AK-02 american chopper

[Admiral Kutzov]

The writer's strike has me channel surfing more than usual. Not that I usually watch much more than food network, espn and history channel.

Tonight's choices really sucked so i settled for a rerun of American Chopper. That led me to an idea for a game (those that know me are now ducking and covering).

I've been searching for weeks for a mentor to learn me emperor. no joy to date. several compadres have suggested we could go commando (whoops, getting too personal there) wing it.

spies continued is about to wind up, so I need something to keep me out of trouble.

As I'm an emperor virgin, I'll keep this relatively simple.

HOF mod 3.13.01 (AFAIK, this incorporates Bhuric's patch)
Standard
Arboria (thus the chopper name)
Roosevelt (ind and org)
We lose if we don't build the Great Wall. (I like spies)
VC: just win
defaults

the start

the civ

the save: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/11866/AK-02_BC-4000.CivBeyondSwordSave

Roster:
open
trynthlas
quill18
wenz
pigswill
AK (my opening moves are idiotic, need the team to pick up the slack)

 

[Ozbenno]

Great name.

If I didn't have far too many games to juggle I'd request a spot but will lurk and maybe snipe from the sidelines.

EDIT: You've got to have some sort of variant to reflect the TV show (pity bikies aren't the American UU ), maybe to do with Gunships, I don't know.

 

[quill18]

quill18 here, checking in.

Is this normal speed? How many turns are we playing? (And do the first few rounds get more turns?)

Great name for a game. And yeah, if we get into any modern-age warfare, we should proudly wield our Gunship choppers.

I'm not experienced with the Arboria map script. If anyone has any observations to share with regards to it, please do. I'm at work right now so I can neither generate test maps nor load the save. The opening screenshot is cropped a little tight -- we can't really guess at the tiles to the west.

Given the information we've got, I'd move the warrior 1E to be sure, but probably settle in place -- even with the mountain. The only other potential moves would be settling 1E or 1SE, and that loses fresh water and potentially settles us on a hidden resource.

On my typical Big and Small maps, this sort of forested start (and the blank squares) would clearly indicate two hidden resources. Does that hold on Arboria as well? If so, we can probably count on at least one early strategic resource.

Americans start with Fishing/Agriculture? Fishing is obviously worthless at the moment. I believe our tech priorities are:

Hunting
Mining
BW
Masonry

I would research things in that order, but I'm not sure if that's optimal.

I would definitely build a worker first. Then probably 2x Warrior/Scout, another worker (lots of chops!). I'd use both workers to quickly chop out the GW and a settler or two. I often like to chop out Stonehenge too, but we may not want to pollute our Great Spy pool.

Following up with Poly/Priesthood and chopping the Oracle in our second city might not be a bad plan.

For the early game, I'd work farms and mines around our capital. Assuming we found another one or two good production cities, I'd consider coming back and cottaging over the grassland long-term.

EDIT: My research is indicating that Arboria is all about forested grasslands, so just about anywhere can become a site for cottage-spamming, not to mention chop-rushing a huge axe army and world wonders...

 

[Trynthlas]

Emperor eh? Well I'm nice and suicidal, so I'm game.

Is this normal speed? How many turns are we playing? (And do the first few rounds get more turns?)

More comments to come this weekend, as work is going to eat me alive today.

 

[wenz]

with AK01 almost over I like to participate in this.

I´m sorry, have no idea what american chopper is (I´m from soviet germany), so if You don´t want a "western culture" noob here I take no offense.

Could dig me into it in time though...

 

[quill18]

with AK01 almost over I like to participate in this.

I´m sorry, have no idea what american chopper is (I´m from soviet germany), so if You don´t want a "western culture" noob here I take no offense.

Could dig me into it in time though...

American Chopper is a reality TV program involving (primarily) a father and son running a workshop where they custom-build motorcycles (a.k.a. "choppers"). Mostly they just argue with each other.

Barring any further development of the theme, it looks like AK is just going for a play on words, since we are playing as Americans on a map that requires a lot of Chopping. "Chopper" can also mean Helicopter, hence the discussion of the Gunships.

Relevant links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopper_%28motorcycle%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Chopper

 

[wenz]

thanks Quill for the enlightment!

I´m such an idiot . By the sound of it, I thought "american chopper" was a TV series in the 60s/70s like A-team, hence my comment about western culture

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Is this normal speed? How many turns are we playing? (And do the first few rounds get more turns?

Normal speed. More turns for the first few rounds.

In my limited experience with arboria, it is a single landmass that is heavily forested.

On my typical Big and Small maps, this sort of forested start (and the blank squares) would clearly indicate two hidden resources. Does that hold on Arboria as well? If so, we can probably count on at least one early strategic resource.

Not sure. Resources that aren't hidden are going to be very scarce; lots less than you're used to.

the title is mainly just a play on words.

I will probably start saturday afternoon, my time. I'll finalize the roster order once I get two more players.

 

[pigswill]

I'll give it a go (if you'll have me). I've won on monarch.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

(if you'll have me)

certainly, I have vague recollections of us playing in an SG in C3. Welcome aboard.

