ALC Game 16: Persia/Cyrus

[LlamaCat]

I played about 50 (edit: probably more than 50??) turns in a shadow game. I suck at this level but I played with the general plan discussed. I think it is a tough situation either way where to settle that 2nd city. Nothing in this mini report gives anything away but just in case:

Spoiler :

I settled I SE of the horses, as Cabert is suggesting, to be on the coast and get the horses ASAP. Researched AH, wheel, mining, BW. Barb city appeared in the north, close to my horse city, and now I am bogged down trying to take them out with immortals. China and everyone else is racing ahead of course. Barbs already razed my horses once. Everyone's saying these Immortals are great but I have lost 2 against CG I fortified barb archer, so I'm not sure what to think yet... not that impressed. It seems like I need more than I can produce in 2 cities just to take out this stupid city?? Maybe the idea of settling the 2nd city north of the horses would have prevented the barbs from appearing?

 

[aelf]

I played about 50 (edit: probably more than 50??) turns in a shadow game. I suck at this level but I played with the general plan discussed. I think it is a tough situation either way where to settle that 2nd city. Nothing in this mini report gives anything away but just in case:

Spoiler :

The thing about Immortals is they are cheap and therefore spammable. Notice that people are talking in terms of 8-10 Immortals for the first attack. With axemen, you usually need about 6-8. 2 Immortals are not going to get you anywhere. You need to have a ratio of at least 2.5 Immortals : 1 archer to be sure. Even with a moderate-sized stack, you might lose half of them taking a city. They don't get CR promotions, you know. Hence, you need to keep building them. But they are fast, so getting fresh ones to the front is easy. The only problem is spearmen, but unless it's a Phalanx or a spearman on a hill, two or three Immortals should be able to beat one. Just make sure you pillage the iron/copper mines asap to stop the enemy from building more.

 

[Gr8scott]

My vote is for 1SE of horses.

I think the primary early objectives are to claim horses and build immortals. Ideally the second city has horses + food + hills. With this setup, the horse city becomes the immortal powerhouse. In our case, the horse city is not going to be a production power house. Live with it and plan accordingly. Yes you can make it so-so production with a lot of work and a lot of delay (2nd ring horses, masonry to work marble, etc.) Much better to just see the second city as a source of horses that facilitates taking over AI capitals.

Advantages of 1SE:

-Horses in first ring. no time / hammers wasted on monuments. (<== this is a big deal. Building monuments to get border pops is a big temptation and a bad idea imo at this stage...)
-Closer to capital ==> less maintenance
-Horses immediately connected to capital via coast/river system. All we need is to put a stable and a road on the horse tile and we are good to go.
-Capital has sufficient food/production to be primary source for immortals.
-Speed is vital since Qin is protective.

Strategy suggestions:
-grow capital while working on BW
-build warrior / start a barracks while growing. Ideally you want a barracks in your immortal producing city, but it is not essential.
-Whip a settler / overflow to worker? A second worker will be very helpful to help get horses going and build roads towards victims...
-Be ready to switch over to immortals production when horses get online.

Worker:
-get food specials developed then mine the hills (duh )
-Chop a barracks in capital perhaps?
-build roads towards Qin?

 

[Sisiutil]

You are going to overlap 6 tiles with your capital?

I've founded fishing villages with fewer workable tiles. In this case, spare citizens from the fishing village can work the capital's cottages when Persepolis' denizens cannot.

I played about 50 (edit: probably more than 50??) turns in a shadow game. I suck at this level but I played with the general plan discussed. I think it is a tough situation either way where to settle that 2nd city. Nothing in this mini report gives anything away but just in case:

With the last game, a valuable precedent was set of having a separate spoiler thread. I'd appreciate it if that was done again.

Sounds like most of you are advocating 1 SE of the horses as the 2nd city. It would certainly enable the Immortal rush. The other advantage is that there will be little danger of that city reaching its happiness cap anytime soon with so little food available! It won't be anything like a decent city until Bureaucracy enables chain irrigation.

Okay, let's assume I'll found city # 2 1 SE of the horses. What about barracks? Whip 'em, chop 'em, don't bother?

As for city #3, that should definitely wait until BW is finished and we know where copper is located.

 

[Hold The Onion]

I like having a barracks. Since you don't need monument you build barracks to grow with. shouldn't take long once horse tile is workable.

 

[Neoclast]

Ater much thought, my vote would be one north of the horses. Gets the Marble for the added production and the much needed Corn for growth. Another reason for this that AI love to get Marble and I am sure that if we don't hop on it Ghengis will.

EDIT: Going one North of horses would build Monument followed by barracks and then Q up the Immortals.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

It won't be anything like a decent city until Bureaucracy enables chain irrigation.

