Let's actually start with the map on t270 (AD 1), and then organize events thematically:
Cities - on t173, I had 3 left after the Barbarians razed Pataliputra. I rebuilt that city and founded 4 more, so I have 8 now.
• Pataliputra (t181, 890 BC): I've kept the old name. Only works two Flood Plains, leaving the rest to Bombay. I'm about to flip one more from Ragnar. Apart from that, the city runs Scientists and converts its single hammer to Wealth. Getting the Library was a bit tough; worked a Desert Hill Mine for some time, then whipped.
• Agra (t211, 590 BC): At the border to Saladin, stealing his Cow. The main reason for founding this city so early was that it would have food in its inner ring. That's also what I liked about the Pataliputra spot. When I started the settler, I had intended to race Saladin for the Cow, lost that race, but it didn't really matter because Saladin founded his city two tiles away, as I later learned, in order to also reach the Iron farther east. I guess it's the kind of city that high-level BtS players found a lot of – a couple of food resources and not much else, which is good enough for Slavery. That's how I've been using the city too, also because I felt the need for a (military) production city at that point. Got a Granary there (chopped), Barracks (my only one so far), Spearman (double-whipped), Axeman, Lighthouse (double-whipped, overflow into Pyramids).
• Calcutta (t223, 470 BC): On the peninsula S of Delhi. Had to spread borders through a Monument there, so the city hasn't really developed yet. My intention is to mine all 4 (non-Desert) Hills for a production-focused city not reliant on Slavery. I probably would've settled Lahore first if I had had IW at the time.
• Lahore (t241, 290 BC): NE of Delhi. I was going to place this farther west, covering the Oasis (which has now been orphaned). After discovering IW on t233, the eastern spot became more attractive – mainly because it denies Iron to Ragnar; I've got another source right by my capital. Ragnar says he has nothing to gain from importing Copper, so I suppose he must have a source, but it's a mystery where. He's not training any Copper units. So it's not clear how much this city is hurting him for now.
• Madras (t270, AD 1): Nothing special; Rice and Jungle Banana, both in the outer ring, will take some time to develop. But it's right next to my captial, i.e. negligible distance maintenance, easy to reach for workers.
My
old cities have mainly produced a lot of units. The first two, Delhi and Bombay, have Libraries, both whipped as they weren't getting much production. (Delhi has fairly high production now due to its Iron source.) They also both have Academies now (more on that later). I've been starting a lot of Granaries just recently; 4 cities are working on them. I don't intend to use Slavery much in those cities – in fact, I've just switched to Caste System for a while – it's really either for +2 health or to help population growth. My 3rd city, Vijaynagara in the north had been kept at size 2 until IW. Now that the Gems are defoliated and the northern riverbank is being improved, the city is growing.
All my cities have stayed pretty small, well below the happiness cap, mainly because I can still grow horizontally. Emblematically, I have just one Cottage so far, built only recently. But this is also due to my two Desert Gold Mines; if it weren't for those, I would've cottaged the majority of my Flood Plains.
I've 4 more sites marked for
future cities. [
Edit: Oh, those aren't visible in the screenshot. 2 in the northern jungle, 2 along the NW jungle coast and 1 on the SW islands, covering Crab, Clam and mainland Cow. So, 5 actually.] The ones in the north I could more easily be beaten to, but they'll also cost more maintenance and need more attention from workers. If I don't get them, it might not be too difficult to conquer them in the medium term. Will become clearer once I finally explore the north, where, apparently,
5 4 [
edit] of my continent's 8 civs have their home. It's also time to do that for the sake of trade routes: Madras only gets domestic routes currently. And I may also be able to sell more resources in the north, especially now that I'm connecting jungle resources.
