ALC Game #22 Take 2: Arabs/Saladin

[kazapp]

Given BalbanesBeoulve's insight on Sury (thanks for that, obviously the fact I've never started on the same continent with him before explains my ignorance), it might be wise to keep Roosevelt as a friendly buffer.

I'd far prefer you stealing Roosevelt's worker, his lands, his capital and his life.

This map seems to be very favorable - I humbly believe it's time to get ambitious! Why not take this excellent shot at ending your Emperor stint with a new record score? A free worker would be a definite help. There seems to be enough neighbors - you don't need the American for the vital tech trade.

And regarding the ugly-evil-alien-guy, wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity to showcase your protective trait?

Meaning that if you include Washington and environs in greater Arabia, you seem to have all the land you need, so you don't need to invade Khmer right away.

That's a perfect opportunity to have a defensive war, where Ugly Evil squanders his economy by uselessly suiciding his armies against your defenses.

It sure would be more interesting than Plan A (letting Roosevelt do your dirty work behind the scenes) and it would provide some action where normally the bountiful lands would dictate a peaceful game.

This way you'll use Surys alien demands against him. Turn him down, watch him get mad and let him bleed himself dry, I say!!

Only thing is you need to make sure to win the war for the hearts and minds of the populations of the landmass (aka religion) - but Saladin would only see that as an additional challenge, wouldn't he?

 

[GinandTonic]

Great Wall generated great spy to drop the defences of Washington, allowing a slightly delayed axe-rush? With stone the GW wont take long, esp with a second worker to get everything up and running. Since you'll need to beeline alphabet you'll be able to rob Rosie for all his tecs for peace too.

 

[patagonia]

Don't steal the worker. Roosevelt and Zara are both incredibly easy to befriend and you've got a ton of land in the south to REX into (Zara has a very high peaceweight - check, he's probably "pleased" with you already - and you can rack up a big shared religion bonus with him too). Besides, Roosevelt might build you some wonders if you leave him be...

With a pyramids-SE, you should be ahead in tech, land or both, so you can pick him off easily later on, and maybe give the UU a workout.

That's the peacemonger perspective, but there's another more important issue here:

Sury and Zara are both city-spammers and you won't be able to keep pace with them this early. If you get bogged down trying to take cities from Roosevelt while they're busy REXing, you'll end up getting swamped (especially if you want to sink hammers into the 'mids too). Leave Roosevelt to compete with them for land and you'll have 3 smaller opponents to pick off later if you decide to go a-warring.

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If you're going to get a second city out before the GW, you'll need to chop/whip that settler. It doesn't go as early as Stonehenge (which almost always needs to be built before city 2), but is a fairly high priority for the AI, and you know there's an industrious opponent out there.

If the plan's to get the Pyramids in Mecca (which it should be with stone and Madrassa's available), then settling a high food site to act as a secondary worker/settler pump seems to be in order. It goes against the convention of settling towards your opponents, but the +2 event you've got draws my eye to the spot 2S1E of the gold to your west, picking up gold, rice and 10 floodplains. Alternatively, there may be a good spot by the pig and wheat to the east, but you'll need to scout a bit more around there first.

I don't think there's much call for settling north yet anyway. Since you settled Mecca N of the original start location, your second border pop will take you to the edge of the jungle belt. Roosevelt is also unlikely to head your way immediately since he's got a corn, jumbo floodplains site to his west and the AI rarely plunks its second city down more than 3-4 tiles from the capital. Most Emperor AI tend to get IW around 1000BC, which is probably when he'll start to spread in your direction.

 

[Airefuego]

I agree that there is so much good land to settle that taking Washington is an unecessary distraction.

In fact the land south is so good, our biggest danger may be greedily REXing our way to economic meltdown... "just one more city! just one moooooore...."

Luckily the gold and gems are so numerous we can afford to REX like a madman for a while. And I think we should.

Best thing is, it's massively food-rich, for our SE. All those floodplains... and resources too.

Be gentle with me, it's my first ALC dotmap

These four cities all look pretty tasty for a start - mineral riches so each one will pay for itself (letting us REX for longer) and heaps of food for the SE.

The 9-floodplains city might have health issues, but as previous poster wisely noted, we have a bonus +2

Red city could go 1W, to avoid wasting river tiles, but loses a gem.

Then there is the elephants city - my head started spinning here, need to see if there is a food resource in the fog to the west first. My head kept spinning when I thought about the calendar resources... so many... and trying not to waste river tiles, and... and...

