ALC Game 17, Take 2: Russia/Peter (BtS)

I like Validator's dotmap as well.

The question is which wonder takes priority, or if you want to attempt two. Colossus would help fund the expansion, and should be very fast to build if you found the city 1W of copper soon. St. Petersburg should be able to get Colossus built fast. GL will be 2-3 free scientists, and will require later settling near the marble to help. And you need 7 cities to get the quest anyway.

With that logic, I would recommend the following cities in some order for 4 through 7, depending on the priority of Colossus.
1W of copper, red, blue, light blue. If you decide not to pursue Colossus, I would swap out the copper city for the yellow city. I like the placement of that city on the hill much more than 1NE where it loses the lake and the flood plain and picks up a lot of ocean in return.
 
+2 beakers is a lame bonus. It's not even worth it.

Seriously, I might complete the quest and then not take the 2 beakers, because they will make absolutely no difference.
 
I am also thinking city specialization according to validator's dotmap (actually i post the similar map before. sorry validator, i own the copy right, haha, but i would call it validator's dotmap.)

st peterburg --Wall street city ( gold=civilized jewelry , iron=creative construction, fish=sushi' co.)i am not sure about the shine, it's unpredictable, and u might want to adopt other one's religion for diplomatic reason.

red city---iron work city(a lot river tile for levee and watermill, the rest mined or workshop, food sufficient)

Rome---oxford city (obvious)

Blue city--national epic + national park

marble city -- military city(found the standard ethanol for oil only in this city if necessary or prevent others found it, capital can also found the standard ethanol) and build workshop on grassland tiles before CS)

capital could be all purpose city--research or production or military

the red city is better than the blue city for iron work since all river tiles in red city can build a watermill.

I think St. Petersburg is more of a Heroic Epic city. It can work 4 plains hills with the 2 fish and let Rome have the gold. I would let St. Pete build units and Colossus for now while other cities build libraries and run specialists.

I like the idea of the red city as ironworks.
 
+2 beakers is a lame bonus. It's not even worth it.

Seriously, I might complete the quest and then not take the 2 beakers, because they will make absolutely no difference.

really? if it's +2 beaker for all library built, +2 beaker early is huge and all bearker modifier works on it.

can anyone please confirm it's +2 in one city or +2 for all?
 
Since you have Hinduism in Rome, I'd suggest converting right now. Whoever is just to the west clearly has it, so you'd get an early diplomatic bonus with them and be all friendly with your neighbour while you REX to cover your island. Also, you're short on happiness resources, so building a monastery in Rome and pumping it out to the rest of your cities would be a big help.

For the cities, it would probably be a good idea to put one on the continent to the west to get a foothold there before the AI comes over and claims the spot and you're forced into an amphibious invasion.
 
Sisiutil,

Thanks, as always for these ALC's.

Anyhow, here's my take on a dotmap for the island:

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Don't put off the island to the west with the iron too long(provided it has seafood), if Caesar met some one with a workboat, it means some one with a Galley could settle it. Obviously, all bets are off if there isn't seafood. Oh, and it warms my heart to see naval power do something:goodjob:
 
Loved the play-by-play of the round and the naval action, though I'm not sure whether the blockade really worked, as you didn't have all of the coastal tiles blockaded. If someone can confirm blockading ... the screenshot Sis posted indicated it only blocked trade through the blockaded tile ...

Well done on the land battle, too. Your army should be sufficient to fog-bust most of your home continent.

I would focus on your economy and grow slowly while attempting to maintain at least a 50% research rate. To me, that means finishing Metal Casting, building Colossus, picking up Currency and Code of Laws for markets and courthouses, and getting Calendar for the sugar. Yes, it's infrastructure and not as exciting as beelining, but you are feeding the golden goose now to get the golden eggs later. You may miss out on some goodies, but you will have a rock-solid civilization that can keep on expanding or go to war as needed.

I would settle cities in the order in which they can become useful. The gold/pig city, forest/floodplain city, and the city site to the east of Moscow are all immediately useful. I'd get settlers and workers out to those locations ASAP.

Last question: has the oracle been built yet? Not to contradict myself here, but if you could grab your marble resource you might pull off a high-end slingshot ...
 