I've been reluctant to
explore earlier because I needed my units against the Barbarians, and more units cost more production. (It's also more fun to explore the map later.) Well, units are pretty cheap to make on Marathon, but I've noticed that
unit cost and away-supply are painful – probably should be tweaked a little. If units are relatively cheap, then they should also cost -somewhat- less to maintain. However, the high Barbarian pressure resulting from the spaciousness of the map is important to bear in mind, and I'm OK with unit expenses being a bigger factor on Marathon in general; having to pay closer attention to that is interesting for a change. Anyway, I found myself withdrawing my lookouts into my borders as soon as the Barbarian threat allowed. Especially during the slog to Currency, having to pay 4 GPT in supply and another 3 in unit cost was unacceptable, almost as high as city expenses at that time —
Which is another balance issue with either Huge map size or Marathon:
City expenses have felt too lenient. I'm more used to playing on Emperor and smaller maps, that may bias me a little, and I've kept my citizenries small, but still: For Agra and Calcutta, my 5th and 6th city, both founded beyond what should be considered the inner ring of cities around the capital, the (pretty reliable) projected expenses on the found-city button were 0, i.e. my income immediately increased through the single (at that time) trade route and commerce in the city center. Only my last two cities have strained my economy a little bit. It's probably mainly distance maintenance that needs to be increased; seems like I can settle forward with abandon.
Tech path – here's a screenshot highlighting the techs I've discovered or started (Construction) since my last post:
Doing Currency before IW was perhaps a little extreme. I should've considered the potential Iron tile yields and the strategic value of knowing where Iron is located more. That said, Currency has a way of becoming a bigger roadblock the longer one puts it off. Another factor I should've considered ealier is
bulbing – especially with a Phi-Spi leader that wants lots of specialists and few Golden Ages (on Marathon). After Mathematics, until Education, Great Scientists will only bulb Alphabet. Of course Alphabet is pretty useless in a No Tech Trading game. So probably I should've already put off Mathematics - doing IW first - in order to bulb Math. Or I could've bitten the bullet and bulbed Alphabet while researching IW after Math. This would've sped up Currency (Alphabet being an alt. req.) about as much as my Academy did and would now allow my next Great Scientist to bulb Philosophy.
As it is, I've placed Academies in Delhi (t199) and Bombay (t268). Having switched to Caste System on my last turn played, perhaps I can avoid further Great Scientists until I get close to Education – by running Merchants instead. Ideally: Merchants in the non-Academy cities, helping me increase the research slider, which benefits the Academy cities.
Getting IW right before Calendar has also lead to a bit of a worker shortage starting around t250. I increased my worker count to 8 then (having seen the problem coming 15 turns earlier or so), but some needed builds still got delayed.
The aim with CoL was mainly to enable Caste Sytem and Civil Service. (Confucianism was founded almost 50 turns earlier, probably by one of the 4 unmet civs.) Before spending 25+ turns on Civil Service, I want to get Construction in the bag.
Plans for war: I'm content with peaceful expansion. Saladin's good cities are far away from me, and Ragnar serves me well as a weak buffer. My aggressive eastern expansion has boxed him in; he may have exhausted his room for expansion at his present 4 cities, without Iron, and his 2nd city is under my culture pressure. He may, however, have a remote Copper city somewhere. Of course this situation will motivate Ragnar, if he's not a complete milquetoast, to start a war. As for (random)
personalities, there is a bit of an info leak in the mod as I've come to realize: The attitude threshold for opening borders is one higher when the AI has not seen any land tile owned by its trade partner ("nothing to gain") – which is often the case when the first meeting occurs. A total of 11 AI personalities (out of 52) will open their borders even when Annoyed. Normally, this can't be tested because the AI is Cautious in the early game, not Annoyed, but, with the stricter threshold, membership in that group of 11 is easy to check. In this game, Tokugawa (met on t173), Julius Caesar (t187), and Boudica (t205) were willing to open their borders on the first meeting without having seen mine. Joao (t203) was not willing. For the southern hemisphere, i.e. Sal, Ragnar and Kublai, I didn't check in time. The border-opening personalities are predominantly peaceful types (major exceptions: Ragnar, Stalin) with correspondingly high peace weights.
(I guess I'll close this minor loophole by having everyone require Pleased attitude for Open Borders when having nothing to gain. Only when playing with Random Personalities, that is. Or maybe it's more of a feature than a bug, sometimes providing an unreliable first hint at the true personality upon establishing contact? Having 3 easy-OB leaders among 7 rivals in this game was unusual. Let's perhaps first see how accurate my predictions even turn out to be.)
As the Glance tab (on t223) shows ...
