And finally some comments on the submitted games. Hope they make sense...
splunge the 2nd:
Ok, I think after reading some of the other spoilers over here, you are already aware of what is the main drawback of your start: not settling on the river. After you invested one turn into moving the worker on the mountain (which is by the way quite ok, if you feel insecure about you start location! Better waste 1-2 worker turns than settle on a bad spot, while a much better spot is available!), you should have seen the excellent river spot quite clearly. The consequences of settling on the spot are: lost food (from the city center as well as from the non-irrigated deer) and therefore the population is only half of what could have been achieved by that time (size 2 versus size 4 (Lanzelot) or size 3 plus extra worker (templar_x) or size 2 plus two extra workers (PaperBeetle)). And as a result you are already quite behind in research (Alphabet not yet finished, while others already started on Writing.)
creamcheese:
Excellent. There is not much to comment on here. Basically you combined some of the ideas of PaperBeetle's and my approach and got to the same population (4, if we add the extra turn to 3000 BC). Only drawback (as with Paperbeetle's and one of templar's approaches) is the missing warriors and what I already said about them above. But despite the lack of scouting, your trades with both AIs were very good and got you to about tech parity.
Aabraxan:
Very difficult to assess... Here we will finally be able to compare the granary-first with the settler-first approach. And I'm still not entirely sure, which one is better... Your initial planning at turn 0 was very good, and you played the settler-first plan quite forcefully. Also you used the trade opportunities very well.
However, for my taste the second town is a bit too far away: true, you can use the fish and build a very early Curragh, which could be decisive in finding early off-continent contacts, but in case of war it is not possible to move units between Entremont and Alesia in one turn, which could make defense a bit difficult. (And also your settler spent 3 turns traveling instead of just 1, but didn't really reach a better spot that would justify the long journey.) Another drawback is: with Alesia at E-SE of Entremont, it could now use the roaded and mined river grassland instead of the unimproved river BG. This would net 1 extra gpt for quite some time! (Entremont will not use this fully improved tile for quite a while: at the moment it is size 1 and uses the fully improved BG, at size 2 it can take the deer tile, and by the time it gets to size 3, the river plains should nearly be improved. Entremont should need the river grassland only occasionally for 1-2 turns while waiting for another tile to become ready.)
I know, you wanted the road on the SE tile in order to get your settler into place faster, but I think the mine on that tile was kind of wasted for now (especially as Alesia is so far away and can't use the tile). Instead, improving the deer could perhaps have started 6 turns earlier?!
However, I'm looking forward to seeing how this settler-first approach is going to work out!
Glasnost:
Yet another different plan: you are going for Iron Working directly without the "diversion" via Republic. The benefit should be that you can perhaps capture AI territory, before the AI can build a large army and get that territory much earlier than otherwise. However, the drawbacks will be a despotic Golden Age and a kind of under-developed empire early on. The reasons for this are:
- Because you stay in Despotism for a very long time, you will loose a lot of food, growth and production. (Especially during your GA.)
- While you are leading war against the AI, they can't help you... You will probably miss out on quite a number of trade opportunities and enter the middle age much later than the others will.
- By capturing the AI towns early, you basically capture only empty towns. If you first let the AI develop a bit, there is a good chance that you can already capture a number of granaries, barracks, marketplaces, aqueducts or even a wonder or two... The AI gets everything at a 20% discount on Emperor level, so you should take advantage of that and let them do some construction for you first. (On lower difficulty level this never works, but on Emperor the AI can be expected to get something useful done in the early phase...)
Also I don't think that early war against the Americans was a good idea: the two captured workers don't do you any good, because they are now ages away from your core, and also you probably already missed a deal or two due to the war. Most other players already have 5-6 techs at this point of time, while you only have 3.
Like splunge's game, this game also suffers from the lacking growth.
Didn't think moving settler 2 squares to river was worth it.
I hope this game will be an eye-opener for you: 2 turns are
nothing compared to the extra food that could have been gained by this! Just look at it this way (only taking the extra food from the river into account and disregarding the fact that the deer tile could also be irrigated much faster, if Entremont moves to the river): when settling in place, you have 2fpt and growth every 10 turns. When settling on the river, your have 3fpt and growth every 7 turns. So in the first case, Entremont reaches size 2 on turn 10, size 3 on turn 20, size 4 on turn 30, etc. In the second case, it reaches size 2 on turn 9 (2 for moving the settler and 7 for growth), size 3 on turn 16, size 4 on turn 23, etc. Already the very first growth comes one turn faster!
In general I think the importance of not loosing any time with your starting settler is way overrated. It is much more important to found your capital in a decent spot, because your capital will be your most powerful town for most of the ancient age, contributing like 80-90% of your empire's total income and production for quite some time! Therefore loosing even 2-3 turns means nothing compared to gaining 1-2 extra food.
Puppeteer:
This was the best trade round I have seen in a long time! 6 techs and all of their gold, excellent! (Never thought the min research strategy would work so well in this position...) Also the initial game assessment and strategic thinking during the game are very nice.
However, there is one point where I think there is lots of room for improvement...: your worker management!
- Of course having the worker skip two turns out of the first 12 is a no-no. Early on every worker turn counts!!
- Then the worker left a few tiles without putting a road on them first. This also looses precious time, because when you re-enter that tile for finishing its improvement, you again loose an entire turn!
- And finally I think it is not good to spend so many turns on forest chops early on. Much better to get a few tiles improved first, so the capital has something to work on, and keep the forests for later. In this particular example there is another point to consider: you planned on chopping all three forests... This would mean your 4-turn settler factory will no longer work... (It needs one forest to pick up the 2 free shields on growth every other turn!) Consequently, in order to get the settler factory up and running, you would need to waste further worker turns for mining a plains tile!
As a result of all this, you have only one single tile improved by now, half of what could have been done in that time.
Sorry. I hadn't had any problems with the video.
(probably not)
