ALC Game 17: Russia/Peter

[Lance of Llanwy]

Settle in place, one more voice for the chorus. How nice is that, flood plains, but no desert? I wish my map generator would be so kind. I'd do AH first, but that's because I build a worker first most of the time and he usually needs something to keep himself busy, so go ahead with BW...

 

[Sisiutil]

Settle in place (you'll probably get Horses or Iron in the cross) and get on with it

Rightie-o, that's what I'll do tonight--play and post the first round. I plan to settle in place, build a Scout and then a Worker while researching Bronze Working and then pursuing Agriculture and Animal Husbandry.

Don't blame me for researching BW first, gang; blame the game designers. They made BW what is probably the most valuable tech in the game. It reveals a vital early resource, allows you to build one of the game's best military units, and enables both the Slavery civic and forest chopping to accelerate production. Only the Civil Service civic comes close to enabling so many crucial game elements. Furthermore, Peter starts with Mining, so researching BW first leverages one of his starting techs, and that's what the ALC series is all about.

And I don't always research BW first. When I play as Egypt I go after Animal Husbandry right off the bat, since Hatty and Ramesses start with Agriculture and AH enables their very potent UU. And have a look at the last few ALCs:

ALC Game: 1st tech researched
Game 11, Carthage: Agriculture
Game 12, Japan: Agriculture
Game 13, Mali: Agriculture
Game 14, Mongolia: Agriculture
Game 15, Ottoman: Mining/Bronze Working
Game 16, Persia: Animal Husbandry

So you really should be glad that I've broken out of my rut of researching Agriculture first!

 

[EEE_BOY]

Sure, BW is important, and shouldn't be delayed for long, but wouldn't harm if it comes as the 2nd or 3rd tech, and u still have time for the settler to secure the copper resource and start whipping and chopping. in the very beginning, growth is much more important, agriculture and AH are better for growth given the fact that u have only that cow the most powerful tile for this city so far, u need to hook it up sooner rather than later.

starting with mining means u can get BW quicker if there is no horse, not the reason push u go BW so early. sorry if i insist denying BW as the 1 st tech

 

[Hero]

in the very beginning, growth is much more important

Sure your cities will grow if you lay down some early farms, but your number of cities will grow if you crank out some early Axemen.

 

[EEE_BOY]

BW comes in 2nd or 3rd won't delay your axe, but AH later will sure delay your growth in your capital

 

[ShredZ]

"Then again, that probably means a mix of resources hidden in the fog and hidden from view until the right tech comes along. Or so I hope."

In my experiences, when you have so many flood plains, you generally get less resources, so I would doubt youd get anything else, tough of course a horse may popup or something.

Move the scout E then N.

I would settle in place (barring there isnt 2 gold mines just east of you), and go cottage crazy just in this one city.

Build worker first, research AH soonish.

 

[RubiconNH]

Hi Everyone - Been lurking for some time now and feel ready to pitch in now.

I think the key point here (as stated repeated by Sisiutil) is to leverage the traits of each civilization. It seems to me that starting with Mining begs for researching BW first. One could argue that researching another tech first and then still reaching BW at the same time as other Civs is still leveraging the advantage of starting with Mining. However, I agree with Sisiutil that the disproportionate advantage of BW at this early stage of the game outweighs any other option. Chopping more than makes up for lack of growth. Plus, there's only so much whipping you can do this early in the game before hitting the unhappiness wall.

 

[RubiconNH]

And I say crank out another scout first. Get the additional pop plus the advantage of beating your opponents to those huts. Gaining the extra gold or a tech or two is a far bigger advantage than founding your second city a few turns earlier. Also gives you a bigger strategic picture to decide where that precious second city should go.

 

[EEE_BOY]

It seems to me that starting with Mining begs for researching BW first. Chopping more than makes up for lack of growth. Plus. there's only so much whipping you can do this early in the game before hitting the unhappiness wall.

1,how about starting with hunting begs for AH first?
2,how many trees can u chop? don't u want to save them for the GL? i think sisiutil like this wonder very much.
3,can u whip if the population is 1 this early? growth is so hard this early without one food-rich tile.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

And I say crank out another scout first. Get the additional pop plus the advantage of beating your opponents to those huts. Gaining the extra gold or a tech or two is a far bigger advantage than founding your second city a few turns earlier. Also gives you a bigger strategic picture to decide where that precious second city should go.

I hate to , but ...

What good is seeing the big picture and where the 2nd city should go when somebody's already built there?

I've been beaten to prime real estate far too many times to delay my 1st Settler anymore.