... Tokugawa, Julius and Boudica are Pleased with each other (except Toku vs. Boudica) despite, mostly, having just +1 or +2 relations. The Random Personalities option hides first-impression and rank-based modifiers. So it seems pretty likely that those are all peaceful personalities. Joao is also on -mostly- good terms with them and vice versa, perhaps he's similarly meek.
Then, not visible in the screenshot, when I first met Boudica on t205, she was the worst enemy of Kublai Khan at +/-0 relations. -3 is needed for that in the mod. Curiously, 18 turns later, the hidden modifiers have increased by at least 2. i.e. he's no longer even Annoyed (that starts at -2). Ranks haven't changed much but, I guess, the score ratio between Kublai and Boudica has become more even. My best bet is that Kublai is sensitive about ranks and also has a peace weight somewhat (but not totally) dissimilar from Boudica's. Which is to say, a bit of a hardass.
Kublai, in turn, has fairly warm mutual relations with Sal and Ragnar, again through hidden modifiers. But they don't dislike anyone, so I peg them as middle-of-the-road personalities. So, Ragnar's Pleased attitude toward Sal and toward me (from Buddhism) might or might not strongly dissuade him from war. Saladin currently is Pleased with both Ragnar and Kublai. He will perhaps convert to Buddhism if it spreads to one more city (so far: two), but, even then, remains a potential threat. And Kublai, being Pleased with Ragnar, could well attack me through Ragnar's territory. So far, none of them is overtly building up units. Ragnar does have 3 Horse Archers in 1 AD, and him having bothered to research HBR in the first place is perhaps a bad sign. Sal has gathered 2 Axemen in his city at my border, on top of the regular 2-Archer garrison, but that's just the logical place to park any idle attackers. When I last scouted out Kublai, there were just Archers and a single Spearman (but Kublai has Iron, as does Saladin). Also noteworthy: Ragnar and especially Saladin are still struggling against the Barbarians. They're not losing cities, but I've lately seen Barbarian Archers from Sal's eastern border having roamed (and pillaged) almost up to the western coast. And Kublai Khan may still have a decent amount of (jungle) space for peaceful expansion.
I'll keep producing the occasional combat unit because, once I notice rival buildup, it'll be tough to start from scratch, i.e. from just some Archers scattered across my sizable domain. And it's also conceivable that someone attacks Ragnar and that I'll want to conquer at least Ragnar's capital in order to limit the gains of the invader. Expensive units will give me more power per (GPT) unit cost. I can already produce Swordsmen, but Catapults will be even better from that angle. Once I have Construction, I'll also be able to unlock War Elephants within a dozen turns if need be. (But I'd rather skip it as long as I can.)
Future tech plans: I see myself headed toward having almost 50% more cities and territory than most of my rivals. Once I consolidate that, I should get a sizable tech lead, and the safest and, at least in terms of turns played, fastest way to win from there will be a big war of conquest against whichever targets. The Middle Ages are too early for realizing this plan, so I'll want an (early) early modern unit. Could use Cuirassier, Rifleman or Cannon (possibly followed by Grenadier). And I'll definitely want to be first to Liberalism. To that latter end, I only need the following techs:
Civil Service, Paper, Philosophy, Education (bulb), Liberalism.
Cuirassier will require these additional techs:
HBR, Aesthetics, Literature, Music, Gunpowder, Nationalism, Military Tradition
Rifleman requires:
Metal Casting, Machinery, Alphabet, Guilds, Banking, Gunpowder, Printing Press, Replaceable Parts, Rifling.
Cannon requires:
Metal Casting, Machinery, Engineering, Gunpowder, Chemistry, Steel
Most of those techs aren't terribly useful to me by themselves. Literature, somewhat, for the National Epic, Metal Casting for Forge, Banking for a detour to Economics for the free Great Merchant. (I don't think I could reach Music in time for the Great Artist.) Off the paths, Monarchy and Feudalism would be useful for their civics, and Feudalism would also speed up Guilds on the Rifling path. Still, the Rifling path is easily the longest. Between Cuirassier and Cannon, it's a tougher choice. Speed is going to matter less on Marathon, and Cannon packs a bigger punch. So I'm leaning toward that path, to be interleaved with the Liberalism path, starting with Civil Service once Construction is done. Whenever I start Metal Casting, a preliminary choice will have been made.
