Apocalypto

[Mikehendi]

Hi guys, Do you have room for one more?

I've played a lot of civ, including a few SG's, until about a year ago (may be even longer), then stopped civving. I started playing again a month ago, mostly monarch/emperor games with variant rules. I play more concentrated in team games though, so one level higher should be challenging, but doable.

A few quick thoughts, without having read everything yet (so apologies if I'm pointing out obvious stuff )

The half-price granaries and the +3 happy UB, combined with the low production variant, has written Slavery all over it.

Workshops will be equal to unimproved forests at least until Guilds. Which we won't have much sooner then when mines will be allowed.

I like settling on resources we cannot improve in order to access them. PH marble = 3H city tile by the way.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Good to be back!

Not sure how to handle the gold hill, we can't mine it so other than the 2 hammers is getting it in the first ring that important?

It would seem that Math for some forts would help us somewhat, no? Plus its on the way to our UB.

 

[Cam_H]

Mike! Of course you can join! It's been a while since 'Dutch need Discounts'!

vranasm
lymond <<< Up
nocho <<< On Deck
Sengir
Cam
Norvin_Green
Mikehendi​

 

[lymond]

I will play the turnset today, basically getting through AH.

I think we need to decide on BW vs. TW/POT next.

I still think settling on Marble is good. Gold can't be mined anyway. Closer to food is good, but the city will have floodplains to work, it can help work cottages there when the cap is whipping, and it will get the monkey food later.

 

[nocho]

Welcome Norvin and Mike!

I also like settling on the marble, though maybe set should stop on settler completion supposing we reveal a bit more land. Horses might also alter ideas.

Since we can't chop I give the nod to pottery over BW. So far we haven't met anyone yet so possibly we can settle at our leisure and don't need quick settler-whips. So maybe better to get grans and cottages first. I hope we're not isolated though. However, I hope Cam took notice of that when he had a peak at the map. Maybe it works out like the She-Wolves, island for ourselves, but everybody reachable by galley.

 

[lymond]

10 turns played...I stopped at completion of AH so we can decide on tech path

Not much in the way of scouting since the warrior was under constant assault by wildlife (killed 2 lions and a panther) We are lucky he survived the first turn...he's a trooper.

TW is a placeholder. I also switch to both flood plains this turn of growth for commerce, but feel free to switch if you feel the 1h is better.

As you can see, we have horses to the west:

Spoiler :

However, with BW I don't think horses are urgent if we want to settle marble first, since it means insta-Holkans.

Unfortunately, the immediate surrounding land is not exactly great for this variant since food is rather scarce.

 

[nocho]

You didn't upload, so I guess you'll play some more turns?

When the borders of our cap pop again, I think we only need 1 fogbuster in the very south, 1 in the north-west and then towards the NE. That's to say I think we can reasonably gamble on postponing BW a bit for the holkans and go pot first. However, no strong feelings on the subject.

 

[Mikehendi]

Spoiler :

I like TW-pottery over BW:

IF there's an AI on our continent, we can easily block off lots of land land with just 1 city in the NW. (A backyard with room for 5+ cities and a pony).

Therefore, expansionwise we can afford to grow the capital on the cow and wheat, cottage the FP's and just slowbuild settlers (8-9 turns) and workers (5 turns) from the capital.


If we settle on the marble, that city can help growing cottages in the capital early on, and also blocks off our backyard without border pop.


In fact, assuming the 2nd city will be on the Marble, I like TW-pottery even over AH. It makes our worker have less/no idle time.

In the time it takes to research Wheel and Pottery (like 16-18 turns), The worker can
-farm wheat (5+1 turn)
-farm FP (one of the 2 northern ones) (7+1 turn)
-road 2 tiles toward second city (5 turns)
so about 19 turns.

Then cottage the 2 other FP's (about 10 worker turns), while teching AH (also about 10 turns, since we'll have 1-2 more commerce from growing), and finally improve the cow at the time we will start spitting out settlers and workers.

But let's scout a bit further before deciding where to settle.

EDIT: whoops, I'm a bit late... Yes that took me over a half hour ... spoilered it since it is no longer relevant.

Edit 2: And thanks for the welcome comite Yeah, that Dutchie discount game was a fun game indeed!