So the big toss-up is:

A. Rex as fast as possible, chopping settlers and the mids and not much else?

Or B. slip GW into the queue to protect our massive early REX empire.

They are both fine options. I would tend to grab the GW because we have the stone, so why not use it... but really, both are fine.

 

[Scarredroman]

First rate map; terrible neighbours.Then again, you don't plan on sharing your continent with them or anyone else, anyway.

Grab the worker. First warrior rush in ALC is it? Heck, with this start and the 2 early workers, stone, whipping and all those forests there's a good chance you could build Stonehenge, the Great Wall and the Pyramids. There are a couple of sites screaming or a settler. One on a flood plain to the SW - 6 FP, 3 hill (1 gold) and rice is tailor made for a GPP farm and producing workers and settlers in double quick time.The second is east on a hill with 3 gold and wheat - the future site for Wall Street. These setlers can be whipped and, if planned carefully, the overflow from most of the second pop point will help build the Stonehenge. Two other potential sites are the gems to the east and the happy campers in ivory heaven.

Go forth and conquer. Keep the other capitals and destroy the rest. With the Great Wall, it does not matter if barbarian states arise for they cannot attack.

 

[carl corey]

Scarredroman, if you go for Stonehenge and then Great Wall there's a good chance to lose both. I'd rather chose one of the two, even if they're cheap with stone.

 

[slobberinbear]

Some thoughts on early war with FDR ...

What exactly are we going to do if he sends a few archers towards Mecca? We are at least 20-30 turns away from being able to produce a non-warrior military unit. We'd have his worker, but if nothing else, FDR could pillage the heck out of our lands and there would be nothing we could do about it ...

Also: I thought I'd read somewhere that the Great Wall improved your power rating. If that's true, maybe worker-stealing then building the GW and some warriors could get you a quick peace. Even so, you're ~15 turns from having stone hooked up and maybe 20-25 from finishing the GW if you build it right away. Can you deal with FDR's archers until then, assuming the GW helps your power rating?

Of your three neighbors, who is the most threatening? Survy has a bad rep, but watch out for Zara, who is a REXing madman. Once he gets going, he is hard to slow down. Finding out where Zara and Survy are, precisely, is key -- so you can decide who is the bigger threat. Either way, FDR isn't your biggest threat, he's just the sucka with the naked worker.

As far as the GW goes ..

Assuming you don't take FDR's worker, conventional wisdom is to build the GW after building a city (say, the triple-gold bonaza site to the SE, or the Calendar-heavy NE site). It appears that your southern and western frontiers are large, and Emperor's barbs are fast and furious. Again, building the GW saves you from having to tech Hunting and Archery right away, too. It also lets you block off your rivals northwards (to hopefully secure your southern expansion area) while being immune to barb incursions from the south.

I think you're going to end up clear-cutting Mecca, and soon. That's a lot of open space to REX into, and you'll need lots of hammers fast. And the GSpy will help you keep pace techwise as your science slider drops.

Last point: You may have a legitimate argument for building the GW BEFORE your Settler, which I know is taboo, but hear me out. You're not going to have BW for what, 25 turns? So you're not going to be able to chop or whip until then. That means you'll be stagnating Mecca while building workers/settlers the old-fashioned way, unable to rush produce them until BW. Why not use that time to grow Mecca to size 4, while building the GW with the stone hookup? At that point, you'll have the corn and stone hooked up for great production and the population there for knocking out a settler or three. Yes, your second city would be slightly delayed, but your third and fourth settlers would be faster due to Mecca's size, and you will have gotten the GW 'out of the way.'

 

[slobberinbear]

Here's my stab at a dotmap. It is clear to me that the northeastern area needs two cities for all the gems, calendar resources, etc. Also, I was flummoxed by the triple-gold site. There's no way to get all three gold while getting the wheat. So I put the orange dot to get the wheat and left the last gold for the black dot, which was coastal and grabbed the corn and crabs.

So which ones first? I'm not sure. The sites you can bring online now are to the south, but you want to expand towards your rivals and the northern sites will need Iron Working and Calendar to get up to speed. I suppose I would alternate it ... settle northwards for blocking, then southwards for cash now ...