I didn't really like any of the earlier dotmaps as I thought they were trying to fit too many cities on this landmass. My attempt at a dotmap:

If anything, I think that Sisiutil should be trying to cram as many cities as possible into the dotmap. This is the only continent you have with a capital. If you're going to keep your maintenance low enough to not collapse even a merchant specialist and/or low science town economy, then you're not going to want to found more than a couple of cities off of that continent. If Oil is somewhere else, you'll want to grab it with a city (to the point of even founding ON the oil and just accepting the fact that you have a junk city if circumstances warrant). I doubt that you have oil with all of your plains/grasslands and just a couple of flood plains. Oil likes desert and tundra, so maybe there's some up north and/or off your coast, but I wouldn't count on it.

Other than grabbing Oil and maybe claiming an especially seafood-y island or two, you're going to want to stay away from founding off-shore cities, especially on another continent. The last thing you want to do is start paying colony fees.

As for the Iron carrying island to the west, if the Romans were still in the picture, I might consider grabbing it to deny Caesar his Iron after we made him mad at us, but since we gave unto Caesar what belonged to Caesar (a good thrashing, that is), I wouldn't worry about it.


Here goes my first attempt at a dotmap posting to CivFanatics:

popejubal

Edit: picture didn't show up. Here's a second try.
ALCdotmap.jpg



City 1 grabs pigs and gold.

City 2 is very close to Rome for lower maintenance and can work some nice floodplains. Move it 1W if you want to keep City 6. I made a boo-boo on my drawing.

If you don't want both City 2 and City 6, then skip City 2 and found City 6 as your next. If you place it 1 SW of where it is on the dotmap and you can at least work a couple of the flood plains and still get both seafood. Wtih city 6 where it is now, it will claim a tiny piece of the island to the north on its second border pop and that might be a good thing to let you station some troops there without any cell-phone roaming fees. (I'm convinced that the "away from home" cost for units is just roaming fees for their cell phone calls home.)

City 3 is just a quality generic city that can be either good at commerce or production or even a bit of both as the need arises. It also busts a good bit of fog without being insanely far away from Rome.

City 4 grabs Marble at about the time that you'll want to start the Great Library. It also grabs your only non-metallic happy resource as soon as you trade something to your neighbors for Calendar.

Cities 5 and 6 claim Copper and Horses and both cities can work those tiles relatively easily.

City 7 is just a riverside city that isn't an outstanding site, but it will help connect its neighbors to the river there and can work all of its tiles once biology comes around. Before Biology, but after Civil service, this will be a massive farmland. If you need a wonder chopped, this is also the city to do it since you don't need the trees for the city's health and you don't need the trees for National Parkistan.

City 8 is the next to last city on the continent and it has an amazing amount of overlap with its neighbors. It can borrow the corn and pigs from the neighboring cities to grow quickly and whip out a library so that you can get the National Epic started if you decide to pair National Epic with the 15-18 specialists from National Park. You don't need to actually claim the Forest Preserve tiles for the city as long as they are within your cultural borders and within the city's big fat cross. The neighboring cities can work the tiles to get the 1/2 or 2/1 food/production (and massive happiness bonus) while National Parkistan gets the insane number of specialists.

City 9 can work a couple of nice resource tiles at 4 food and a couple of commerce each, but it's mostly just there to make sure that an annoying AI doesn't found a city on your continent. City 9 can be a semi-decent commerce city even if all of that water were Mountains instead of something partially useable.

Speaking of which, the Colonization fees don't start until you have more than 1 city on a landmass. It might be worthwhile settling a beachhead city on a neighbor's continent if you want to try out the conquor-your-neighbor-then-spawn-a-vassal thing here. Probably not worth doing, but if you want to experiment with that part of the game, a beachhead city that runs artists off of whatever food surplus it has would be handy.

The little P islands are just potentials depending on what the work boats and Galleys tell you. Might be worthwhile to allow you to harass neighbors more easily, but mostly to keep your cultural borders safe from encroaching AI settlers if there are seafood resources that make the island worthwhile. I'd say that the Maoi statues have an obvious home in Rome, but it might be funny to rush buy them on an island with 20 water tiles. :)
 
regarding blockading...