A note about the
Pyramids: Baffling that they're still available in AD 1 in a 12-civ game. Actually, behold the wasteland that is the Wonders tab:
I've started the Pyramids on t260 (100 BC) in Agra, after, at long last, connecting my Stone source. The construction is running on the backburner, receiving whip overflow. I'm not counting on finishing it, but, who knows, and it's worth finishing because, with the Cannon plan, I won't come near Constitution. Why has the AI not been constructing wonders? For one thing, I haven't met any Industrious leader yet. More importantly, the high Barbarian activity and abundance of space for expansion pose major distractions from all buildings, and Marathon makes buildings extra costly compared with units. But there may also be a sneakier reason: The placement frequency formula for all
strategic resources has a per-player component – which makes sense if the aim is to give everyone access to strategic resources
eventually. On a sparsely populated map, empires will be bigger, so fewer strategic resources need to be placed. In other words, I suspect that few civs, if any, had early access to Stone or Marble on this map. Perhaps for Stone, Marble, Horse, Copper and, to a lesser extent, Iron, the per-player aspect needs to be dialed down in favor of the constant placement rate. The
tech pace is actually also lagging behind the game year, with me and Ragnar, two of the (Gold-endowed) tech leaders, still researching Construction, for which I've been aiming at a ca. 300 BC discovery date (on account of Catapult) when revising the years-per-turn progression. The lag isn't dramatic and will likely be reversed later in the game. Generally, I don't think the mod should adjust to a non-default player count; should rather assume that any consequences (such as more Barbarian activity) are intended by the player. That being said, it would be desirable to extend AI code for dealing with the Raging Barbarians option to also affect undercrowded games or, better, to replace any existing yes-no checks for extraordinary Barbarian pressure with a threat value, for more nuanced AI behavior.
Lastly, how did I actually fare against the
Barbarians? Land units were only a minor distraction in this millennium, with just 4 Warriors appearing near my borders on t175, t185, t191, t192 and then no land units for more than 50 turns. I did get the impression that those Warriors appeared very readily in small holes (1 or 2 tiles) of fogged non-Jungle tiles and that Jungle tiles were almost always spared; a single Archer spawned in a 2-tile Jungle patch NW of Delhi on t246. I may need to tweak those probabilities a little. It also worries me that no Copper-based Barbarians showed up at all. I would've expected them to start appearing soon after t200. Will have to investigate this later.
At sea, Barbarian Galleys tend to appear sooner than I expect them; in this game, on the same turn that I finished my first Galley (t177). That first one did not enter "my" bay (where Delhi, with 1 Fish, and Bombay are situated), moved somewhere SE, briefly severing my trade connection with Kublai Khan, returned a while later (or it may have been a different one) and then got killed by the Mongols. Since a single Galley is only a barebones defense against sea Barbarians and because I was going to have two more Fish at stake in the SE (Agra, Calcutta), I produced another Galley around that time. I also (mostly) kept both Galleys near the entrances to my bay and to Saladin's (where 3 Arabian cities and Agra sit). Fog-busting the islands near me and Sal in the SW would've required several more Galleys. Just three more Barbarian Galleys came my way in total, all between t236 and t258, and all died attacking my Galleys at 20-something percent odds. Just one of them had cargo, a single Archer, which got dropped next to Calcutta, where I had kept two units at hand for this eventuality. All fair enough so far.
I know only of two Barbarian cities, one on the scarcely explored continent in the far northwest (units encountered there make clear that it's really a remote part of my own continent) and one east of Arabia. That seems few for such a spacious map, but, at least along my own borders, I had been fog-busting a lot, so maybe more cities were placed in the unknown parts of the map. The city placement rate gets the same Marathon adjustment as Barbarian units, i.e. a divisor of 225%. Using the same adjustment as for settlers, i.e. 250%, would be more intuitive - but would lead to even fewer Barbarian cities.
Will have to end on this boring note lest I add more verbiage.
) today; that worked out as planned. Will get a bigger chunk in tomorrow or the day after I think.
weights <Ctrl+E>?" Could be shown as an on-screen message by default or optionally as a popup with a button that leads directly to the Espionage screen ("Let's see the big picture" / "No, not right now") or optionally not be shown at all.