 

[carl corey]

I'm not sure how often the AI sends archers that early against your capital even if you declare war. I'm more concerned about what happens when Sisiutil's camped warrior will eventually die and we'll have to defend several cities while building the Pyramids and workers to connect the cities and build improvements. (which boils down to the same concern, it's just that we disagree a bit over when Roosevelt will counter )

GW before Settler is an interesting choice, but you won't have the stone hooked up when you start it. I can see us going both ways, but I'd rather use the full stone-enhanced hammers for wonder building. Despite your growth you won't work high-value tiles for a while, as mining and roading the stone will take some time, so I'd rather get the settler out of the way first.

I can't do a dotmap right now, but Airefuego's red location looks good for a first city. However I'd locate a second and a third to the west, one with the elephants, one with the dye/gems, and so block all the south for later settling. We'll have to see what else is there to the east, but I doubt that Roosevelt will move around that city to get to the sites below.

 

[Daedal]

Of your three neighbors, who is the most threatening? Survy has a bad rep, but watch out for Zara, who is a REXing madman. Once he gets going, he is hard to slow down. Finding out where Zara and Survy are, precisely, is key -- so you can decide who is the bigger threat. Either way, FDR isn't your biggest threat, he's just the sucka with the naked worker.

That pretty much sums it up. Zara and Sury are IMO both awful neighbors. Roosevelt can spam cities, but otherwise he's harmless. GW is more important now than ever because you'll want to REX north without wanting to build a huge army for power rating and protection from the south. Steal the worker if you want, but you'll have to build GW very fast if you do that or else deal with Roosy's pillaging archers.

 

[Lord Chambers]

Has anyone ever seen an AI send his garrisson archers to attack your capital after you've stolen a worker? Hell, they won't even attack a fortified warrior without 3 or so extra ones. Steal the worker and don't pretend that your early game relations with him really factor in to any sort of Soviet buffer strategy or whether you found a religion or something later on.

Airefuego, why don't you move your blue city site south a tile and trade those two deserts in for floodplains. The extra growth will give you extra time to consider if it's really worthwhile to found the yellow city which only has 8 or 9 tiles that should be worked.

And a general request to all:
Can we avoid using civ cliches for one round? Calling a city with one food resource "tailor made for a GPP farm" is okay because exaggeration and enthusiasm are good covers for actual understanding and competance, but this page features a suggestion "delayed axe rush." Truely, civ lingo has reached an all time useless.

But enough rage, my suggestion for Sisitul is beeline economy gambit for early maces.

 

[slobberinbear]

Has anyone ever seen an AI send his garrisson archers to attack your capital after you've stolen a worker? Hell, they won't even attack a fortified warrior without 3 or so extra ones. Steal the worker and don't pretend that your early game relations with him really factor in to any sort of Soviet buffer strategy or whether you found a religion or something later on.

That's a fair point. I am forgetting that it's still early and everyone still has just one city. Maybe this is just the equivalent of popping a "free worker" goodie hut. And it's not as if Roosevelt is right on the doorstep ... he's a good 15 tiles away, likely with no extra units to send our way ... and he'll be likely building a replacement worker soon instead of archers.

Sis is a bit of a gambler with these things anyway. He will be powerless to resist the lure of the stolen worker.

 

[JTMacc99]

Agree with the City Spammer issue.

Zara will be very friendly, especially with shared faith, as he's usually quite pleased with his own large population and fine technolgy standing. He does, however, tend to wildly overcharge for his trades and is a nightmare to kick out of his cities once Gunpowder shows up. You would be best served to wait for him to upgrade to Riflemen and take him out with cannons and CR2 or CR3 Grens if he's hanging around post gunpowder.

The other guy is a big ugly jerk who is hard to please, hates trading, and will attack peaceful neighbors for the purpose of expansion.

Frankly, it is my opinion that it is Arabia's best interests to eliminate the Americans as soon as possible and do its REXing all along the northern border to seal off its lands from the other two with its own cities. Letting the Americans do it is dangerous for a couple reasons. First, they might do something annoying like try to settle South rather than where we want them to settle. In other words, they might not set up the buffer in a very efficient manner like we would. Second, one or both of the other two guys will eventually attack and either destroy or vassalize the Americans, making them even more difficult to kill when the time comes.

If we take Washington, REX the northern border, building the Great Wall would be a fantastic idea. It means there can be nine million barbs in the South, because, who cares? They would give you a chance to get some promotions while the protective Arab empire organically grows powerful. It means you get a Great Spy to steal lots of techs from Zara. If it does add to the power rating, then you might force Zara and Sury to fight with each other (which would be the "can't lose scenario"). If Sury does decide to send a stack our way, the protective archers/longbows should do just fine and the Wall will put us in Great General city.

