ALC Game 17: Russia/Peter

[jerVL/kg]

One thought, if Ragnar is your only neighbor on this landmass if you kill him early you won't have any trading partners until Optics. That denies you one of the strengths of your game.

Actually, if Ragnar's the only civ on this continent you can't trade with him at all, since he'll have a "perceived monopoly" on all his techs. Only Mansa Musa will trade monopoly techs below Friendly. But I'm willing to bet there's another civ or two south of Ragnar.

 

[svv]

I like Mangle's map.

 

[Yeosol]

The problem with Mangle's map is the copper city has no food. Maybe it dosn't need it though. I don't think blocking off ragnar is that important. I doubt he would settle to far north that you couldn't place that brown city anyway and you should be more concerned with a speedy copper hookup. If your gona rush Ragnar (which I think you pretty much have to) comit to it fully.

 

[bugstud]

brown #1 obv. I suggest copper city as 1n of copper with fish/whale copper, then a city 1n of the west fur for 2fish 2fur.

 

[EEE_BOY]

Vote for Validator 's dotmap.
u need to see where horse is and decide where to go your 2nd city

 

[MangleMeElmo]

MangleMe's blue dot is interesting, since it's the only way to spread irrigation eastward. However, you'll only be able to irrigate ONE tile, unless you farm over the cows. Probably not worth it. I'd rather build two cities as shown -- northern blue dot gets wheat, fish & cows, good production site. Southern blue dot will probably need an extra flood plain from Moscow to be viable. But I'd wait for AH & BW before settling either of these sites.

I see your point. Those stupid hills are going to make it impossible to spread irrigation over to the eastern cities. However, my proposed fish city obviously doesn't need farms, the other two might struggle to grow.

 

[oyzar]

i just gotta say i am savagly impressed by the missmicromanaging in the start... there is no reason to not grow as fast as possible. working plain forest / floodplains every other turn is stricly better than working the grassland forest(same yield over 2 turns cept 1 more commerce). After you grow you can also swich to a more hammer focused title's that are worked so you get the scout asa after growing... this would have let you gotten BW faster and hence been able to whip the worker asap(as i explained in the pregame thread) and basically come out the same as if you went with worker first... now it is waaaay too late... why the heck didnt you just stop after BW???? you should have whipped at once... getting out those early workers help soooo much it is not funny...

also much good the scouts did you... it is just like the mehemed game all over again(getting early scouts that slow your development so much that you get hopelessly far behind)... Scout first is only good if you are on a very large land mass with multiple AI's to fight for the goody huts.. safe to say this doesn't happen very often. You need to be more flexible in your thinking . This game you do however have neighours to save you out from the fate of the mehemed game and it looks like you can just settle your little strip oif land then take out ragnar with a force of mostly axemen.

 

[sneaky]

I support Validator dotmap. The question is whether to first settle the lower city and block off Ragnar, or to go straight for the copper. Because you already have blocked off Ragnar's access to the north part of the island with your capital, I would suggest to go ahead and settle the copper city and wipe Ragnar out. After that check out if there are other civs or not and adjust your play accordingly.

 

[RubiconNH]

I too vote for Validator's map and settling the copper first. I think wiping out Ragnar as quickly as possible is way to go. I tend to get a little claustrophobic in a lousy starting location like this.

The AI definitely has a twisted sense of humor. We really got shafted with those scouts. Oh well. At least we have our health [rim shot].

 

[Porphyrius]

Disapointing... This is well below average land. I mean the only non seafood food tile is a non-irrigatable wheat, plus no extra rivers or lakes whatsoever. Few and poor resources overall. Imean its way north so most likely theres hidden oil, uranium and aluminium probably, but still... Hopefully theres horses and/or iron though they'd mostly bring in s, witch are plentiful in all those hills.

I have to agree with Oyzar as far as the early micromanagment issue. Plus if BW was later in the research que the worker could start on the cows. Generally, id also take a over this early. One gets enough from the pallace and rushing workers/settles/growth a couple is preferable to research in most situations. Its not the end of days thoough, im pretty sure Ragnar is still well handlable.
The scout thingy though is an entirely different matter, mere bad luck. What the RNG gives (in one ALC-JK), the RNG takes(in a next)...

