WOTM 01 First Spoiler

[ainwood]

WOTM 01 First Spoiler

Reading requirements:

1. You must have reached at least 0 AD.
2. You must have a full-view of the starting continent.

Posting Restrictions

1. You may not post about any events post 500 AD.
2. No screenshots of anything that was off the starting continent, nor any discussion of events that you were invoved in off-continent

So - do you like playing warlords? Is it better or worse than vanilla? Do you like the great generals?

 

[Thrallia]

I like Warlords, but for some reason things seem to move somewhat sluggishly compared to vanilla. As for great generals...as you'll see, I had no combat except versus barbs in this first spoiler so I didn't have any(interestingly, experience gained versus barbs does seem to count toward a great general)

I began the game on contender planning to go for a space race victory, I hoped that with the good looking start and my newfound knowledge and experience from the vanilla GOTMs that I could possibly head for a fastest finish on it.

Warrior moved SW, discovers Cow, marble, coast.
Settler moved SE to plains hill...discovers tundra and coast. I shouldn't have been greedy and stupid, I could have moved to the same hill as the warrior and founded there and gotten a great capital, now I'm gonna be like 3 turns late on NORMAL speed.

3880BC: Carthage founded(marble, cow, wheat, 4 fp)
I plan to go for early AH to see where horses are for the UU
3680BC: Tech: Hunting>AH
3640BC: Buddhism founded in a distant land

Worker started immediately after I hit size 2
3280BC: Tech: AH>Masonry
3000BC: Tech: Masonry>Mysticism
2880BC: Meet Korea(weird, first civ I meet is another new civ...I wonder if this portends anything)
2800BC: Tech: Mysticism>Polytheism
2520BC: Utica founded N of Carthage on Coast
2360BC: Tech: Polytheism>Wheel
Hinduism founded in Utica!!!!(crazy, huh? I've NEVER seen Hinduism founded so late)
2120BC: Tech: Wheel>BW
somehow during this 500 years I managed to black out and lost a settler I had sent toward the East river
1600BC: BW>Priesthood
1200BC: Hadrumetum founded on East River
1000BC: Oracle built in Utica(I no longer remember exactly what I took here, but I assume it was Metal Casting)
825BC: Hippo founded E of Hadrumetum near Cow and Horse
250BC: Parthenon built in Carthage
200BC: Confuscianism founded in Hippo
75BC: Kerkouane founded next to iron between Carthage and Hadrumetum
100AD: Temple of Artemis built in Utica
Kashi Vashwanith built in Utica
Leptis founded W of Carthage
325AD: Hanging Gardens built in a far away land!
375AD: Great Library built in Carthage

Basically, after a very very bad start(I can't believe I wasted almost 200 years wandering around) and after some brain farts(I didn't see the news that my settler was killed by barbs and didn't notice until I wondered why I hadn't built my third city yet) I finally have a decent looking civ. Carthage, Utica, and Kerkuoane look to be great production cities, Carthage should be a monster, and my other three cities should be commercial centers. I upcoming goal is to push for GL, Colossus, and Cothons, which them I will have 5 trade routes per coastal city! Sounds like some nice commerce once I get optics.

I've seriously fumbled the start though, so I harbor no hopes of actually winning an award anymore.

edit: also I've once again forgotten to take screenshots of this time period, so to avoid spoiler issues, I have no screenshots to give, I can only mention that 4 of my 6 cities are coastal, and that Carthage is placed on the hill SW of where our warrior began.

 

[Shillen]

I didn't take notes this game so I just have the replay file and the autologger to go by.

After moving my warrior SW onto the plains hill and seeing the marble and cattle I thought this was going to be the easiest game in the world. I moved my settler onto the same hill and settled next turn. My goal with this game was space race victory.