Other thoughts on the kill the Americans NOW idea:

It would be very, very useful to steal techs from Zara, since he hoards them and the other guy is useless.
You will probably need to contact the rest of the world sooner rather than later, just in case there's a tech monster out there.
Any strategy that would make Zara and Sury fight with each other would be brilliant.

 

[Rameau's Nephew]

I agree with Patagonia. Rushing Roosevelt just gives Zara and Sury more space to outgrow you. I'd only steal the worker if I thought that I could make up with him shortly thereafter.

 

[phurph]

The gem city won't pay for itself until after IW (or a border pop and a couple of cotts are worked). You still want that awesome site, just plan accordingly.

Patagonia has an awesome point about settling floodplain/gold city (2S 1E of gold). If you take advantage of +2 health from event you can have 11 fp with no terrain unhealth

health=4 (+2 event, +2 river)
filth=4 (11*.4 for fp)

 

[uncarved block]

Roosevelt is normally a neighbor I'd like to see, but given who's next to him, he's going to expand your direction anyway; an early Axe rush would be best, if, as Saladin might have put it, "Insha'Allah". Take the Worker.

I treat Sury the same as Monty: it's not a question of "if" but "when" war is going to happen, so warring on your terms and not his would seem a priority. On Noble at least, he's able to keep up in techs all the way to Macemen. Look for his first attack around Construction, if you have a shared border-- or even if you don't! Looks as if we might get a good look at the power of Protective Longbows this game.

This leaves Zara to grow in peace, under this plan, but that's not the worst thing in the world. He's a good trade partner, and unless the wars go lightning fast, he'll be the only one left around the time the other civs start showing up, which will restore tech trading. This is actually a good set of neighbors, or at least the diplomacy seems fairly clear cut at this early stage.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

I won't answer the question directly.

You're close to jungles, chances are you have iron nearby but not horses or bronze. Early worker steal tends to boil down to early rush later, but you won't have an early rush.

Of course, that doesn't factor directly towards your decision, because a worker would also help you REX. Speaking of which, you should REX rather than war. You have to REX, because you've got 3 REX-ers and if you don't, you'll be gobbled up before you know it.

 

[Olodune]

Resist the temptation of a free worker! The worker would be nice, but FDR can build some wonders for you to take later, an early DoW would likely force his hand towards military instead.

Peaceful expansion into the rich lands looks like a better move than taking out FDR early. Zara can be strong, especially in the Medieval/Renaissance so keeping up with his expansion rate is a priority. With this board/AI mix I'd be tempted to avoid early wonders completely, and certainly wouldn't try for more than one.

 

[huerfanista]

Well, all of your exploring so far has been north (and south, to the nearby coast). You only know where 1 neighbor is, and they all showed up very quick (with Zara first, IIRC). I'd say exploring east and west is essential before getting too caught up in any long- or mid-term strategy.

Zara showed up on turn 6 and Roosevelt's capital is at least 10 tiles north, as far as I can tell from your screen shot. So there's no way that he's north of Roosevelt (plus, there's a lot of jungle north, so his scout couldn't have been moving 2 tiles/turn through that). He's likely east or west (not sure where his scout originally showed up), and very close by. I'd like to see another 5 turns of scouting east and west. Get ready to rex hard with these 3 jokers (at least Roosie and Zara - they're both very close), and I'm sure the AI values those juicy resources just as much as you.

 

[JTMacc99]

You're close to jungles, chances are you have iron nearby but not horses or bronze. Early worker steal tends to boil down to early rush later, but you won't have an early rush.

Ooh. No early rush resources would be a problem, wouldn't it.

Of course, that doesn't factor directly towards your decision, because a worker would also help you REX. Speaking of which, you should REX rather than war. You have to REX, because you've got 3 REX-ers and if you don't, you'll be gobbled up before you know it.

I'm thinking that both war and REX are called for in this game, because I think I would want to REX right where Roosevelt would REX. To pull it off, it would call for a VERY early end for Roosevelt, and some serious attention paid to the economy shortly thereafter. The protective trait will be a major contributer here, because I envision stretching the defenses a little thin while building all of the necessary things to support a 5-7 city early empire.