Awilder's 2nd Imm game - Isabella of Spain

I would suggest simply settling where you are now, 1n of the marble, don't worry if there's 1 coastal tile, or go back north. You could do what abegweit suggested, that would be a good idea. I wouldn't settle on the marble, though, because it will provide some great production and commerce eventually, and it will take you longer to improve the cows and wheat.
 
Yeah, I think I'm with you DMOC. Somehow I thought ESE of my current location was also ocean, but I see now that it's not. It looks like the marble is next to a little cove, so I'll only be stuck with one useless ocean tile.

Leaning toward SIP (current place that is), other option in consideration is move E onto hill to scout for seafood, and go either to the marble or back to original spot on turn 2 to settle. I should have time to play a round tonight, and I hope also time to write the report!

Thanks for the suggestions/input everyone!
 
OK so this was a pretty long round. My reason was, I had a pretty specific plan, and I played it out all the way (and a few turns more :mischief:)

First off, as discussed above, and as DMOC suggested, I settled in 1S of my starting spot. We could see that there would be one ocean tile in the BFC when not on the coast, but other than that it was a decent site. The original place was probably better, but who can tell what's in the fog? I decided against the PH cause we could see desert, and against the marble bc I wanted to maximize production. Here's the site



So I actually thought about the opening for a while, and I actually think it was better to start partial warrior>grow to size 2>worker. Like so



The worker only comes out 6 turns later this way, and he has much fewer idle turns. I'll spare you the details, but feel free to debate this opening. Tech went

AG>AH>Mining>BW>Masonry

at first to be able to chop and improve all the resources. We met some people:







Ooh, Catherine sends me those saucy looks even though I'm a chick too...

Also, you can see in the back of Hammurabi's shot that I built a settler after the worker. As I met each AI, I was super happy to see that no one was industrious...

My super secret plan was to build TGLH, and since I couldn't manage a good coastal capital, I had to do it in city#2, hence the beeline settler. I timed the settler so that BW would come in close to when the city would be settled, so I could whip a Monument and a WB asap. Here's the site



I normally don't settle so far away from the cap, but this was by far the best site I could find for trying to get TGLH down. All told it had to make 30+30+60+200 hammers! Also you can see me getting sailing there. I was fairly close to being able to start the lighthouse right after sailing was done, but I sunk a few hammers into TGW first (I did in the capital as well). Note: I still didn't have wheel at this point so those were not double count hammers. Trying to get TGLH in the second city is pretty awk. I'm sure it's not viable in general on deity.

A couple turns later, I spot some city making activities down south in the jungles. Guess Hannibal has IW in:



I should mention that since I was on a peninsula, totally fogbusted, and there were always a bunch of AI scouts and archers running around, barbs were alllmost a non-issue.

I did not get to whip that lighthouse. By the time the whip anger had worn off from the WB/Monument, the whip would have overflown into gold instead of hammers.

Speaking of TGW, the fail gold from it was a life-saver and a half:



I got 50 some from the cap as well so I could run 100% slider for a while. Why polytheism you ask? That's right, ToA! I have never built this wonder before, but I seem to recall it going much later than its place in the tech tree indicates, which I only know from trying to fail-gold it many, many times. It seems to combo very well with TGLH, and this was my whole plan from the start. Since I had no wheel, there were two workers near my cap who had all the time in the world to pre-chop every tree in sight. In fact, they pre-mined a couple of hills as well!

The whole plan was TGLH + ToA. When I saw the opening, I really wanted something to drive the economy. I saw the marble, and all the coast everywhere, and the plan was hatched.

Here's me starting TGLH:



No shot of me starting ToA, but I think it was 2 turns later. Could have been 1 turn, but I waited to 2 pop-whip a settler into it. I really needed to get city 3 down, and polytheism was the last tech I needed for a bit.

Next thing of note: an unwelcome neighbor. I think he is far away, so not a problem really.



Plus, he is already in WHEOOHRN when he meets me. I can't be the target, right?

I keep my fingers crossed, and chop-chop-chop. First up,



Not exactly the one I wanted first, since it's not exactly spectacular without the other, but I'll take it.

Next up



I know, I know; this is pretty lucky. I actually could have gotten it several turns sooner, but a barb spearman came to the party while I was in the process of building it, made me whip a warrior and pillaged my stone for good measure. I have seen TGLH go as early as 1000 BC on IMM and as late as the early ADs. I'll take my results here :mischief:. Also it's worth noting that TGW fail gold came at 1520BC (absurdly late!) so there must not be any other wonder-whores on the map.