3160BC – Slavery adopted
2480BC – Utica founded to the east by the flood plains/wheat
1280BC – Confucianism founded in Utica, converted right away
1200BC – Great scientist – academy in Carthage
875BC – Oracle – took Civil Service – converted to bureaucracy
700BC –Hadrumetum founded far to the east by incense/cattle/fish.
525BC – Hippo founded to the west by the wheat/cattle
475BC – Great Library
375BC – Wang Kon declares war on me - I guess I cut off his expansion – he sends like 4 warriors at me which were easy fodder
75BC – Great scientist – academy in Utica
150AD – Kerkouane founded far to the west by the cattle and a ton of hills (low food)
50AD – Peace with Wang Kon – got monotheism and some gold
350AD – War declared on Wang Kon with 8 macemen, 2 galleys, one caravel off exploring and one protecting my galleys from triremes.

Technologies

Spoiler :

???? - Agriculture – forgot to turn on the logger
3160BC – Bronze Working
2880BC – The Wheel
2640BC – Pottery
2200BC – Writing
2080BC – Mysticism
1880BC – Polytheism (was thinking of temple of artemis at the time but I never got around to building it)
1800BC – Priesthood
1720BC – Masonry
1280BC – Code of Laws
1120BC – Sailing
1000BC – Animal Husbandry
950BC – Hunting (there was an axeman wandering around near Utica and the horses were out of my cultural borders so I needed archers unfortunately)
925BC – Archery
850BC – Civil Service
800BC – Iron Working – once again, iron outside borders, frustrating
750BC – Alphabet
675BC – Literature
600BC – Mathematics
500BC – Currency
375BC – Metal Casting
225BC – Machinery
125BC – Compass
25AD – Optics
50AD – Monotheism
125AD – Paper
175AD – Calendar, Meditation (must have contacted someone here)
250AD – Horseback Riding

Overall this was a fun map I thought. Very tough starting location despite the good capital. I feel like I expanded a little too slowly and too far away. A city NE of carthage could have been plenty good enough but I didn't settle there until way later on. The low happiness killed me early on. I made heavy use of the whip for the first time ever this game and found it quite useful (especially when cities didn't have enough improved tiles to work and things like that). Speaking of which as usual I didn't build enough workers. It was annoying that all the horses and iron landed 1 tile outside my borders and I ended up having to waste turns researching archery to protect myself against barb axemen. At 350AD I've contacted two civs besides Wang Kon. They didn't like me much because I was a different religion but I just gifted them each a tech for the +4 modifier and now they like me well enough.

Interestingly, I replayed this game after I finished and before 1AD I had popped not only iron in Carthage's workable radius but gems in Utica's as well! If only I could be so lucky in the real game. That early 2 happiness (with forge) was killer in that game.

 

[Shillen]

Sounds like some nice commerce once I get optics.

You'll need astronomy to get trade routes with overseas civs. I felt the great lighthouse was probably a waste on this map. There's only so many good trade routes your civ can have (limit of AI cities). With cothons giving an extra trade route that means the trade routes from the great lighthouse will be less commerce than they would be with any other civ. Temple of Artemis is huge though and I wish I found a way to build it.

 

[uberfish]

I decided to use this game as practice for space race competitions. No dry runs.

Founded Carthage on the spot to use the 6 FP and 4 hills, decided to play an very fast cottage/academy opening. In order to preserve GPP purity in Carthage I did NOT build stonehenge, and I think failing to build that wonder was an error. I didn't go for pyramids since I used food surplus for settler/worker production or slaving mostly. Instead, since this was a low difficulty level I decided to experiment with an Education slingshot to pile up as many beakers as I could in the capital early. The tradeoff with this was that my early expansion was a bit slower than I would have liked. I could have picked up liberalism before 1AD if I felt like it, but it's a little pointless to do so when you can get a much more expensive tech later.


