AOL01 - New players welcome!

[aol]

Hey all,

I'm looking to start an SG for beginner players (like myself). If a nice, more experienced player would like to join and mentor us, that would be great! 24 hour got it/48 hours to play would be great!

Leader: Random
Rivals: 6 Randomly Determined
Difficulty: Prince
Map: Fractal
Size: Standard
Speed: Normal
Victory Conditions: All Enabled.

Roster:
aol
pholkhero
marick
tracktwo
chimalpopoca

Thanks,
Aol

 

[pholkhero]

've been looking for a more laid back game to play, though I'm not a newbie.

i could be your experienced player.

if you get more people, sign me up!

for map, why not fractal? or continents? or hemispheres? or big&small? you can see i'm easy.

leader: have absolutely NO preference. noble or prince is fine for me

 

[tracktwo]

I've been playing single player for a while, but never broke into SGs. I consider myself pretty newbish. I'd like to play, if you'll have me.

I usually play on Prince with mostly random settings. I win some, and I lose some. No strong preferences for map or leader. Noble or Prince is fine by me.

 

[aol]

Thanks for the interest, I've edited the starting post slightly...

I'm out of town right now, but if we get enough to start before I get back (Tuesday) maybe somebody else could roll up a start for us to discuss.

Cheers,
aol

 

[chimalpopoca]

Hi,

I was lurking for some of the SGs here in the forums, now I'd like to take part in one.
Playing on Emperor (with official 3.13 patch) single player.
So sign me up please.

One thing, can you put me to the end (or close to the end) of the roster? Only in case of getting enough players before Friday. I'll be available from then on.

Fractal is fine by me. I like that unpredictable one.
For the leader, I'd suggest either Hannibal or Willem, they have nice treats IMO. Financial is a much help with techs. Also, Hannibal's charismatic helps us to get veteran troops faster. As for Willem's creative, reaching the BFC automatically helps us much in the early parts of the game.
But many depends on what playstyle are we planning to adopt. (Ideas?)

 

[marick]

Hi,

I've been curious about SGs too. If you still need one more, I'd love to give it a try. My current games are Noble level, so I'm in the newb category, but I do seem to be doing pretty well on Noble, so I should be able to handle Prince with a bit of guidance.

May I join?

-marick

 

[aol]

Thanks for the interest. I've got the roster set up in hopefully a good mix of experienced players and newbs like me!

Rolled up a random leader and got:

The unique catapult gives +25% against melee units, and our UB gives +35% science instead of +25%

And our start:

I'd like to see what (if any) resources are in the sea (move war SE). I like the bonus from settling on a plains hill, especially if there's some food we can use in the sea.

Initial techs: agriculture, for corn; bronze working; or fishing, if we could use it.

I'll probably play 20 turns tomorrow afternoon, if everyone's had a chance to give some input.

 

[marick]

Sounds like a good plan.

Mind turning on the resource flag circle-thingees? I still can't quite see the resources without them.



-marick

 

[aol]

Sorry, will do for future shots!

Just on my way to bed, so the resources visible are:
Corn(SE of settler)
Sugar(W and 2W of warrior)

 

[pholkhero]

like the leader, and don't play him much. cool. the one time i did, the hwacha was terrific!

i'm not so sure on tech path, though.

do we want a religion? starting w/myst n being fin, we might want to aim for hinduism if there is a 2 commerce tile nearby.

if not, maybe we could do warrior se to the hill, and move the settler to that plains hill by the sea, too. we can afford to waste a turn to see if a great site is just nearby. i would only settle that plains hill if there are other hills under the fog there. without 'em, there's barely any production.

if we find seafood, i say we go Fishing first obviously, building a warrior until we can swap to a WB. swap and go back to the warrior. if we can get the corn, i'd go Agr next. if not, BW for sure.

also, my eagle eye has found what might be an elephant's asz in the SW jungles, 2 S of the sugar. mmm . . . 'phants and hwacha's at construction . . . drool

 

[tracktwo]

I haven't played Wang Kon for quite a long time, so that looks good. I'm a terrible city-spotter, but if there isn't any seafood, what about 1w of start? Corn, fresh water, and eventually sugar, lots of rivers and what looks like a few hills up in the fog north.

If we some high-commerce and settle fast, then I'm up for trying for Hinduism.

 

[aol]

So, looks like I was on a bit too much of the last night and didn't, y'know, save the game...

Decided to keep Wang, here's our new start:

Moved the warrior onto a hut for the 26 gold. Settling in place or one south looks good to me. 1 South gets the second gold, but may crowd out a second city using gold/rice in the south. In either case, get a worker out to start mining, and research towards religion or AH, followed maybe by pottery to get cottages on those flood plains.

Will still try to play this evening.

 

[marick]

I think I'd settle in place. Giving up the 1 gold, but gaining another spot by the river seems ok. Also, as you say, we should plan on another city southeast of the capitol to pick up the rice and the other gold (and the sugar, maybe).

I vote for AH, then bronze working, then pottery (and skipping a religion, because I'm not crazy about getting a religion early before we know where/who our neighbors are). I'm thinking the first worker will end up pasturing the pigs, then mining the gold. Gold + pigs at size 2 should be a (I think) a solid 4H, 3P, 7C.