I have been trying it in a game where I can see inside the opponent's cities, and I was shocked to see that when I parked my ship right by the city coast and blockaded, every one of that city's water tiles were blank in the city screen, not being worked as if they had enemy units in them. no food, no gold, nothing.

however, the trade route income was still there (?) Not sure if it's a bug or really what is going on, but it seemed pretty powerful as far as cutting off the tiles. So basically you don't need to pillage... the blockade acted as a kind of super pillage for all the tiles as long as it was in effect. but shouldn't the trade routes also go?
 
but shouldn't the trade routes also go?

Well, from a real-world standpoint, not necessarily. If the trade routes are inland, certainly not... and even if not, blockaded Tiwanaku (for instance) can still trade with Tokyo through another sea city, say Cuzco.
 
it is important that you remember to NOT research any renaisance techs.. you'll end the quest prematurely
Can anyone provide a list of the renaissance techs?
  • Do you intend to cottage or farm Ruska's floodplains? If you're going to farm them you should pillage the cottages before Ruska comes out of revolt.
  • I would pull the galley back so that the scout can get loaded on board. The landmass to the west looks large so you may need some land based scouting to reveal the whole thing. Also there may be huts. And if you do run into the mystery AI over there you should be able to get OB and use the scout to explore their territory.
What does everyone think? Should Rome be farmed or cottaged? I'm leaning towards farms and making it the GP farm myself.

Good point on the Scout and Galley, that had occurred to me too, though after the round ended.

look out the date when stone wonders tbeing completed , if they come fast and furious, then the pyramid is out. if they seem to be delayed a lot , u have very high probability grab it with your first GE.
As I recall (and forgot to mention) both Stonehenge and the Great Wall have been completed, so I suspect someone out there has stone. I may try to generate a GE from a forge to build the Pyramids, but I won't be surprised if I get beat to them. But a GE is handy regardless.
Since you have Hinduism in Rome, I'd suggest converting right now. Whoever is just to the west clearly has it, so you'd get an early diplomatic bonus with them and be all friendly with your neighbour while you REX to cover your island. Also, you're short on happiness resources, so building a monastery in Rome and pumping it out to the rest of your cities would be a big help.

For the cities, it would probably be a good idea to put one on the continent to the west to get a foothold there before the AI comes over and claims the spot and you're forced into an amphibious invasion.
I'd prefer to meet a few more neighbours, assuming they're accessible, before making a decision on religion. But an imminent conversion to Hinduism does indeed seem likely, given the dearth of happiness resources.

The idea of settling on the land mass to the west is intriguing, but like the religion decision, I'd like to explore a little further before committing myself.

Good work on the dot map, Validator. I will probably follow it while considering the variations suggested by kniteowl & cabert (a city 1 west of the copper to claim the latter and the fish, as well as to help with the Colossus). I'll consider moving the horse city 1N as kniteowl also suggested, but I think it may work fine where it is.

As for the purple island city, I think it has a plains hill in its BFC 1SW of the pigs, which would give it some production off the bat. Plus there could be some more land to its south and or east--you never know. Besides, how else are we going to get a city to work the pigs?

As for later resources like oil, remember that besides desert and tundra, oil also likes jungle, and I've got quite a bit of jungle to the south, so lets keep our fingers crossed.

The next round will not be quite so dramatic, but vital nonetheless. Fog-busting, exploration, and expansion while pursuing the Colossus, the Great Library, and maybe, just maybe, the Pyramids from a GE. I anticipate finishing MC as many of you suggest (with help from libraries and scientists) then pursuing the path to the GL. There may be a diversion in there to Alphabet if I meet several other civs, but I'd rather not risk losing the GL, which would be choice combined with the SE, the Philosophical trait, and winning that quest.

By the way, I'm convinced that only getting +2 :science: in one library from completing the quest must be a bug. That option for a reward is hardly worthy of a quest, it's more like the result I got earlier from the iron mine--just give me the +2 bonus and have done with it, don't make me jump through hoops! I'm not convinced that the game designers intended it that way.
 
Why create so many cities? They all have to be paid for. Assuming the centre of the island is where Sisiutil will move the capital only 7 cities need to be built to win the challenge. 3 already exist and babarian states will soon pop into existence.

Settling IN of the corn (?) woould place both the copper and gold within the fat cross. I w of the Marble would bring in horses. IN of the gold on the east of the island would give access to the floodplain.