Oh, speaking of that, I went priesthood between Poly and The Wheel actually. I was thinking I might get The Oracle as well. What with my remaining pre-chopped trees and all, I could have got it in 2-3 turns I think. Unfortunately someone finished it before that was possible. I should have switched out of priesthood there, since that was really the only point to getting it, but I went ahead and finished it.

When I got the wheel and connected my stone in Barcelona to the capital, I thought "well, here I've got all these pre-chopped trees still sitting around, might as well get massive fail gold"



I kept chopping and chopping, and on turn 91, 600 BC



Woot. At the moment this mainly is helping with my happy cap issues which were quickly becoming a problem. It will certainly help long-term though as I have only a fledgling (albeit potentially powerful) trade-route economy at the moment.

I stopped right there, which seemed like a good decision-making point. I didn't really want to stop to wait when some wonders were still in question.

Here is my land:



I just recently two-pop whipped Barcelona to get that Cordoba site. Couldn't believe it was still there.

Here's our northern backyard, which is actually quite nice, and somewhat spacious:



Here's the capital in 600BC



Need to get that farm in soon to grow it more. Happy cap was just lifted up 4 (rep+trade for fur) which is nice.

Here are some other shots of the game-state:



Hammy is the whipping boy. Hope I don't get asked to cancel deals, because I have a WB revealing his coastal cities at 3 gold trade-routes a piece. This would have happened sooner, but neither he nor I had writing (past 1000BC, how embarrassing).



Pretty slow tech rate by the look of it, but too early to tell really. I am currently number 3 in GNP at 79. Leader is 90 something.

My priorities are to connect my trade network to Hannibal via roads, and spam cities. I may even delay the library in the capital to pump settlers, since it will not exactly make my bpt skyrocket. I don't have a bureaucracy/oxford style cap as expected.

Our growth was quite stunted by all the wonder-whoring, but I think it will pay off in the long run. Looks as though we can still settle some spots west, and then backfill and perhaps island-fill as well to get 10+ cities if we pack 'em tight.

Suggestions/comments/criticisms?
 

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that desert island with clams and sheep on mainland looks like good opportunity for some good trade routes for your cities.

anyway I think the game is in the bag and you should move on ;-)
 
Thanks for another series Awilder :) Enjoyed your Khmer game and read it till the end.

I agree with Vranasm that you're off to a good start already. Time to try out deity? ;) Settling the desert tile on that offshore island seems like a good idea too.

Two things that would bother me if I were playing this game:

a) No copper; iron not revealed yet. You have a decent chance of finding iron with all that land you've managed to claim, however.

b) All that grassland to the west of Madrid with no food or fresh water to complement it. A coastal city 2W of the silk would always be poor in food and hammers but would eventually be rich enough in commerce to pay off. Alternatively a city 3W of Madrid could borrow the wheat to grow a bit faster while still catching most of the grass. Either case is a long term investment.
 
An early irrigated wheat is worth wasting worker turns. 6 turns of that farm is worth, 3 x 6 = 18, and you'll grow before the grow first farm would have been built.
 
Build a granary before the library in your capital.

When running rep, perhaps it would be benificial to head to caste sooner rather than later.

Another alternative if to go MC into forges and go for PS+forge early warfare, although I think you sank too much hammers into wonders for that to be viable. The ToA would have probably helped you more if you failed it.

I don't understand the Aest line. With the GHL and that amount of blocked land, you need to expand, not build more wonders. Especially true if you head to caste soon, since every city you settle will instantly add 6 commerce from TR and 6bpt from any pop you don't have working foodtiles. If you get a great prophet from the ToA you can bulb caste and really tech ahead. As it is now, you bpt isn't impressive.

edit: expand on the aest line; sure you can use it for tradebait, but you're teching it prematurely, as you won't finish it at 100% tech, most AI don't have alpha yet, and you have a GP coming up with bulb potential. Save your gold until you know what GP you get and include that in your plan instead of heading to aest as a reflex.
 
@vranasm

Hmm, I don't know about in the bag, but it's looking good! ;)

@hr_oskar

Thanks! Good to hear some people read it to the end. I am thinking about trying out deity next game :) Maybe I should suffer it in private before taking it on in public though. I have played a couple of deity games for a few turns, but never even to lib.

There is actually copper, which would have been in my original BFC, but not since I moved 1S :mad:. It's 3N of the current capital.

About the land: TGLH+ToA should make even a city with only grassland worthwhile until I can chain irrigate. Maybe I'll save a spot or two in the backyard for post CS though.