Actually, if Ragnar's the only civ on this continent you can't trade with him at all, since he'll have a "perceived monopoly" on all his techs. Only Mansa Musa will trade monopoly techs below Friendly. But I'm willing to bet there's another civ or two south of Ragnar.

Yup. But it could be just one more civ, so leaving him with just one poor placed city that hasnt produced much culture yet is advisable until the whole continent is maped out.

As for citie sites, the only really decent one is MangleMeElmo pink dot. Three fishes, two furs and two plains hills make a city that will grow very fast, pay for itself and still have decent early . Its potential is limited but 11 extra from the fishes alone (14 with a lighthouse) can support size 12-15 city running SE very well.Still means to make is needed as most resources are in the outer ring. Splitting the fishes as Validator says leads to two slow growth below average cities that ll stagnate economy. Even if iron/horses doesnt show up in a more useful location, a token city (that grows slowly and mostly makes ) on the plain hills SW of copper is better IMO, and an extra settles can be rushed very quickly from the 3 fish city once that one reaches size 3.

Generally, i object to planning out 3-4 slow growth, low early cities as that will lead to economical stagnation. Remember the game favors quality vs quantity, early especially, a lot. No sense in razing all city taken from Ragnar just cause we cant support them along with a bunch of not really useful cities of our own. One fast growing city plus Moscow should be enough, if only iron were to show up on a useful location...
As for blocking Ragnar, a city south (north the land is so meager before calendar ) of the desert is too far and too average, the plan should be an early axe-rush anyway. Peace is unafforable with this land quality. A fur city north of Moscow is not a bad option, but just going for the axe rush with 2-3 well developed cities may be preferable.

For reasearch Ag/AH are obvious priorities. After that fishing(real cheap and a must for the fish city) and writing or mysticism for a source of culture followed by pottery(grans) and IW.

Note: Moving the third scout to fogbust just east of Moscow is well advised. This is going struggling enough without needing any help from barb raids.

 

[drhirsch]

Validators map is the way to go

Mainly because in my shadow game I settled on exactly this places. Without having seen his map Even on the two fill-in city-dots I built, later in the game, two cities.

 

[pigswill]

Looks pretty crud so far.

Certainly not promising for cottage economy. SE looks slightly more promising; some smallish cities (pop3, library, food resource= 2 scientists); capital as commerce powerhouse with cottages. You'll need a decent production site somewhere, maybe using the wheat.

Building a blocking/canal city sw of capital is a good idea. Copper can probably wait a bit; Ragnar is a bit too far away for an early axe-rush. Even if you started a settler now you'll probably discover AH first so maybe wait to see if horses are around before getting too fixated on a dot map.

 

[carl corey]

Another vote for Validator's map. I'm torn between settling copper city first or blocking Ragnar... If you manage to properly fogbust the terrain before planting all those cities you might want to consider chopping a couple of settlers to reach both sites early on (block first, copper second). Cows should be next and you might want to delay the rest and just attack Ragnar. This is all subject to change after you discover horses/iron, but you'd be covering most tiles already anyway.

 

[Porphyrius]

Building a blocking/canal city sw of capital is a good idea. Copper can probably wait a bit; Ragnar is a bit too far away for an early axe-rush.

I check the block city site SW of Moscow and i see only clam to be of immidiate use. Other than that theres a pair of incense that has to wait till callendar and lots of forest-grass that await CS to be farmed, surrounded by desert and sea. Surely not the best available city site and one that can wait till the respective techs are researched, as theres plenty for a axe-rush without it.
Now, the river N of Ragnar is better off with 2 sea food as well, but he is gona likely beat us to it.