I know what you mean, but I would say the opposite. It will be a struggle to build a monument and a lighthouse, but once you do, you'll have adequate food to work 10 tiles and still have 2 surplus for growth. Or you can stagnate at 12 tiles and work both the horses and the grassland hill. Prior to the middle ages, that's a perfectly decent city -- not great but certainly OK. It's only later when you have enough health and happiness resources to grow further that you'll find food to be limiting.

It's also worth noting, however, that by moving BlueSoxSWJ's red city 1 tile west, you add 3 tiles of overlap (only 2 if you ignore the peak) with the blue city. The blue city has loads of food, so it will be able to work those 2 overlapped tiles. So that means that even if you only grow to 10, you can work 12 of the tiles. If you only grow to size 12, you can work 14 of the tiles.

For a city that's going to pick up 2 resources, enable your unique unit, and block access to your land from the north, I'd say you're doing just fine if it stagnates for a while at 10 or 12 population.

I worry more about what you're going to find to the west when you start taking over Chinese territory. Unless Beijing has two food resources hidden in the fog, it looks very food poor, and pretty much all the surrounding territory is similar. I see lots of brown.

 

[commofdoom]

1 SE of horses and wait for BW to show copper before you place 3rd.

 

[Hero]

My vote is for 1SE of horses.

I think the primary early objectives are to claim horses and build immortals. Ideally the second city has horses + food + hills. With this setup, the horse city becomes the immortal powerhouse. In our case, the horse city is not going to be a production power house. Live with it and plan accordingly. Yes you can make it so-so production with a lot of work and a lot of delay (2nd ring horses, masonry to work marble, etc.) Much better to just see the second city as a source of horses that facilitates taking over AI capitals.

Advantages of 1SE:

-Horses in first ring. no time / hammers wasted on monuments. (<== this is a big deal. Building monuments to get border pops is a big temptation and a bad idea imo at this stage...)
-Closer to capital ==> less maintenance
-Horses immediately connected to capital via coast/river system. All we need is to put a stable and a road on the horse tile and we are good to go.
-Capital has sufficient food/production to be primary source for immortals.
-Speed is vital since Qin is protective.

Strategy suggestions:
-grow capital while working on BW
-build warrior / start a barracks while growing. Ideally you want a barracks in your immortal producing city, but it is not essential.
-Whip a settler / overflow to worker? A second worker will be very helpful to help get horses going and build roads towards victims...
-Be ready to switch over to immortals production when horses get online.

Worker:
-get food specials developed then mine the hills (duh )
-Chop a barracks in capital perhaps?
-build roads towards Qin?

Don't we need Sailing for this?

 

[aelf]

With the last game, a valuable precedent was set of having a separate spoiler thread. I'd appreciate it if that was done again.

It was actually in a rather grey area but pertinent to the discussion in this thread itself. I think the full blown spoilers are the ones that need to be moved, since sometimes discussion happens between readers too.

 

[xanadux]

When reading through this, before anyone else mentioned it, I was thinking, how about 1 SE of horses? I don't think this is superior to 1N or 1NW of horses because of being closer to the capital for maintenance/quicker hookup of resource, but because of long term planning. Settling 1 SE of horses allows a future powerhouse city 1N of the corn on the west coast of the northern land area. In the short term, our horses city can work the horses plus the mined grassland hill for a not too shabby 7 hammers at size 2. We can worry about growth after war. Wherever we put the horse city, it will be sub-optimal. Either it will be a future good city but have to pop it's border to get horses, or it will be next to the horses and either be a mediocre/slow to grow city or it will prevent having a great city working the corn and fish. Put the horses in the first ring, and allow for that powerhouse corn/fish city by going 1 SE.

 

[Gr8scott]

Don't we need Sailing for this?

EEP. That's right. Well we have two choices. Either add a couple more roads to the worker queue or instruct the scouts to pop fishing/sailing

GS

 

[Syndrome Zed]

Here's a thought:

Go back to 1N of the horses, then during the interim time where you're connecting Persepolis to Faraway Horse City, crack that whip and get another settler and take city site #3, the gold/sheep city. By then you should have the horses hooked up, and the gold mine will offset the maintenance cost of Faraway Horse City as well as give you a good mustering point for your Immortals to hit Qin. Even if you settle before finding where the copper is, you should still have time to use your Immortals to take some from Qin if you need to.

 

[Hero]

@Zed: Would that make keeping Qin's capital too much of a drain on the economy though? Seems like at the least it might rule out keeping any other cities of his.

 

[patagonia]

I don't think it's worth building a 3rd city before rushing the Chinese.