@vicawoo

Yeah you are probably right. I'm going to check this when I get a chance. My reasoning was that once I grow to size 2 and build the worker, my noncity tiles add up to 2f5h2c -2f for citizen = 5h2c, which is close to the farm and comes in earlier (not to mention I needed commerce badly for my strategy). After both strats have worker, though, worker first probably pulls ahead.

@Jammer Uno

Like I said, I have never built ToA before, and wanted to try it out. Made the most sense to pair it with TGLH. Are people generally of the opinion that ToA is worth more as fail gold than as a wonder? I have to say, I have only seen it failed before.

Aesthetics is for a trading chip, not for building more wonders. It is also to get on the music path which I will want for the GA, and possibly for military tradition+war (I have horses in my backyard). I may get TGLib someday or fail it. In slow wonder Imm games, it can go as late as 400AD, and I plan to grow my cap long before then.
 
Aesthetics is one of the best techs to research yourself, agree.
If i can and if in the mood for a peaceful start i almost always build the great library, one of the best wonders, can usually not find a reason to not get it (expanding is easy with whipping settlers from a crap city, if really needed).
 
@Mylene

Agreed there. I used to build TGLib essentially every game; even with no marble! I've branched out a little bit from that though :p


So I tried worker 1st vs warrior 1st. Warrior 1st won by the slimmest of margins, at the earliest comparable date which was turn 27.

Worker 1st:
AG T10
Worker T12
Farm T16
AH T22
Warrior T22
Pasture T25

Pic on turn T27



Warrior 1st:
Grow T8
Ag T10
Worker T18
T22: farm, AH, Warrior (In my actual game I rushed the warrior T19, but I wanted a more comparable micro path here)
T27 pasture

pic on T27



This way, warrior 1st wins on growth, production, and beakers by one turn on the relevant techs/builds. Disclaimer: I microed both starts the way I saw fit. I invite vicawoo to play it out differently and show me that worker 1st is still better played some different way :).

EDIT: Actually looks like worker 1st got an extra warrior out. Had a feeling it wasn't that cut and dried :p I think warrior first was what I wanted though - I needed to emphasize commerce as much as possible. Also food and hammers considered together - they are about tied. This was more to the point for my game, since I went settler before size 3, and food=hammers when doing a settler. Sorry for confusion.
 
@Anomander Rake

Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying it

@JammerUno

Unfortunately a GP cannot bulb caste system until you have gone all the way through divine right:( I haven't decided yet on what to do with a GM (a GE would be gravy :)).

Let's agree to disagree on aesthetics. IMHO, getting it when one AI only has alphabet is optimal - you tech aes, 1 turn into alpha, get alpha from the AI, and have 2 techs on everyone else. I can double up on those and get some more expensive techs (like CoL if anyone has it).

More to the point: what should I be teching instead of aesthetics?
 
I consider the music line to be totally worthless if you're not going to grab the GL and/or have dye.

You're right, I forgot GP bulb masonry... still a GM could bulb caste after MC. Or you could go math, bulb currency, tech caste. You have the GHL and are in Rep, do something useful with it besides the +3 happiness.

On top of that you have the option of early forges+PS for 50% unit production everywhere and reduced WW. So I see a clear path of using rep to have great short term tech, followed by PS to make the most of that tech.

edit: what should you be teching? Nothing, you should be waiting for the GP to pop. If it's a GM, math or alpha, if it's a GP, up to a theo bulb.
 
@JammerUno

You are certainly throwing out a lot of suggestions, some of which weren't on my radar for sure; thanks for that! Let me try to think out loud about some.

As for the music line:
- I am planning on grabbing the GL (as you say, I should do something with rep, i.e. run specialists!) or at the very least failing it. Based on the wonder rate in this game, I expect it to come very late (~200AD perhaps) so I should have time to rex some before attempting it.
- I do have dye: SWSW of Barcelona. Since I have TGL there, I am fairly secure on retaining that spot. I will also settle down in the jungle there asap to box in Hannibal. Yet another reason to get aes asap for an IW trade IMO.
- I will try for the GA from Music.
- I am thinking about another mounted campaign. The only thing holding me back is I did that in my Sury game, so I maybe want to try something different (peace). Conquistadors may come into play though...

I am unfamiliar with GM bulb orders. I may bulb MC, but I don't exactly need trade bait since I can simply tech aesthetics. I'm probably planning on sending him on a trade mission. I don't think it makes sense to tech MC and then bulb CoL since CoL costs less, and at least catherine has CoL already, so perhaps I can trade for it before it becomes relevant. 2 of my cities have 1 pop, so it will be a while before specialists (on top of the free priest in Madrid) are possible. Currency is a very high priority, although I need to reveal more AI cities for the trade routes to be activated. Another reason supporting trade mission.