You could load 2 swordsmen onto the galley, drop one off onto iron land and the other off on tundra land to the northeast of Moscow. it should find some deer or fur. ail the galley past the island where you'll found a city, just to see if other land is reachable.

The two bits of land visible southest of you, could be part of the same land mass and somewhere for your scout to go.

I think I 'd leave Rome with its cottages for now and hold off converting.
 
You have enough swordsmen to allow a nice barb city to develop a while before you help yourself to its gold.
 
In practice, the Renaissance will probably start with Education for you. It starts with Nationalism, Printing Press, Education, Gunpowder, or Astronomy. From the layout of the tech tree it looks like BTS probably also moved Banking into the Renaissance.

Be sure to get a level 4 unit if you don't have one yet. Maybe you can find a nice barb city on a nearby island, but otherwise you should consider leaving part of Russia under fog.
 
Why create so many cities? They all have to be paid for. Assuming the centre of the island is where Sisiutil will move the capital only 7 cities need to be built to win the challenge. 3 already exist and babarian states will soon pop into existence.

Keep in mind that the dotmaps are long-term plans. I may not, and probably won't, found all those cities in the next round. The yellow crab city, for example, is a lower priority than several of the others. But it will still make for a good city and I'll want one there when I can afford it.

I think the four priority cities (to have 7 for the quest) are the fish/copper city (not on Validator's dot map; claims copper to help with the Colossus), the gold/floodplain city S of Moscow (blue on Validator's dotmap), marble/sugar city (cyan; marble for the GL and sugar w/ Calendar), and the pig/gold/wheat city (red). The latter may also be shunted aside if settling a city on the western land mass looks worthwhile. The thing I'd be looking for to justify that, frankly, is (a) a food source and especially (b) a happiness resource I don't currently have.

These are all cities with decent food sources, often more than one, which are well-suited for the specialist economy we intend to run.

I will probably leave the horse city for now and see if the barbs found it for me, saving me a Settler and giving me an opportunity to earn a level 4 unit for the Heroic Epic. Normally I'd like to have the horses for Chariots to deal with barb Axemen, but the horses are just too far away and the city not really viable until Civil Service allows it to be irrigated, so I'll just have to make do with Axemen vs. Axemen.
 
In practice, the Renaissance will probably start with Education for you. It starts with Nationalism, Printing Press, Education, Gunpowder, or Astronomy. From the layout of the tech tree it looks like BTS probably also moved Banking into the Renaissance.

Be sure to get a level 4 unit if you don't have one yet. Maybe you can find a nice barb city on a nearby island, but otherwise you should consider leaving part of Russia under fog.
No, Banking is still medieval. Economics is Renaissance, though. There're plenty of civs out there, so hopefully they're all crammed together in one or two additional continents and can't even build seven cities. If you can, definitely take the scientist...what more could you ask for? If you don't have the GL....you might as well leave Archery and just take it, because two beakers for one library has got to be even lamer...
 
however, the trade route income was still there (?) Not sure if it's a bug or really what is going on, but it seemed pretty powerful as far as cutting off the tiles. So basically you don't need to pillage... the blockade acted as a kind of super pillage for all the tiles as long as it was in effect. but shouldn't the trade routes also go?
How soon we forget the Berlin Airlift! :lol:

What does everyone think? Should Rome be farmed or cottaged? I'm leaning towards farms and making it the GP farm myself.
Farming Rome would make an INSANE GP Farm...it can potentially reach size 37 after Biology. :crazyeye:
 
I would cottage Ruska myself.

It's already got huge food bonuses to grow with, why do we need a few extra. I think all the generated commerce, and research, will be more usefule than growing that bit faster.

We could always farm over the cottages towards Bioligy?

Anway, maybe that's why I play levels below this :)

Cheers.
 
I would cottage Ruska myself.

It's already got huge food bonuses to grow with, why do we need a few extra. I think all the generated commerce, and research, will be more usefule than growing that bit faster.

We could always farm over the cottages towards Bioligy?

Anway, maybe that's why I play levels below this :)

Cheers.
Normally I'd side with you completely, but I am trying to run a specialist economy here, which means food for specialists rather than cottages. Nevertheless, even in a SE, you need some cottages. And since it looks like I'll be largely living peacefully rather than warring, meaning a lack of point-stick research, it may be wise to head for a hybrid economy rather than a pure SE. Thoughts?
 
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