Thoughts about Ragnar:

1. Gems are fond of each others company, so he likely has 2-3 in his capital
2. Gems are near jungle whitch he likely has to his S, thus he'll try to expand N towards us
3. He may have started on religius tech but between gems and coast with 50% bonus (financial) hes due to come ahead allover soon
   
   

Now all these IMO urge for an early rush based on building max 2 more cities before it. Our axes may have to learn to march a bit, but as far as distances contribution to city maintenance are concerned 2-3 gems can really "help" bring as closer.

 

[Validator]

Now all these IMO urge for an early rush based on building max 2 more cities before it.

I'd go with 3 cities to support the rush. The blue and green cities on my dotmap would both have good early production so I think it's worth taking the time to settle both. The key to launching the attack is how quickly you can generate enough axes, and I think that will be faster with 3 cities even with the delay from building the second settler.


Sisiutil, one thing that may want to consider is getting a few warriors built ASAP (which probably means building a couple by whipping). The goal would be to fully fogbust the area thereby eliminating the threat from barbs. There would then be no need to worry about building axes for barb defense, so you could focus on an optimal growth strategy. That would allow growing Moscow to size 4 before starting the first settler. This delays settlement of the second city by a bit, but would allow the second settler to be whipped after a few turns so the second and third cities would both come on line at about the same time. The cities could also focus on building whatever is the most helpful to their growth instead of needing to build garrison units.

Once the cities have their basic infrastructure in place they can start on the axe army. Once they reach their happy caps the three cities combined will be able to produce nearly 1 axe per turn, so it shouldn't take long.

If Ragnar hasn't founded a city at the chokepoint you might want to have Moscow build a settler once it reaches its happy cap. I think once you go to war you will want to get to Nidaros ASAP, so a Viking city in the chokepoint would not be helpful.

Techs after AH:
Wheel (you need a road to hook up the copper)
Mysticism (for border expansions)
Fishing (all of the other city sites will need a fishing boat and it's a pre-req for pottery)
Pottery (cheap granaries may help in some cities, and it's a pre-req for writing)
Writing
Alphabet

You may want to fit Sailing in somewhere to build triremes to avoid having your fishing nets pillaged.

 

[biggamer132]

I have to go with Validator's map. The canal city can wait until after you found the copper city, so I would put it down as your third.

 

[RubiconNH]

Just a thought, but what do we think the risk of Ragnar moving north really is? Chances are there are far more interesting locations south of his city that would get settled first. He already has the gems and clams in his fat cross, so the only other resources to go after would be the sugar and fish (would the AI go after incense this early?). My guess is he can get those elsewhere also.

No way to know for sure, of course, but I think it's one more consideration on the copper versus block strategy decision.

 

[oyzar]

the triple fish spot is too good not to settle in an CE... thats 6 specialists already at size 9(!). ofc you should run alot of scientists in capital too, to take advantage of the philosophical

 

[DarkFyre99]

Your land to the East definitely could be better, so I think it's best to build as few cities necessary to secure its resources, then start expanding south.

I think Validator has the best dot map for achieving this goal.

I'd send a settler/worker team to green dot first, then blue to secure your route, then red, and then finally yellow. If you're lucky, Ragnar will settle red for you, but I wouldn't count on that.

Your land doesn't favor a specialist economy, it's really short on food resources, and there's no stone for Pyramids, nor are you industrious. I'd go with a GP farm myself. I'd go with the following cities:

Green: Military production
Blue: Great Scientist Farm
Red: Secondary Production
Yellow: Fur and Fishing Commerce Village

I have one other city recommendation, for later:

If Ragnar doesn't build this city here, I'd raze whatever he builds SW of red. This location's a good one.

Edit: I just realized that we don't know where the horses are yet. The dot map may change based on where they are.

 

[DarkFyre99]

the triple fish spot is too good not to settle in an CE... thats 6 specialists already at size 9(!). ofc you should run alot of scientists in capital too, to take advantage of the philosophical

I was tempted to recommend that triple fish spot as the GP farm, but IMO it would be better to divide up the fish to support two good cities, rather than one great GP farm and two mediocre ones.

Validator's blue has three food resources, plus the possiblity of chain-irrigating the area later in the game.