-marick

 

[aol]

yeah, early religions have been sorta 50/50 for me in the past... Sometimes you're surrounded by religious nuts who go all on you, and sometimes you spread it to everyone and get the shrine...

 

[pholkhero]

hope the warrior wasn't on the top gold. It might've been better to move south to reveal the map a bit more. also, you can't get techs w/o a city being built (can you get techs on prince?) either ~

and not to be contrary, if we worked for it, spreading our religion far and wide, while actively running a priest for building the shrine in our capital with all those FPs and gold and us being FIN ~ i don't know ~ might be an awful lot of money to be had there

I might be in favor of taking two risks at the beginning and seeing if they pay off. The first would be to move 1 SE to the grass hill, grabbing both golds, the pigs and also the sugar. as you guys noted, the risk is losing a 2nd city for the rice. If we have good terrain elsewhere, it's not so big a deal.

the 2nd would be to go for religion, with the aim of making it a golden cash cow for us ~

if we do this, DON'T build a worker first. We need to grow to be able to work more commerce, so go with a warrior, and work the FPs.

also, if religion isn't much to our liking, i like worker > warrior, with AH > BW being good first techs, with the reason being pigs will let us grow faster. we should also look for early pottery. FIN and FPs w/early cottages ~ yum!

 

[chimalpopoca]

Wang Kon, yay!
(Just planning to bomb him out of his palace in my single player game, btw)

Our starting position is great with our treats, seems like capital will be a nice commerce city.
Settle in place looks fine, we can have a nice 2nd coastal city if the comp's suggestion is because of some seafood at the shoreline. Need some scouting tho.

Considering it's Prince we might could give religion a try.
We have Mining for starting tech so (Religious one)-AH-Wheel-Pottery, followed by BW is fine by me for the beginning tech path. We won't need agriculture before settling the 2nd city (if we settle near the rice).
Also bear in mind, we have +20 City def., 1 first strike chance Archery Units due to our Defensive treat, so we could go for Hunting-Archery at some point. Even only one per city of those guys can form a great city garrison early game.

A starting save would be welcome.
PS: Luckily, I have more time than expected, so I'll bring it on with you.

 

[chimalpopoca]

-crossposted-

What about scouting a bit before settling? (bigger chance to lose the religion race)
BTW, our area seems to be temperate climated so we have chance of getting some good city spots later on.

 

[aol]

Did move the warrior from the gold hill... didn't think the map info would be necessary right away, and didn't know about not getting techs (I think I've seen one on prince once, IIRC). In retrospect, what's down there may make a big difference on where to settle.

Personally, I'd like to try getting religion going purposefully, rather than by accident as I usually do. Any preference for Bud vs Hind? I usually go with poly because it's en route to Monotheism and OR. In that case, would moving S or SE with the settler and working the flood plain make up for founding a turn late?

 

[marick]

I have no objection to an early religion, by the way. I suspect I just need some practice in getting it spread to my neighbors, so I'm happy to try it here.

If we DO plan to found an early religion, I assume that means no early axe-rush, so delaying bronze-working (not AH) seems like the way to go.

Buddhism is usually founded earlier (by an AI), so I think Polytheism is a better choice.

-marick

 

[pholkhero]

I almost always try to move my first unit for exploration purposes only. Getting more info about where to put your capital far outweighs grabbing a goody hut that you are sure to be able to grab anyway. either way, though, i don't think it'll affect us much.

i think moving SE will *hopefully* but we may get f'ed. being able to get commerce and, more importantly, the extra food from the FPs to grow faster will, hopefully, offset the move.

I, too, would go Poly as *most* religious folks go w/Buddhism firsr.

@ Chimal: agree on the PRO trait, highly underrated. I posted somethign about it in another thread a couple weeks ago:

PROTECTIVE musing

Ye Archery & Gunpowder units receive Drill I and Garrison I for free
Whilst ye double production of castles and walls
So very misunderstood and maligned
your power is mys'try,
a gift from Divine

So, i think the PRO trait gets a bad rap. Sure, it LOOKS defensive, but the trait is of great benefit to a warmonger as well, esp in the PFS where we're forced to build Walls and Castles. With them and a barracks, 2 or 3 CG3/DrillI archers or longbow are virtually impregnable baring overwhelming odds. And even then, their defensive bonus will hold out enough for the city to be reinforced.

Now, what this first means is that you can build more offensive troops instead. Then, when you yourself have a superior offensive army, you attack your neighbors. Once you capture a city, most likely any injured unit will stay in teh city to heal a bit. Then, when it's out of revolt, you whip in Walls, Castles (when avail) and PRO troops.

This way you certainly hold any city you take, but you won't even need to carry any extra PRO units to act as city garrison's in newly-conquered cities. Thus, your army is a city-eating machine, and your conquered cities whip their way into a beaten and subdued city

if we go w/religion (as it seems we are now that marick is on board, too), i would go Poly > AH > Wheel > Pottery as Chimal suggest, and warrior > warrior > worker at Pop2 as our first builds, while working both flood plains until we score Hinduism.

finally, i'm using the BUG mod which has been known to crash teh game log of non-users. though this bug is out of BUG, some SG captains don't allow its use in-game. AOL ~ can players use the mod??