4000 Warrior SW; Carthage, Found on spot, build worker-warrior-warrior-settler
3680 Agriculture
3400 Wheel
3120 Pottery
2680 Writing
2280 Contact: Korea
2240 Mysticism, found Utica (at Fish/clam/cow/marble west)
2000 Bronze working; Revolt Slavery
1840 Masonry
1760 Polytheism
1520 Monotheism (missed Judaism by 2 turns) Carthage is size 7 working 5 FP cottages and 2 mines
1400 Sailing
1320 Priesthood
1280 Carthage: Library
1040 Code of Laws; Found Confucianism
675 Civil Service; Revolt Bureaucracy + Org Rel
625 GP 1, Carthage: Academy
550 Carthage: Granary
500 Paper
450 Monarchy; Carthage: Oracle -> Education; Hereditary Rule
400 3rd city up at eastern FP/wheat
350 Alphabet
250 Mathematics
225 Carthage: University
125 Music; Carthage: Aqueduct; Merge GA at Carthage
75 4th city up at wheat/cow/horse in west
50 Metal Casting; Trade CoL for Korean world map

AD

50 Machinery; Carthage: Great Library
75 Carthage: Pop silver from mine (Hi unbalanced feature, at least it wasn't gold)
150 5th city up at crab/cow 4N of capital
325 Printing Press
350 Iron Working
375 Carthage: Hanging Gardens. Pyramids BIAFL
400 Compass
450 GP 2, Utica: The Kong Miao
475 Optics; Carthage: Forge
500 Meditation


Researching at 217 bpt at 90%, 175 of this from capital (I don't do this binary science nonsense)

 

[gorilladf]

Wow.... skinny place! And not even close to anyone! So taking over civs early was out.

I didn't even bother to go for the marble. I founded city where I started. I took some VERY unlucky hits from barbs and lost some scouts and warriors. By 500AD I'd only met 1 other civ, yet seen most of the continent. I had 4 cities by 500AD.

I'm now sort of in limbo. Not sure what win I want to go for. No wars. One trade Fur for Fish whooopie! I'm thinking space race win.

 

[Ozbenno]

I basically only bought Warlords to be able to take part in this , so was harbouring no illusions I'd post a decent score or time. Played a couple of practise games with the same settings and noticed the lack of resources and production.

Started the game wondering about what tactics to pursue, a CS slingshot or Pyramids/Representation. Bugger it, I thought, I WANT BOTH!



So in 600BC, I switched to Bureaucracy and Representation and ran a scientist in Carthage.

No point running Representation without Great Library and thus it was built in 75AD, which co-incidently was the year my Great Scientist popped in Carthage. Academy anyone?

I then cast my eyes eastwards towards Korea....

 

[Shillen]

Oh yeah, I wanted to ask, does anyone else have crashing problems with warlords? I can't even remember the last time vanilla civ4 crashed on me but this game crashed at least 4-5 times throughout the game. It was always when I tried to open a city window from the main map. I played with the HoF mod so I don't know if that has anything to do with this.

Other warlords stuff:

I really like the idea that chariots get +100% bonus against axemen. It makes it a lot easier to deal with barb axemen early in the game (assuming you can get horses). I honestly felt barb axemen pre-1AD had no place in the vanilla game as they were just too difficult to deal with. But I guess with chariots in warlords they're alright, although they probably still show up a little too early, IMO.

The happiness monuments are a really nice touch as well. This start was rough enough on happiness, thank god for the monuments. Faster promotions are cool as well. Only 8 xp for the third promotion is big. But I'll get into that more in the next spoiler.

edit: Btw, I'm pleasantly surprised so many are going for spaceship victories. It's good to have games to compare mine with. I figured everyone would go domination or conquest to play with the great generals and stuff, especially since it's a low difficulty level.

 

[Ozbenno]

Haven't had a crash in Warlords at all (played HOF mod as well) in this or any other game (haven't palyed many though).

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Bought Warlords on the Saturday 2 Sept just to play the WOTM, spent half an hour generating a few maps to see what they were like, then straight into the WOTM as my first ever proper Warlords game.

And – wow! This map is a challenge. Long snaky continent, filled with desert, very few decent city sites near the starting location, so distance costs are going to be bigger than normal. And no copper and almost no happiness resources anywhere on the starting continent. And of the three different happiness resources that are there, only one of them (the Easternmost incense) strikes me as being within the radius of a plausible city site. (Even that’s a bit generous. I probably wouldn’t put a city even there if this map wasn’t so short of ‘normal’ city locations). I reckon there’s going to be a lot of much-later-than-normal victories in this one.