 

[vranasm]

we are not creative and I don't like to settle cities without food first ring.

on marble isn't bad since we can't improve the gold, but i would like to settle the horses other way

we surely have think about non traditional production tiles and pasture and camp are prime example.

We need to look around ivory (that I consider prio...should help with cities in west, look further), we could actually make some good rice+ivory city, if marble city is mostly for the cottages in cap.

pasture in west with farms around lake is viable option (i would make the city 1S to have horses 1st ring) or make it 1SE to share the grass cows from cap, loses out on silk though.

given the peninsula i think we need ~4 warriors to fogbust, maybe even 3 will cut it if we settle city 2 soon, so we could delay BW a bit and go pottery before.
we payed already for the cottages when choosing pacal, so we should use them asap.

it looks like calendar will be on our shopping list pretty high.

 

[Norvin_Green]

Perhaps we settle our second city on the jungle west of the marble. Once we get a border pop it can actually yield a whopping 8 plus it gets the rice in the first ring. We can use the banana for another city later.

 

[lymond]

not a bad idea, Norv

 

[Norvin_Green]

It does put us one off the coast though but for the I think it's not a bad trade off. Unfortunately for you guys I only average about 1 decent idea per game!

 

[Mikehendi]

After the capital borderpop on turn 51, the marble will be in our culture anyway, so we could settle 1N of the jungle on the coast and still work the marble.

ATM I'm still in favor of settling ON the marble though. It can output 7 hammers @ size 2 (while borrowing an FP from the cap to grow) pre-borderpop and 9 after. AND gives access to a resource. Settling on the gold is viable too (coastal + 2h city tile + extra happy).

We still have time to scout a bit before the settler arrives though, which might influence things.

(But why are hammers from unimproved tiles so important? Won't most production come from food tiles? There's no restrictions on slavery, right?)

 

[nocho]

I think I agree with Mike here, I'd prefer to settle on marble. The 3h city centre is pretty huge. I think that way with the rice and maybe 1 of the floodplains farmed, it could get a library out relatively quickly and produce our first GS. Don't see that happen that easily settling in other spots (anywhere) if we don't want to burden the cap with that.

 

[lymond]

yep, on the marble is productive for us early and will be a nice city later as well.

 

[Sengir]

Yeah, with the restrictions taken into account we'd better settle either the gold or the marble, with the marble being the better site of those two.

Also, happy new year everybody

 

[nocho]

I'll play later today through wheel and pottery. Will start settler at size 4. Worker after pasture will farm a FP for marble city as it won't have anything better to do anyway. Scout and setup fogbusting net.

 

[nocho]

Okay, felt like getting on with it, so I played.

The wheel and pottery are in, we settled on the marble. Farmed the FP after the cow pasture and started roading so we'd have a TR between our cities. Our worker just started on the first cottage. Chose to build a second worker after the settler.

Scouted a bit more. A warrior in the NW found a fish there but got harrassed by a barb, so ended up wounded in our new city. Last turn there was a barb warrior on the rice, it disappeared, presumably on the tile 1W of it. In the south we have another warrior who can stay on the tile where he's at (or 1S) for fogbusting purposes. There's a sheep and whale there. Then our other warrior in the NE got into some fights and popped a hut for experience, so is now woodsman 3 with HE unlocked. And he found we're not alone. You might discern a hut in the 2nd screenie (south of the western banana), that one was protected by a barb warrior and around it we found Native American and Incan units. So us being the Mayas, it would be disappointing not to have Monty around as well. Cam?

Home turf:

North eastern future home turf:

Queued BW, holkans will be nice once the barbs turn into archers and enter our borders.

 

[vranasm]

at least we are not isolated...

i guess me being deep into SW:TOR and far on the "to play" list, I will wait a bit how this turns out ;-)

the fish city is "clear" imo

the wester is probably settled the way L proposed earlier to grab both silk.

expanding east doesn't look like high prio with all that jungle (not "choppable") and AI's being so far away...

we could get nice compact ~5 city empire around capitol at our part of world and work from that.

 

[Sengir]

I think we can fit in six cities in the peninsula, and we might want to settle one city towards the jungle (though that can be delayed until further notice).

Plan:
Mutal: Worker > Settler
Lakamha: Monument > Warrior > Holkans
Tech: BW > Writing?
Workers: Cottaging the cap