An interesting start with Hannibal

[Wrathful]

Hello everyone. It has been a little while since I played Civ 4, but I thought I would get back into with a new game. As luck would have it, the first map I rolled has proven to be quite interesting. The settings are standard: immortal, fractal with Hannibal (who is an excellent leader in my opinion.)

Spoiler Start :

Starts like this, where you're on the end of a peninsula, have proven to be pretty tough in the past. But Hannibal is a nice leader, and the land seems rich enough. It all depends on what there is to the west I suppose.

I moved the warrior SW.

Spoiler Warrior move :

SIP and on the plains hill are out; those would kill the fish. I see a few options here:

• Settle 1S and work the plains hill to get out a boat for the fish. This kills either the northwestern clam or the sheep.
• Settle 1SE and work a grassland hill (and the plains hill after 5 turns). This kills no visible resources.
• Ignore the fish and settle where the warrior is. Focus on improving the corn first. Grab the fish later.

I guess if I had to choose right now, I would pick option 3. It seems best to move inland here and try to stake out some land. This could get ugly if there is an AI close, and we might not have any strategic resources. We don't have much to chop either.

There seems to be tundra visible to the west, which is somewhat foreboding. Also, the land might continue in the east.

Mansa Musa is in the game, for whatever that's worth. (At least I think he is, I might have interpreted the demographics wrong.) The map has 885 land tiles.

 

[Fippy]

Settle on Corn
Will never be irrigated, and seafood is better with FIN anyways.
I always count like this..only worth 4 (minus 1 which stays permanent), and nobody would shed tears over dry rice.

 

[sampsa]

1W or 1SW. SSEE of settler is land (right?), so no reason to discard 1W. Probably on corn is still better, though.

 

[Izuul]

Yeah I would probably settle on the dry corn.

 

[krikav]

Another vote for settling on the corn.
It's always nice to be able to skimp on agriculture early on, and here it's sure to give us a blazing fast start.
With other leaders, I would be worried about locking in so much food into the capital (both northern clams), but with CHA, I think it's doable. Can probably ignore some of those clams for quite some time too.

 

[lymond]

Yeah..if you settle 1W a city can be place 2e1n of the fish, although same can be said for settling on the corn. I'd prolly go with the corn...no loss of turn.

Can work forested PH for first WB (and still grow a bit), while going BW first.

edit: LOL ...it is indeed an ...um...interesting start...have fun

 

[jnebbe]

Checked out the save , gl brother, will be fun to see how the experts play this

 

[Izuul]

Edit (fairly big spoiler info):

Spoiler :

I replayed the beginning and Oracle'd Feudalism because i remembered AZ doing it once a long, long time ago with Carthage. Took Mutal with LBs and now 5T from Construction to add some cats to the mix.

I think this line could potentially be improved by going for Writing earlier and whipping a library in Carthage. Edit: Tried this later and i wasn't impressed. PH > Writing is just too efficient even if it means a greatly delayed library.

I'm not sure how you would know to do this though. I think i would always tech BW first here, but in my first attempt here i went for AH next to see if we had horses somewhere in the vicinity. This time i skipped that and went straight for PH for the Oracle. I'm not sure if you could still do that quickly enough after teching AH, even on Immortal. Either way, it's still entertaining to do a LB rush.

Oh.. probably should've remembered to switch into HR and Vassalage too! haha

 

[Fippy]

Free workers yay

 

[Wrathful]

The thought of settling on the corn hadn't even occurred to me. That proves I still have a lot to learn about this game.

Spoiler T28 :

Settled on corn, started on a boat, and picked BW for my first tech. I was a bit worried about this map after reading some of the comments.

I think I can see where this is going already.

There is a nice spot to steal workers here. If I stand on the hill I can see all the nearby tiles. I don't really do this very often because most maps don't require it.

I thought killing his scout would be enough to end the war, but he won't have it.

After finishing BW, I went for Hunting and AH, hoping to find horses. With the seafood I have enough commerce to take a shot at the GLH if I want.

And of course, there are no horses to be found. Pacal has some though. After settling Utica I checked if he would make peace and, for some reason, he did. I don't know what changed, but I took it.

So now we're at peace once more. He will probably try to improve the corn again, which means I may have the opportunity to steal another worker. I wonder if it's even worth it anymore. I have no dire need for worker turns here. I would rather have him build settlers and workers than archers.

I will probably try to get the GLH here. If I have iron I can go for a Construction attack later.

 

[Wrathful]

I have been playing this map recently. But now I've reached a decision point and wanted to pause before moving on.

Spoiler :

I did decide to pursue the GLH since there wasn't much else to do for commerce. It was finished on T59. I have 3 good cities and 1 lame one. The happy cap is very high here. I'm hoping to pull off some kind of Construction attack against Pacal if I have iron. There was a blue circle on the easternmost tile of my peninsula, which gives me hope that there is iron around there.

Health was an issue too. I teched Agriculture for +1 health from the corn (+2 with a granary). My tech pace was pretty nice with the GLH. I did invest in a scouting boat for better trade routes.

I decided to self-tech Iron Working early on rather than wait for the AI. The result:

I don't have any strategic resources in my land. I could send out a settling party down south to claim the copper. There is also iron in the west that I might be able to grab.

Or...go for an Archerpult attack. I just need to get Pacal's capital to secure horses. It's on flatland and he's not Protective. If I send in 10 catapults and 10 archers I should be able to take the city. It would be either a glorious victory or a spectacular failure.