But I’m not complaining, I actually rather like this map: It’s only on noble level and I definitely appreciate the very different challenge from previous GOTMs that the map poses.

I’m less impressed by Warlords itself. A couple of interesting new units but nothing that struck me as significantly improving gameplay – certainly nothing that makes me feel I got value for money in the twenty quid I spent, other – obviously – than that I got to play the WOTM. To all intents and purposes, I felt like I was playing vanilla civ with a new patch.

Anyway, onto strategy. I started by moving the settler to the hill two South to see if there was a better city spot. Of course there wasn’t, so I ended up moving him back to the starting spot to found Carthage in-place two turns late. Utica went 4 plots north (with 3 squares overlap with Carthage) to pick up the cows and more flood plains, and my 3rd and 4th cities went East (near the wheat) and West (to pick up the marble/cows/fish/clam). (As I recall the 2nd city was going to go West but there was a barb hovering so I went North instead)

Following a post by Obermot in the scoring thread about noone having tried a milking-cultural victory, I initially thought I’d try going for a maximize-population cultural victory. The idea was to be warlike at first, eliminate all rivals from the starting continent, then go into cultural/pop-grow mode, in the comparative safety of being separated by an ocean from everyone else.

Of course I rapidly realized that this was not the map for that kind of strategy. On this continent it takes some thought to find nine sites for the standard cultural cities, let alone lots of pop-maxing other sites. So I decided to just settle for wiping out Wang Kon then going for cultural – at least with my isolation and the noble difficulty level I knew I could switch off my science and not have to worry too much about being invaded by more advanced civs later on.

OTOH the nearby marble was perfect for my strategy, since most of the culture-generating wonders I was interested in were half-cost-with-marble ones. I built the Oracle to get the CS slingshot and a shrine (sorry, AU_Armageddon). Otherwise the plan was to build only wonders that give great-artist points, all in the capital, at least until the capital was generating so many great-artist points that there was little danger of other wonders in other cities spoiling the great-artist production. (At this point I hadn’t actually read godotnut’s guide to cultural wins so hadn’t realised this probably wasn’t the best strategy, but never mind!)

Oracle/slingshot came in 575BC, parthenon in 150BC (quick build thanks to the marble and working hills). Beyond that – I won’t say any more since, like Thrallia, I didn’t take a 500AD-ish save so I have no idea which of the events in my game were pre-500AD and so reportable here.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

btw the Saves available thread and the download page both say this game has a high sea level. Is that a typo? A starting continent this big, yet containing only two of the seven civs, suggests to me a low sea level map.

 

[lilnev]

500 AD. So far so good. I set myself the additional challenge of building all the World Wonders. Yes, all of them; except the shrines, as it's clearly impossible to monopolize the early religions, though I'll try to grab the later ones if I can. If you've never tried this, give it a shot. It's a good challenge.

Wonders built by me:
Stonehenge 1360 BC
Oracle 925 BC
Great Wall 900 BC
Temple of Artemis 625 BC
Parthenon 400 BC
Great Lighthouse 100 AD
Pyramids 125 AD

