I played 10 because I wanted ten. I'm already slowing you guys down, why would I want to play more and slow you down even further.
BTW since you may have missed it with the screwed-up server date, here are my comments.
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As usual, Belials comments indicate he doesn't belong here.
Tsukemono5@ (is there a short nick you prefer?) My comments are not so important that you needed to wait on them but it would be good to avoid problems like TSK01.
My biggest concern is following the golden rule:
Population is POWER
- That means, settling food bonuses are a high priority. (Luxuries have been our high priority which is ok because unhappiness limits population too.)
- Once we have food bonuses, improve them to their best potential.
- Once we grow, do what is necessary to minimize the loss when workers and settlers are built.
We did good with point 1, putting Bombay on the Cow. We did not-so-good with Madras only having 1 two-food tile and then didn't bring irrigation to its plains tiles when we were going for the ivory. I follow the teams suggestion about settling the furs and the iron next. If I had my preferences though I would have gone with the greener pastures in the south. (That would have helped our Barb problem too.)
We've done badly with point 2. We've left the game in the forest losing 1 food per turn. That doesn't sound like a lot but its the difference beteen Settlers every 10 turns and settlers every 8 turns. It will make a difference. Also, we hadn't started any attempt to irrigate our cow in Bombay, nor irrigate the plains in Madras.
For point 3 we need to build units periodically because Delhi doesn't grow as fast as it makes settlers. We need to prevent dropping all the way down to size 1 or 2. This is killing our treasury. We need to get the populations up to their max happiness. We have 2 luxuries connected so with 2 MP we can have five citizens. Using the slider we can easily get 6 or 7. When the furs get connected we'll be even better. Things that also help minimize the loss of citizens is i food bonuses for quicker recovery (see point 2) and having OVERLAP of cities. That way the improved tiles that are not being worked by city A, can be worked by city B when City A makes it's settler/worker.
There is a big trade off here between workers and city size. In general, it's important to have at least one worker per city. When we build Settler, Settler, Settler, we need another city that can build worker, warrior, worker, warrior fast enough to keep up. I think Bombay can do that. It's building a barracks (one was started, vetoed in favor of a worker and then started again.
) not because I think veteran warriors are that important but because I wanted to build something that would let the population get up to the 4 or 5 range. (You may end up changing to an archer or spear as there is another camp in the south.)
When cities get to their maximum food (or get to 1fpt) then any city can peal a worker off. The more the better.
My second concern is the barbs. (Amirsan@ I'm sorry I added them and I think I actually must have selected raging.) This is going to be a good diety experience, making us ready for anything.
There is a couple of good things with barbs on diety. First, you get contacts quickly because the AI sends units to destroy your barb camps. (They're genetically programmed to hate them.) Second, the AI is usually strong enough to take out most of the threats for you as long as you can turtle when barbs come. Third, raging barbs pop up camps quickly giving us the opportunity to make a little cash and upgrade units. This has to be done intelligently though. To make the camp appear, you must leave a tile in the Fog of War. Choose where you want them to appear based on terrain. Don't let them appear in the mountains or jungle. Without an attacking bonus sometimes your best approach is to fortify on a mountain and let them suicide on your spear. Once the roving barb is dead send an archer over to kill the camp. I realize we've suffered a lot of losses but once we get swordsmen, we can barb farm to get them to elite and make a little gold on the side.
However, we need to get a few more unit producing cities. I suggest a city to the SW of Delhi as it has BG and rivers. The SE can be our barb farm so I would place a low priority on the green dot, UNLESS you move it NW by 2 tiles. Then it can share the improvements of Delhi as Delhi makes settlers. We need some units on the mountain ridge so barbs can get the high ground.
The chinese are Rapidly approaching so if you want that second iron, better get it right after the SW town. Usually its a good idea to delay iron hook up so we can build cheap units for MP first. Dont connect iron until our settler push is over and each town has the 2 MP it needs. Once we get Republic (30 turns or so) Then MP wont be needed, we can upgrade half the warriors to swords and claim more land.
(Sorry for the rambling.)
Tsukemono5@ Shift a few units down to the mountains and hit the camp with an archer. Then leave them somewhere that will allow another camp to show up. Rinse, repeat. Don't attack the barb while he's on the mountain. Hopefully he will impale himself on the spear. It might be less risky to cover with a warrior as well.
Settle SW next. Send the scouts in the north towards the Pennisula in the east. I left Belials warrior on the mountain fortified because I didn't want barb camps in our tender spots.
Watch the timing of the forest chop, it's due soon but I don't remember how soon. I didn't set Delhis build to plan for it.
Road and irrigate the plains tiles to the west.
Don't get dead.
Sorry for the long post. Don't forget that I've never played much diety so feel free to print this out and throw it in the garbage.
Belial@ I swear I got the embassy message but I could have been halucinating. I never tried to do anything with it. I played 10 because I don't have time for more. Most SG's start playing 10 around this time. We're on a nice turn schedule for it. Harbors are expensive and this is a panagea map. Not sure we want to focus on that yet. Maybe in Bombay when the expansion phase is over. Good point about the dye city. Much better than China, we're playing nice nice with China for a while.
. We'll have fun with those in our south if that is the case so I won't completely argue settling there either.
) but I watched diplo like a hawk. There are three techs that we don't have, and none of them are Republic. One is Monarchy though. No one would trade me a tech for anything. I'll post the turns in a bit.
). Uh oh. Middle ages. I send the spear that was guarding the workers north to Calcutta.
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