Waiting on a response to PM from a literary monk as to the final roster spot.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Housekeeping items. Standard size, normal speed. The usual as far as being polite and timely. See Deviant Minds and LK series for edification.

I like discussion and probably babble too much for my own good. So feel free to float outside the box ideas.

First person will play 40turns, next two or three twenty five. thereafter we will go 15 unless we're at war, in which case it will be 10.

A reasonable amount of spam is encouraged; it helps the story and entertainment value. 1-5 screenies per set is encouraged.

I'd like everyone to keep in mind "logical breaks". i.e. you've played 13 turns, a tech finishes and you have no reasonable plan. Just stop and cede the extra 2 turns to the next better player. What goes around, comes around. Having said that, don't be hesitant to pause for discussion. If you're five turns into a set and have a question, take a break and ask for advice. We'll let you finish after we hash it out.

General silliness with an eye on the game is encouraged. Have fun with it. If we lose, it will only be like my third SG loss (so I have no worries about competing with pholkhero).

To keep things moving along, I'm proposing this order:

quill18
wenz
trynthlas
pigswill
open, pending PM
AK

IIRC and I've counted correctly, that puts us pretty much in order east to west.

@ quill, I put you first. If you don't want to go first, let me know and I'll ask for a volunteer. don't start until we get a little more discussion about the homeland.

My thoughts on the start in the next post.

@ ozbenno - sniping is encouraged

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Yeah, I probably did crop that starting screenie a little too tight, but all you're really missing to the west is more trees (or is it forest?).

I took the liberty of moving the warrior one east as suggested by quill. found this:

I agree with hunting -> mining -> bronze

I would definitely build a worker first. Then probably 2x Warrior/Scout, another worker (lots of chops!). I'd use both workers to quickly chop out the GW

I'll also go with the worker first and then two warriors (with an eye on woodsmen3 for one of them).

A-team

one of the great tv shows. always a cute girl in distress, Mr. T always built some sort of tank to save the day. We used to bet how many times he'd say "sucker". Ah the memories.

anyway, my vote for settle in place. silver, deer, fresh water, 3 hills. what do ya want? 5 cows?

official start in about 16+ hours. get your comments in.

gotta secure that marble.

 

[Trynthlas]

I think I'm probably the least experienced player here, so feel free to point out any errors in judgement

I don't know what's west of us, but who cares? (yet) My instinct would be to settle 1 SE of the start position, so we can secure the marble with the capitol. We still get the deer and the silver as well, plus a bunch of nice hills and enough grasslands to cottage that the capitol city strikes me as a perfect hybrid, and great for bureaucracy (with marble early, AND silver, we should be able to get the CS slingshot, no?). I know we lose the fresh water from being next to a river, but I think it's worth the tradeoff. I'm also tempted to suggest an early wonder-building strategy, mostly the ones that will get a bonus from marble. Temple of Artemis is a great boost to early trade.

Builds: worker->warrior(s) til pop2->worker->chop settler
Techs: Mining->BW->Masonry (gotta get the GW and hook up the marble) -> beeline for oracle & CS slingshot

Well, that's my $0.02

 

[quill18]

I've run a couple map tests now that I'm home:

- The maps are single continents, no islands. Just big pangeas. Very rectangular.
- The maps do loop east-west like a normal globe.
- Virtually every starting location has 2-3 deer in the BFC.
- Deer is plentiful. Other health resource are EXTREMELY rare. On the test map where I counted, I found 3 pigs, 1 cow, 1 sheeps. That was IT for livestock for the whole map. Corn/Rice/Bananas are similarly rare.
- Happy resources EXTREMELY rare. Map I looked at had 1 silver, zero gold, zero gems, 2 dyes.
- Stone/Marble rare. Might have a total of 3-4 (not of each type) on the map.
- Horses/Copper/Iron are common enough that we should have access to them as reliably as a normal game.
- There's a generous amount of space around each civ. Axe rushing may be difficult.

This leads me to a few conclusions:
- We are EXTREMELY blessed to have silver.
- Health is going to be a huge problem long-term. Settling on fresh water should be a high priority. Freshwater lakes (like the one to the SE) and rivers are critical.
- We probably have a second deer in our BFC, to the west or north.
- I do not want to move our settler off the river.
- 1SE of the marble will probably be a sweet site for city #2.
- Happiness is going to be a huge problem. Can our silver + desire to get Priesthood be used to pop a religion?
- Civs with access to stone and/or marble will be rare. We have marble, are industrious, and have forests to spare. We can dominate the wonder market.
- The amount of space will likely lend itself to developing a strong cottage/wonder economy to support early REXing, rather than an early rush.

After looking at a handful of Arboria maps and comparing our starting location, I really do not like the idea of moving. We'll almost certainly lose a deer. Especially if we're building the GW first, I think we can afford to wait for our 2nd city before working the marble. 1SE of the marble nets our new city 2 resources without a border expansion AND fresh water AND no overlap with our capital.