Wonders built by the AI:
none

The general strategy is to get three high-production cities fast, one of which must be coastal. Get a GE off the Great Wall (possibly augmented with a forge/engineer) to build the Pyramids.
I moved the warrior N and the settler SE to get a view. Not seeing anything particularly compelling, I returned to the start square to settle. Four plains hills and lots of floodplains. Built a worker while researching Ag and Masonry. That allowed me to put hammers into the Great Wall while I grew to size 2, then switched to a settler. I made a minor mistake here by starting Bronze Working right away. Slavery isn't very useful for Wonders (it'll eventually be great for granaries, forges, etc, but not for a while); I mostly wanted it for chopping, but my worker had plenty to do anyway.
I decided to put the second city 4 tiles due N of Carthage, coastal and within range of cows and crabs. The reason starting BW was a mistake is that this site really wants to expand to its full fat cross, and the best way to do that without wasting hammers is to found Judaism. I switched to Mysticism, Polytheism, Monotheism, but was beaten to it by four turns at the rather early date of 2200 BC. Oh well, make do. This site had some overlap with my capitol, which was helpful – these were the first tiles my worker improved.
Second city (Utica) started on the 'Henge right away, while Carthage grew to size 4 then paused to spit out another settler and a second worker. That meant Stonehenge would finish well before the Wall, but I was planning on picking up Metal Casting with the Oracle, so a forge + engineer could build my GE points. Third city (Hadrumetum) was founded SE of the marble (hooray!), starting the Oracle. I expect most people (with Carthage founded in place) would put a city W of the marble, bringing in fish and clams and not overlapping with Carthage. But that spot has no hills, and production is paramount. Overlap I can live with. Meanwhile I teched BW, AH, Priesthood, Wheel, Pottery by 1080 BC.
After a workboat, Utica started the Temple of Artemis. Ordinarily the coastal city would start the Great Lighthouse, but in this case no other city was going to be free soon, and the AI seems to prioritize the Temple (bizarrely, imho), so I wanted it fast. The Oracle did indeed get me MC, and I chopped/whipped a forge in Carthage to get an engineer up as fast as possible. Hadrumetum then took on the Parthenon, while Carthage was free to build buildings and more settlers/workers. I did the math twice before finishing the Temple of Artemis to make sure that my second Great Person would still be an engineer (first was a prophet, eventually to lightbulb Theology and found Christianity in 300 BC). It was, and I put the Pyramids in Utica, which in the meantime had finished the Great Lighthouse. I figured I would maximize my GP points there and turn it into my GP farm. I won't have much control over what types I get, but I'm OK with that. Quantity over quality.
Continuing the tech list: Writing, MC from Oracle, Sailing, Alphabet (only Wang Kon, though, and he wouldn't trade), Meditation, finish Monotheism, Theology from GP, Mathematics, CoL, Lit in 350 AD.
As of 500 AD, I've founded two additional cities (by the East River, and the Wheat/Cow/Horse site to the west). I'm in Representation-Slavery-OR, with Christianity as my state religion. The Sistine Chapel, Chichen Itza, and Hanging Gardens are all within 8 turns of finishing. Hopefully I'm pulling ahead tech-wise, but without any contact or any trading partners it's hard to know. I'd like to tech towards Optics, but I also need to get started on Notre Dame and the Hagia Sophia. My largest concern is that my focus on production has stunted my research (satellite cities are being cottage-spammed to help out), and without tech trading I might not be able to stay the leader on all branches of the tech tree.
More next time. Good luck to all.

peace,
lilnev

p.s. It crashed on me exactly once. Fortunately it was 500 AD, so I'd saved that very turn. I was just looking around my empire to plot the next stages.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Third city (Hadrumetum) was founded SE of the marble (hooray!), starting the Oracle. I expect most people (with Carthage founded in place) would put a city W of the marble, bringing in fish and clams and not overlapping with Carthage. But that spot has no hills, and production is paramount. Overlap I can live with.

Definitely an interesting decision, that one. I spent quite a lot of time deciding whether to build just west of the lake or just south of the lake (didn't consider your spot SE of the marble because I was in it for the long term and didn't want too much city overlap, and I already had Utica to the north overlapping with Carthage).

• South of the lake brings in good production early on and those horses fairly quickly. But the low food caps its growth quite severely.
• West of the lake brings in good resources but lower production. On the plus side you can build a lighthouse and so get 3 food from the lake, but on the minus side you can't even get the marble and cows until the cultural borders grow. (South requires culture to get the marble and horses, but at least the cows next to the city can get you an obelisk very quickly)

Both spots have lots of desert in the radius but that's a common theme on this map.

ISTM South is a much better short term spot but handicaps you in the long term, while West is useless in the short term but much better in the long term, so I suspect the placement really does depend on your long term aims. In the end, I picked West, and chopped the forest just west of the marble to get an obelisk - that decision was made a lot easier by the discovery of other sources of horse, and the lack of nearby Civs likely to require an early war.