Police state may indeed be a great option for eventual war. Thanks for reminding me!

Waiting for the GP to pop: I get 35ish gpt at 0% research (and also 4beakers, so they have to go somewhere). I have iirc 2 turns into aesthetics. If I had sat on 0% for 4 turns total, I would have accrued ~70+(~140) = 210 gold. I don't really like accumulating that much gold this early (except trade mission profit), and on top of that the pyramids were in question up until the turn I stopped. Failure would have meant 500+ gold in the coffers!

I definitely don't want to tech alpha as it's (almost) strictly worse than aesthetics (same beaker cost, less trade value) Math might be OK; otoh I have clear cut my trees so it would only be useful for further penetrating the tech tree.

As for bulbing theo, I have no religion! I don't recall if christianity has been founded, but I don't want to found it myself and hinder the spreading of Hinduism (this was a problem for me last game when I founded conf and later wanted to spread my neighbors religion to cities which had conf already). If it is founded, theo will be of no use until hindu spreads AND I do a war buildup. This could take quite a while as my empire is quite under-developed.

Basically, it seems like you have a very different play style than I do. It would be great if you would do a shadow game, say from the 600BC save for comparison's sake, or from the beginning would be great too.

Again, thanks for the input. I am sticking with my game plan largely based on preference, and nothing would be more beneficial to my game than a shadow game showing by example why I need to reevaluate my priorities.
 
First off, ToA is NOT the wonder I thought it was :( Like I mentioned before, I had never built it before, and based on the wording I assumed it increased your trade yield in EVERY city, but it's just the one it was built in. Now I know NEVER to build the ToA again, because you actually want someone else to build it so you can get large GM trade mission yields. Fortunately the tech pace and expansion pace in this game turned out to be slow so we should be ok...

Anyway, I started off by building a granary in the cap while I let it grow to gear up for a massive settler spam. It turned out there was a lot more land to grab than I thought!



In a couple of turns, my first GP popped, and it was a GM at ~40% odds.



I decided to send him on a trade mission to fuel my rexing, and also because I didn't need MC this early (aesthetics covered all the trade bait I needed, and I can't spare hammers to build forges atm, there is a massive land grab to be done)

Turns out Shaka is sharing an island off of the main landmass with none other than:



Harhar. they should give each other good company!

Like I mentioned, after growth in the cap, I began *settler at 5 turns a pop.



Normally at this stage of the game I think it is really important to grow the cap very large. However, my economy will be driven by trade route income, which if I'm not mistaken actually increases with the other guy's pop, not mine. At any rate, this is no cottage cap! I let Barcelona grow in the mean time and moved the capital there eventually.

After aesthetics came in, I surveyed the trading situation:



Time to tech a couple of turns into alpha, grab it from Hannibal, and then with luck have 2 trading chips on everyone else! Getting in aesthetics when only one AI has alpha is a great time imo.

Unfortunately, Hannibal was teching priesthood at the time, so it took me two turns to get enough beakers for him to give me alpha.



For my research, I started on literature (note that I still haven't popped the GM trade mission, so I need a couple of turns of 0% research here and there, the GM was busy scouting before he ran his mission)

Since Monte was languishing near the bottom of the score heap with me (and would be a terrible techer later as usual), I concentrated trading with him. There must have been some trades with others, but I forgot which ones by now





Also I have OB with Hammurabi, and as expected I get some stop trading demands. This one was easy to turn down; he's not on my landmass and I don't fear a massive galley invasion.



I check several cities, and find only 900 gold options, so I just pop my GM for that. This is still pretty early to hope for 1100 (which would need a TR with my cap of 3 commerce)



I could have used the GM to explore West, but some of that is unsettled, and I didn't want him picked off by barbs! Also needed the cash.

After Lit came in, I dropped some hammers in TGL.



This would eventually be my cap so I didn't have it contribute so much to the rexing effort. I let it grow while building TGL. iirc I did have it push out one settler before coming back to TGL though. After Lit, the obvious tech choice is Currency.

The aforementioned rexing in action:



There is so much more land at this stage than usual in Imm! I don't know what the deal was; even jungle doesn't usually keep the AI out this long! Note that I went for music after currency. No one has lit, so I will get the GA, and also building culture will be key to snap my borders closed to Hannibal trying to sneak any settlers through.

More trades:



My workboat finally gets far enough to meet the final AI



I was shocked! Why wasn't he snatching all those wonders from me?? Turns out he was isolated on the same landmass by a mountain sitting in a choke point.

