt it will be close to some of the others here.

 

[drlake]

Thanks for the comments, Dhoom. I like playing the various series games (NC, MS, etc) and succession games to see all the different ways to approach the same situation.

 

[vranasm]

@lymond

Spoiler :

I think a lot of people had problems with number of cities at the end of 100 turns...except for dhoom of course

I like your save. I especially like the position of washington since only you and Siran in MC did it this way and this position really leaves the east open for 2 good cities.

the gold city is next in order and we are high off...

strong candidate for me...