While you're settling and connecting Horseville (none of the spots are ideal, but make sure horses are in the first ring), the capital can be building a second worker, barracks and monument and growing to the happy cap for maximum hammer production. Once horses are connected, it goes 100&#37; Immortals and doesn't stop until you've eliminated Bachelor number 1.

Any production from City 2 is incidental to be honest, and it'll never be great, but my preference would be for 1W of horses if pushed. City number 2's sole function in this game is to get you horses fast. The only infrastructure it needs is a barracks, eventually a monument and a granary. It can focus solely on military/workers etc after that allowing your newer, presumably better cities to focus on more useful things.

Dotmapping the remainder of the land exposed so far is going to be a waste of time. With an Immortal rush you're sacrificing your own REX for acquiring a neighbours - unless there's a particularly horrendous example of poor placement, I'd keep what the Chinese build for you, and if you happen to havea a big stack of veterans after they're eliminated, trim Khan's southern border...as an Imperialistic AI he tends to REX like crazy himself and you know you'll be fighting him sooner rather than later.

 

[Cookie Crumbs]

Rushing the Chinese as early as possible is important -Protective archers are a real pain to take down once borders start popping. Get Horses up and running ASAP, settle 1 SE of Horses. You can found/conquer more decent cities later.

 

[slaze]

couple thoughts...

I have some problems with 1SE. Being Charismatic, with your happiness and a monument you can get pop 6 cities, or 5 without a monument. If you go 1SE, you're stuck on 2 pop working max-production tiles, or you're growing at 1 food per turn. It just doesn't have any food.

The solution to the horse city is the corn. If you want to skip the monument, 1NW is the answer. It's comparable to 1N minus the Marble, which gets delayed until 1S of Dye, and it covers alot of tiles that you wouldn't otherwise reach. In terms of fat cross production, 1N is king. The monument delays you 1 and 1/5 Immortals and the time to get corn up and working right away, but you are gonna need them at some point to get to 6 pop.

I think you go either 1N or 1NW.

 

[Dr Elmer Jiggle]

I have some problems with 1SE. Being Charismatic, with your happiness and a monument you can get pop 6 cities, or 5 without a monument. If you go 1SE, you're stuck on 2 pop working max-production tiles, or you're growing at 1 food per turn. It just doesn't have any food.

City number 2's sole function in this game is to get you horses fast.

10 letters.

 

[Validator]

Sounds like most of you are advocating 1 SE of the horses as the 2nd city.

I think that if you look at all the posts since the update you'll find that support is pretty evenly split between the sites N and SE of the horses. I think we're all in agreement that there really isn't a good horse city site, we just disagree on which is less bad.

You were initially in favor of the N site but seem to have switched. What changed your mind? I haven't seen any compelling arguments in favor of the SE site. There's only a minimal saving in time to hook up the horses and while it will save a couple of gpt in distance maintenance I don't see how that makes up for having less short to midterm potential and not acquiring a source of marble. The biggest benefit of the SE site I suppose is that it leaves the coastal fish-corn site available, but is that really a city that you'll be founding any time soon?

What about barracks? Whip 'em, chop 'em, don't bother?

Before discussing barracks I think we need to discuss how you're going to move forward from this point. After the worker finishes I guess the plan was to start a settler immediately? Since either horse city site doesn't require a border expansion to connect the horses the real pressing thing at this point is to get the road built and to start improving tiles so your capital can start building immortals ASAP. With that in mind what about building a second worker before the settler?

The first worker can start with the pig pasture which will speed the second worker build time considerably. The two workers can then team up to build the corn farm and then build the road. With the corn farm and pig pasture both being worked while building the settler it should finish quickly (although it doesn't make use of the Imperialistic bonus ). With the road finished by the time the settler is done the settler can get to the site quickly and the workers can immediately start on the horse pasture.

While the horse pasture is being built the capital can start on a barracks or build another warrior for city garrison duty. Once the horses are hooked up I would have the capital build a couple of immortals for barb defense (they should be ok without promotions), then build/finish the barracks and then more immortals. After the horse pasture is done the workers can hurry back to the capital to mine the hills. Working the two food tiles the capital should grow very quickly to size 5.

The horse city will probably need to start with a monument (or barracks if Mysticism isn't complete).

 

[Validator]

I have some problems with 1SE. Being Charismatic, with your happiness and a monument you can get pop 6 cities, or 5 without a monument. If you go 1SE, you're stuck on 2 pop working max-production tiles, or you're growing at 1 food per turn. It just doesn't have any food.

City number 2's sole function in this game is to get you horses fast.

This doesn't really answer the question. First of all I disagree that quick horse connection is the sole function of city 2. It's the primary function, but that shouldn't stop us from trying to get additional use from the city.

The SE site's only speed advantage is that 1 less tile has to be roaded. 3 worker turns. No big deal IMO. Especially if 2 workers are available.