Claiming the iron is not guaranteed; Charlie built Stonehenge and might swallow it up with his culture. To get the copper I would have to march a settler and at least one archer down there, which would take a long time. I could build a galley to get there a bit quicker, but that's another 50 hammers spent. Then I have to improve the copper as well. And if a barbarian axeman spawns down there I can't really defend the copper mine.

Another problem is that Charlie seems to have blocked off Pacal and has essentially secured the entire rest of the continent for himself. He will probably become a monster in 2000 years if I don't do anything about it. And of course there is another continent or two in the fog and who knows what's happening out there. Someone got Judaism early (or at least it felt early) so that has me worried.

 

[krikav]

Well... now you are in a tight spot.
I don't think I would have gone for GLH here at all. Financial and all that seafood would have been enough commerce to get what you needed to get.
Can't allow an AI to box you in like that.
I would go for archerpult right away and pray to the gods pacal doesn't get HBR and if I can get his land and a foothold i the world, I would come up with a plan for charly later. Might have to befriend him and go overseas for more land first too.

Lack of iron later on can be handled, you can trade with Charly for one turn and do the upgrades you need to do, then pillage the resource you gave him in return.
And cavallery doesn't need iron, likewise rifling+trebs. There are options still.

 

[sampsa]

Getting this out of my system: GLH is overrated. Without islands or inter-continental trade routes it's not really giving much even and it isn't cheap at all. On the right map it's really good, but even then, due to islands the map is usually easy even without GLH. is something you can gain easily by just expanding to more cities and working cottages (or even FIN coast).

I think you can win this map without attacking Pacal, but to me it's very clear that a construction war is the best play, especially with CHA. Also, FIN gets you there faster, so the traits are excellent for this. Archers are good enough to mop up wounded troops, while cats do all the real work.

 

[lymond]

Can't allow an AI to box you in like that.
.

There was no way to avoid that here.

 

[krikav]

There was no way to avoid that here.

Well, yes that will happen. But my point is that priority should be on breaking out, not building GLH.

 

[lymond]

Well, yes that will happen. But my point is that priority should be on breaking out, not building GLH.

Oh..absotootely

Not sure why he's teching Meditation either.

In these cases, one needs to be especially focused.

Ha..warripults may work here too. Pacal looking a bit boxed in himself.

 

[sampsa]

Ha..warripults may work here too

That's the spirit!

 

[Izuul]

Playing this I was a bit surprised by just how effective LBs are as attackers early in the game. I guess it makes sense since they have no hard counter.

 

[Wrathful]

I think it's good that I took a break; I was definitely starting to lose focus on what was important in the game.

RE GLH: I think by building the wonder I was trying to keep my options open and "play the long game". I was also really hoping there would be iron somewhere in the east. In terms of tech I don't think it cost me much; Masonry is needed for Construction and Sailing is good here in general. But 200 hammers is quite a lot and maybe not worth the investment.

Spoiler :

My plan now is to build up some archers while teching to Construction. I will whip some barracks first because I will definitely want promotions.

But then something happened that changed everything.

So now War Elephants are available. That changes things. But I still might go in with just archers and catapults depending on how long it takes to tech HBR after Construction and how weak Pacal is looking. I had been planning to tech HBR for horse archers even before this trade appeared.

One issue with this is that he has fish and clam near his territory. So he might decide to cancel the deal later. I didn't see any sheep or silver near him however, so I should be able to trade those.

I reached Construction on T82. HBR will only take about six more turns here, so I will just wait and attack with a few elephants in my army. My capital is doing well; I don't even have to whip there to get out units quickly.

Eight turns later I decided to go in. I can start bombarding his defenses while a couple more guys (including one elephant) catch up. I also took this opportunity to switch into Buddhism now that my units are moving out. I promoted a few archers to guerilla and others to combat. I didn't see any axes or swords around, so I should be safe.

Overall I would say it went pretty well. I had some good luck and some bad luck, so it was pretty even.

Mutal is a really nice city, although Pacal built not one cottage along the river being the idiot he is. My poor city of Hadrementum also gets its deer at last.

But Charlie is really becoming a problem; he's up to 8 cities and has plenty more land to expand into. His land is good too. I can only hope that he crashes his economy while expanding so quickly.

Annoyingly, I am 1 experience point shy of getting a Great General.

My tech path probably wasn't optimal. I went for Monarchy after Construction and later was able to trade for Alphabet with Charlie.

Fast-forward several more turns and Pacal has been wiped out completely. Now I have to think about how to proceed from here. Charlie is my friend and won't plot on me, so I can choose when I want to attack. I probably want to go for Astronomy to make use of my Great Lighthouse better. From there I can take on Charlie with cannons.

 

[krikav]

Nice work @Wrathful !

Yes, from there on, Astro is a really good aim.
If you can find some horsehockey islands on your continent though, hurry up and settle a pair of those too, for the offshore bonus.

It's not a given that Charly will be the prime target though, as he is a religious nut he is super easy to please with a whopping +8 religious diplo bonus when he has the holy city and there might be better targets on the other continent.

Hard to see from the screenshot now, but it doesn't look like you have an enormeous continent? There is a huge differance if he stops at 14 cities compared to if he goes up to 24.

Going monarchy in semi-iso (which this turned into) is generally a no-no, as the AIs trade it away as willingly as they trade away alphabet. And Charly is all but guaranteed to go there as it's on the way to his favourite civic vassalage.