 

[Kevin J]

How do you turn on logging? I have only a rough idea what I did by 500 AD, but I remember the start.

Moved warrior SW to hill - saw the marble and cow and moved settler to same hill west of the start location.

Sent warrior east exploring. Started researching agriculture.

Warrior popped after 8 turns, got agriculture. Sent warrior west exploring. Researching animal husb; city producing worker.

Met korea about this time. Hi Wang Kon!

After animal husb, roads then cottages.

Worker farmed wheat, then cattle. By this time have roads, set down a road. Then started cottages on flood plains.

Town is working on granary. Went for BW. Switched to slavery and rushed granary. Have city sites planned out.

2nd city -Hadrumentum- founded east of Carthage on coast 1W of flood plains - clams, oasis and flood plains in cross, for quick growth. 3rd city -Utica- quite a bit east of that, on a hill almost next to Korea - fishies in radius, as well as cattle. I know this land would be Wang's without me pushing there, hence why I've settled so far from home rather than close - I don't know how to warmonger. 4th city -Hippo- between 2nd and 3rd - Koreas not going to fill in this land between my cities, pluys there's a horse and wheat there. 5th -Kerkouane-north of Carthage on coast, picking up the cow there, and close to a couple flood plain sites for growth- but too far to grab the carbs.

I think I'm around 500 AD at this point, so I'd better stop. At that point, I still hadn't met anyone but Korea. I founded all religions that had been founded at this point (judaism, confucianism, christianity and taoism) except the first two, have 5 wonders (Stonehenge, Oracle, Pyramids and Parthenon in Carthage and Lighthouse in #2 city Hadrumentum)- but not the GW, which I got beaten to by a few turns. Barbs haven't been a problem - I think there is very little fog of war for them to pop out of. Because I have some religious diversity, judaism plus confucianism plus taoism (plus buddhism from Korea), I'm thinking of trying for culture . . .will it work? Around this time I stop paying close attention and start playing on autopilot. The quality of my game goes way downhill as I aim for a win by default.

Wait, I checked my replay save. Here's what happened:

huh, it says I started two sessions here. wtf.
3960 BC Carthage Founded
3640 BC Hindusism Founded Far Away
3520 BC Buddhism Founded (By Korea, it turns out)
2720 BC Adopt Slavery (so BW at this point)
1840 BC Adopt Organized Religion (Founded Judaism)
1720 BC Found Utica (City #2 above)
1320 BC I complete Stonehenge in Carthage
950 BC Found Confucianism in Utica (Religion #2)
900 BC Complete Oracle in Carthage--->CS and Bureaucracy
825 BC Found Hadrumentum (City #3)
775 BC -Some B@$t@rd steals the great wall from me
600 BC Christianity founded in Hadrumentum (Religion #3 for me)
425 BC Great Prophet and Temple of Solomon in 400BC
250 BC Hippo (City #4) founded
200 BC Taoism founded in hippo (Religion #4)
150 BC Kerkouane (City #5) founded
25 AD Great artist popped --> settled in City #3(Hadrumentum) Bordering Korea
50 AD Built Pyramids in Carthage-->Representation
375 AD Korea builds Temple of Artemis
450 AD I build great lighthouse in Hadrumentum (City #3)
450 AD Great Prophet--> Use to get Kong Miao in 500 AD
475 AD Korean City bordering Hadrumentum revolts to join me - I disband it.
500 AD Parthenon in Carthage

So I've got 4 religions, 5 cities, 5 wonders, and things look ok to aim for culture - which I've never done before, since I disable it as a winning condition in my normal games. I wish I'd stayed motivated and taken a break - I played straight through from the very start until the end of the game, and I'm getting more and more sloppy - even by 500 AD.