Anyway since he is down here in score with me, I can grab some cheap techs from him with no worry about WFYABTA



Once I get feudalism in some trade, I actually revolt to serfdom for a while. I had whipped a few granaries in my new cities, and mainly needed to improve the land around them now. I figured rather than having to build 30 workers to cut through the jungle, I could get by with 20 and serfdom until it was done.



0 Turns for revolution. Spiritual ftw.

More Trades:



As usual after paper came in ( you can see it being researched in the screenshot above) I did some map-bartering for huge profits.

Yet another strange feature of this game:



A barb city just sitting in Hanny's territory at 540 AD!

I had a somewhat dicey diplo situation here, as I was sandwiched between the two large AIs who had opposing religions. I gave into this demand to relieve a little pressure:



As far as religion, I did want to get benefits from things like OR and philo, I was usually confucian with Catherine, but once Hannibal demanded I switch to hindu, which I did (he was WHEOOHRN at the time! went for Hammy) and then I switched back to conf asap. I could safely stay there for a long time, because Hannibal was aways busy with Hammurabi.

Once my rexed cities were reasonably established, I triggered my golden age from the music GA in 600 AD:



Looking at this shot I see I probably should have waited until Philo was in so I could get a few great people out of Barcelona. I played pretty sloppy in this game :(

I finally get a GS and put an academy in Barcelona (which has built the palace by now). I debated doing this and just bulbing the rest of education. I decided to do academy because I didn't think there was much point trying to rush to conquistadors at this point (see below).



After Nationalism comes in I start the Taj:



Meanwhile I am losing a cultural battle with barbs!



How embarrassing! Galleys+ swordsman are painfully slowly en route... The barb city was quite nice when I finally got it. Yet another piece of land blocked off by a mountain here.

I keep my monopoly on paper here:



He is likely the first war target, and I think I can go for him before he gets out of war with Hammurabi. Certainly I will have at least begun the troop buildup by then.

Just as education comes in I pop GS number 2. At this point I have compass, and I don't have machinery, so I can bulb into lib.

Now it's safe to trade for machinery



And I have the prereqs for liberalism>military tradition.



I don't have state of world pics uploaded at the moment it seems. I will post them later tonight. Basically, the issue is that both catherine and Hannibal (my likely war targets) both have LBs on several hills, and Hannibal even beat me to gunpowder (they have engineering as well, but Conquistadors are better than Cavs agaisnt those!) . So an unsupported stack of conquistadors doesn't look like a great idea. They are both very large as well in terms of land area. I think that the most logical course here would again to go for cavs and try to sweep the continent. I am actually thinking of going for a Conquistador+Cannon war instead, mainly to try something different.

My usual issue with cannon wars is there isn't anything that compelling as a support troop unless you tech all the way to rifles too. Muskets are OK, and that's what I usually do. Conquistadors seem pretty good at filling this role. It will be a slow moving army of course, but I think it will easily have the staying power to take the continent.

My other reason for heading to steel is that it isn't a dead-end tech as far as space-racing. I plan on going that way in this game since I did domination last time.

What do you guys think? I will post a save+more detailed world view pics asap.
 
Very interesting read! I haven't seen a lot of Izzy games being posted here, and it is great to see one being played, as she is one of my favorite leaders to play as. Having her as an AI is another story though! :)

I also pondered a bit when you mentioned the synergy between Temple of Artemis and the Great Lighthouse. Had your capital been coastal, it would have actually carried some weight. Unfortunately, Madrid is not, but oh well. :)

It looks like you are headed towards Cavalry warfare? My last three offline games have totally left me out of any horse tiles, so I couldn't get one going. I'd love to see one in action again. :)
 
I really fancy the ToA esp in WE/SSE super capitals. Huge City=High trade route yield. 5 GPP pt much earlier than Glib.

Pro:

lots of GPP early
1 extra REP specialist
increased trade route yield with off shore island (in this case)
synergy with GLH
investment discounted by marble
TR income boosted by bureaucracy
(huge culture)

Con:

no failure gold / shields to sink in something else
less gold for trade missions
AI gets more gold for trade missions
huge hammer investment
GPP not too desirable and GP outcome insecure


For me that boils down to long term investment (ToA or Settled GM) vs. short term return (failure gold, trade missions). If you can use the potential of ToA (i.e. huge City, GP Farm) thats probably a good investment. But I actually find it quite hard to judge, esp. since ToA is considered generally as quite useless. Its probably much more desirable to be built in a coastal city, where you can get more TRs and multipliers like harbor.
 
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