Yeah, this is the pessimistic view, since we really don't know what's out there yet, but the quicker you can get your 1st Settler out means the quicker you can get your 2nd & 3rd Settlers out -- thereby compounding the rate at which you can claim resources and/or block the neighbouring civs.

-- more of my 2

 

[jerVL/kg]

If you go scout first, work a grassland forest until Moscow's borders pop, then switch to a flood plain. This way the scout will complete and Moscow will grow to size 2 on the same turn, when you can start a worker.

I disagree with BW first, I would get Agr/AH immediately, then BW. You want to hook up the cows ASAP, and you're not going to whip/chop for a while. You could always go BW/AH, but you need Agr anyway and it will make AH cheaper.

Be careful you don't overchop your forests -- if you attempt the Oracle/MC sling, you'll need quite a few of them to chop that forge.

 

[RubiconNH]

1,how about starting with hunting begs for AH first?
2,how many trees can u chop? don't u want to save them for the GL? i think sisiutil like this wonder very much.
3,can u whip if the population is 1 this early? growth is so hard this early without one food-rich tile.

1 - Again, BW provides bigger benefits than AH
2 - Fair point
3 - I'm talking about the amount of time the additional population needs to match the output of one chop.

 

[RubiconNH]

I to , but ...

What good is seeing the big picture and where the 2nd city should go when somebody's already built there?

Certainly possible, but not likely this early. The converse of this is what good is settling your 2nd city nice and early if it's built in the wrong (less than optimal) spot? This has happened to me before as well, but I'm still learning. Not a noob, but certainly no expert.

 

[EEE_BOY]

1,Again, BW provides bigger benefits than AH
3 - I'm talking about the amount of time the additional population needs to match the output of one chop.

1,BW is better, i just don't want to research it as the first tech which will not provide anything immediately, only to see where copper is, but u don't have a settler to claim it, so basically means nothing if u research it too early. it is efficiency i am talking about that AH to hook the cow is immediately and greatly improve your city.

3,the same thing again, whip is necessary and key to success, my point is too early when no population can be whipped.

 

[Sisiutil]

Round 1: 4000 BC to 3190 BC

I started the round by settling in place, which was the general consensus:

So as several of you have been warning me, don't expect too many other resources nearby when you have several flood plains. I'm still hoping for something hidden to show up in all those grasslands, but with my luck, it'll be uranium. (Has anyone else noticed that Uranium has become nearly useless since the 2.08 patch made it necessary to research Fission to make any use out of it? Before then, it was a nice alternative to oil so you could build modern naval units, if not tanks. But I digress...)

With Moscow founded, I chose Bronze Working as the first tech and chose to build a Scout first.

As I mentioned before, I felt that these choices leveraged Peter's starting techs best. I don't agree that starting with Hunting argues in favour of researching Animal Husbandry first. Agriculture should be researched first to make AH cheaper, and while Peter's UU does require horses, it's not going to be available for quite some time.

Founding Moscow revealed a tribal village on a hill to the northeast. I decided to leave the goody hut west of the city for the first border pop. The tribal village to the NE popped for some gold, which will help with early research.

I kept checking in on the city and changed the worked tile from a flood plain to a grassland forest to make the Scout build complete on the same turn as the city's growth:

I've noticed that if you have a 3 food tile and a grassland forest to work (which is usually the case), you can change from the 3F tile to the forest with 9 turns remaining on the build and growth. However, you can also wait a turn and switch when there's 8 turns to go. The advantage there is to spend an extra turn working the 3F tile if it also has 1 commerce to assist research, which was the case here.

Then Moscow's borders popped, along with that goody hut, and I got... a Scout!

Well, don't that beat all. It seems the RNG has a decidedly twisted sense of humour. Anyway, my first Scout was off exploring the east, so I sent this fellow west. The 3rd Scout I was building, I decided, would head north.

My newest Scout soon encountered my nearest neighbour:

Ragnar! I don't think we've seen him in an ALC in quite some time--maybe not since the Asoka game?

At any rate, as you can see, I met him quite near Moscow's southwest, so he was clearly off in that direction somewhere, and of course this means we're not isolated.

My Scout finished in Moscow and I switched to a Worker. I was debating whether to switch to working the plains forests for a boost to the Worker production, or to keep working the flood plains to aid research. I decided to prioritize research for now, since there isn't really much for the Worker to do just yet:

I may swap part way through the Worker build. I'm sure at least one of you will do the math and tell me I'm being a moron. What are friends for?

My southwest-faring Scout, meanwhile, found Viking territory not far away from where he first met that Viking Scout:

Rangar is close by, and he has gems! He's looking more and more like the future victim of a roarin' Russian axe-rush, don't you think?