 

[Déja]

I don't recall all that many details for the early game, but I hadn't decided what VC I was going to go for until after this spoiler ends (big mistake). I went for rapid early expansion and founded four or five cities really early on, and for most of the early period of the game I was running at about 30% science. However, by using libraries instead of monuments to grow the cultural borders of cities, I ended up with competitive science output in spite of the low %. By 1AD, I was up to a nice 70% and making money by throwing down cottages on any floodplains I could find. I took the lead in tech pretty early on. I decided to play nice with Korea, since I was more interested in playing a peaceful game, and so we both spent the early game in massive rapid expansion. By the time that 500AD rolled around, I think I had about 6 or 7 cities, and though I converted to Buddhism to play nice with Korea, I still managed to found Christianity right around the 500AD cutoff, if I recall correctly.

 

[ainwood]

btw the Saves available thread and the download page both say this game has a high sea level. Is that a typo? A starting continent this big, yet containing only two of the seven civs, suggests to me a low sea level map.

No - it was specifically set to be high sea level. I figured that with two games a month, and this on 'noble', that a high sea level and 'normal' speed would allow a somewhat faster game.

 

[Ozbenno]

Definitely an interesting decision, that one. I spent quite a lot of time deciding whether to build just west of the lake or just south of the lake (didn't consider your spot SE of the marble because I was in it for the long term and didn't want too much city overlap, and I already had Utica to the north overlapping with Carthage).

• South of the lake brings in good production early on and those horses fairly quickly. But the low food caps its growth quite severely.
• West of the lake brings in good resources but lower production. On the plus side you can build a lighthouse and so get 3 food from the lake, but on the minus side you can't even get the marble and cows until the cultural borders grow. (South requires culture to get the marble and horses, but at least the cows next to the city can get you an obelisk very quickly)

West of the lake was where I went as its was (IMHO) a much better spot. Started building a work boat, once city is size 2, whip it and start a monument and repeat process. Cultural expansion isn't that far away to pick up cows, marble and clams.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

No - it was specifically set to be high sea level. I figured that with two games a month, and this on 'noble', that a high sea level and 'normal' speed would allow a somewhat faster game.

Interesting. Thanks for the consideration, it's appreciated. I certainly agree with you that high sea level and normal speed should allow a faster game, and that is something that does make it easier to play if you're pressed for time (which I always am). I suspect random chance must've seen that map have rather more land than typical for a high sea level map.

 

[CliftonBazaar]

I made a good start and started a few wars against Korea gaining ground each time.

But I had a really, really big problem this game - NOBODY would trade with me (errr ... before 500AD that is, wouldn't want to say anything about after that date ); Korea wouldn't trade before we went to war (we were even the same religion!) and when I beat them down they wouldn't give me any techs when they sued for peace; we kept waring, they kept losing AND WOULD NOT GIVE UP ANY TECHS!!

Made a huge army but couldn't find a second civ to beat up after Korea. So destroyed the Koreans to my East but the West end of the island has not been settled.

 

[Shillen]

How do you turn on logging?

The autologger mod is included in the HoF mod. If you go into the options menu there are 3 tabs for the HoF mod. I think the first tab has a checkbox to enable autologging.

But I had a really, really big problem this game - NOBODY would trade with me (errr ... before 500AD that is, wouldn't want to say anything about after that date ); Korea wouldn't trade before we went to war (we were even the same religion!) and when I beat them down they wouldn't give me any techs when they sued for peace; we kept waring, they kept losing AND WOULD NOT GIVE UP ANY TECHS!!

Here's how it works: If the you are the only civ that the AI knows then the AI will not trade techs with you unless you're either friendly with them or the AI happens to be Mansa Musa. As for the other AI's I'm guessing you were not the same religion so they were "annoyed with you" right off the bat. As I mentioned in my spoiler all that needed to be done is to gift them a tech for the +4 trade relations modifier and then they are willing to trade despite the different religion. Careful about that, though, as sometimes you end up with a trading with worst enemy modifier. Also, on higher difficulties it's usually a little harder to get +4, you might need to trade several techs to do so.

As for Wang Kon not giving techs for peace when you were winning the war that is definitely odd. I'm guessing he didn't think you were winning as much as you did. They value lost troops a lot, so if you take their cities but lose a ton of troops in the process then they think you are losing the war.