Builds: worker->warrior(s) til pop2->worker->chop settler
Techs: Mining->BW->Masonry (gotta get the GW and hook up the marble) -> beeline for oracle & CS slingshot

Where does hunting fit in? Skip it, since we can at least farm to boost growth? Do we want Pottery to accelerate our research, since CoL and Math are fairly beefy techs, even with silver? I've never done a CS Slingshot. The things I haven't done could fill a very large book...

Or do we get out a Library and two scientists? Yeah...that'd probably be best. An early Academy would do wonders for us, especially if we cottage our capital. With the silver, I think we should plan on the capital being our commerce heavyweight. Though keep in mind that if we do found a religion (Confucianism?), it should pop in our second city.

So capital = science/commerce, 2nd city = wealth/commerce. Early game, of course, they'll probably just work mines and be production houses...

 

[pigswill]

I've been having a degree of success in recent games by getting worker early, then growing city to its happy cap before thinking about first settler.

My thoughts would be something like: settle in place, build worker. Build warriors/archers while awaiting masonry, Once masonry is in build/chop Gwall asap (without whipping). Start with mining (silver) and hunting (deer) in either order. Next three techs would be archery (archers), BW (chopping) and masonry (Gwall). I'd probably go for archery before BW because I think warriors are basically naff and archers actually have a chance of surviving barbarians.

By the time Gwall is built our city should be on max pop and can then start knocking out settlers and workers at a decent rate. (If you hadn't noticed already this approach is based on Snaaty's recent thread on surviving higher levels).

 

[Shadzy19]

Lurkers comment.

Nice starting position ! Its bound to be a bit food poor but with the rare silver in the BFC and so many forest coupled with industrious and marble nearby is hax!

I would go hunting > mining > bw > mys > masonry > the wheel > poly > (you need it for TGL anyway, while meditation is near useless ) > priesthood
and grab mc , theo , monarchy or col (in case u go for col get meditattion in stead of poly) , just time the oracle right , the early silver means you have many option since the techs will come in fast.

worker > warriors untill bw comes in , another worker helped by a chop > stonehenge > gw > oracle
2 early workers to irrigate/mine/chop will speed things up greatly , no early settlers unless the AI's start really close.

 

[wenz]

Very good observations so far!

Quill is right about the lay of the land. Health and Happy ressources are really rare, deer and forests are plenty. However, there is not always that much space around, sometimes a neighbor can be very near.

We are Ind/Org, that means we get half priced forges and courts. Building the Oracle to get one of the techs for these would be the uber chopper?!

Other than that and Great wall, I would suggest we expand quickly. Just settle all the land and think about economy later. I would make our capital a worker/settler factory for some time. Second city can train units for new settlements. Food and Hammers all the way, baby.
(silver is enough commerce for basic research, and if something goes wrong, we will have a great spy)

I overcame my revolutionary chop&whip-at-random days, now I like to improve tiles first and work them at the happy cap. That said, hunting first for deers is a given for me. Then mining, bronze, myst, masonry, ->priesthood, then pottery or writing, depending on which tech we wanna take with oracle.

If we don´t have copper near and no immediate neighbor, I wouldn´t bother with horses or iron, just a quick detour to archers and we are set with defense. Oh, and by the way, just settle in place..

Build order like this: worker-warrior-warrior-worker-great wall, then see obove

In short: first REXing like mad, and later vertical growth with forges, courts and monarchy.

 

[pigswill]

We certainly need to explore the neighborhood early on. Proximity of neighbours will have a major effect on our early strategy.

Barbs could potentially be a major problem particularly as fog-busting will be very challenging and resource intensive with all the forests breaking line-of-sight.

However there does seem to be a consensus on hunting, mining while going worker first then warrior(s). That's probably enough for an initial set, maybe stopping after these techs are completed. With more map info we can then think about what comes next.

 

[Trynthlas]

Where does hunting fit in? Skip it, since we can at least farm to boost growth? Do we want Pottery to accelerate our research, since CoL and Math are fairly beefy techs, even with silver? I've never done a CS Slingshot. The things I haven't done could fill a very large book...

Hunting fits wherever we feel we need it, with the extra commerce from the silver mine it's a quick tech and we could probably even pick up archery if we wanted to. Personally I don't like the deer resource, it's one of the weakest imo. Of course, work with what you have, so like I said hunting is a quick detour (after the silver mine). Pottery is on the path to writing if I remember right, so that's where we'd pick it up.

I think that we should aim to have mining researched by the time our first worker is built, if we can fit hunting before that, great, but my priority would be to hook up the silver ASAP.

As far as the other opinions on moving, if health resources are that rare, ok, sit on the river and settle in place - however I wouldn't do it just to grab another deer. Gaining the marble for losing a deer is a great trade

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

However there does seem to be a consensus on hunting, mining while going worker first then warrior(s). That's probably enough for an initial set, maybe stopping after these techs are completed. With more map info we can then think about what comes next.

Sounds right. I'm starting to lean to hunting, mining, bronze, archery then the religious path to get oracle and COL. Sounds like we have a plan for the first set.

the monk is awol, so the the last roster spot is open.

quill18
wenz
trynthlas
pigswill
AK
open

quill, start us off whenever you're ready.