In 3370 BC, I finished researching Bronze Working:

I changed civics right away:

And... do I have copper anywhere nearby? Yep--not right next door, let alone the capital's fat cross, but within reach:

Meanwhile, religions were being founded. Someone founded Buddhism, but Ragnar founded Hinduism and converted right away:

Okay, so... a Financial leader close by with gems and a holy city. Poor dumb bastard. Heh heh heh...

I sent a Scout (I have several to spare, it turns out) back out near the copper just to explore more thoroughly and see if there were any more resources out at sea that I should know about. Turns out there is:

So that's where I ended the round, especially since we now have enough information to start planning cities on a dot map:

Once again, fractal has given me a very interesting land mass to work with. From what I can see it looks like a snaky continent, but we'll have to see what the rest of it looks like. That will have to wait until Writing so I can get Ragnar to open his borders. Are we the only two civs on the continent or are there others? I won't know for some time.

I have one Scout north of Moscow fog-busting, and I'm thinking of assigning that duty to the other two since there's no more exploring to do. So much for using the Scouts to race to all the goody huts! I only claimed two of them in this game and I suspect that's all I get unless I find one on an island later on. At least if I use the Scouts to fog-bust I'll feel like I'm getting some use out of them. I still stand by my decision to build one first; the lack of their utility is the luck of the draw this time around.

In terms of resources, I have a couple of Calendar resources available to me, as well as lots of furs for an immediate happy boost. I also have the seafood trifecta available for their collective health boost, and deer and wheat too. With all that seafood available, the Colussus might be a worthwhile wonder to consider later on in the game. No marble or stone for wonder building, however.

I have a decent amount of territory available to me for my early cities. It's not exactly the greatest land, though, and I'm going to get crowded in my Ragnar very quickly. The Viking is not long for this earth.

I'd like to do a reality check with the SE experts regarding its viability on this map. I can't irrigate anything but the capital until Civil Service comes along. On the other hand, there is plenty of seafood available. City planning is going to be important, methinks.

Besides planning city locations, we need to talk about their order. Copper is available, but it's at an inconvenient distance. Do I build a distant 2nd city to claim it, or should that be city #3 or even later? I'm researching Agriculture and will then go after Animal Husbandry. Sound good?

The saved game file is below.

 

[Jondalar]

S, I have to say - out of all the posts on this board, I look forward to your ALCs the most. I'm finally going to follow along in a shadow game this time and see if I can improve.

 

[MangleMeElmo]

In Soviet Russia, map dots you!

I couldn't decide on a specific order of placement, sorry. Hope this works for you. It's a little sloppy because I did it freehand on MS paint.

 

[stuge]

I think that SE is viable here. You've got enough seafood to run a decent number of specialists. Your lands aren't exactly great in the long-term, though, so I'd say you need to attack Ragnar ASAP.

I'm torn on city placement. It's hard to get all of those three fishies into use. I'd go with one that gets fish, wheat and cows and with another that get copper, fish and whales. Found the copper city first, get sailing so you don't have to waste time building a road there, gear Moscow towards maximum production and go lop off some Viking heads.

 

[Validator]

You should have whipped the worker when BW finished and you switched to slavery. That's the most effective way to gain extra hammers from Expansive's worker bonus.

My dotmap:

4 decent cities (in addition to Moscow) but nothing really great. Each of them will have enough food to work a couple of scientists if you decide to go the SE route. There's also room to squeeze a couple more cities in, but you'll probably be better off expanding into former Viking territory. I'm not sure if you want to expand toward Ragnar first (red dot) to block him off. Unfortunately that's not the best city site. I'd go for green and blue in that order.

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.

 

[jerVL/kg]

Ugh, you've got some crappy land there. Here's what I would suggest:



I agree with MangelMeElmo's brown and red dots, in fact I would make Brown Dot a priority, to block Ragnar's expansion. Let Ragnar have the fish/clam/sugar, you can "liberate" it from him later.

Best bet for Copper City would be 1NW of the copper (pink dot) -- anywhere else and you won't have enough food to run a viable city. Green Dot can be backfilled after Calendar; it's marginal at best. I would not recommend putting all 3 fish in one city -- the land tiles just don't justify it. Build your GP farm at fish/clam/sugar instead (after you take it from Ragnar, naturally!) Forget about the whales...you can't harvest them for millenia anyway.

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.

From the looks of things, you're not going to be able to run much of an SE outside the capital, certainly not before CS. Instead, you should prioritize taking out Ragnar as early as possible. With any luck he'll build a couple wonders and a shrine for you.