born losers

[Dhoomstriker]

Played a couple of turns and there's an extreme amount of barb warriors (not archers). Is this due to it being a modified map?

I assure you that the initial saved game has the Barbs knowing Archery, as well as Hunting, Agriculture, and The Wheel. It was also generated from a World Built file as a Custom Scenario with Deity selected and all of the AIs started off knowing those 4 techs in addition to whatever other techs they normally start with.

If that process fails to produce Barb Archers, then common wisdom on the subject on the forums is flawed.

I chose to not comment on the game itself, to avoid accidentally revealing things, so I will just wish you the best of luck.

 

[lymond]

dhoom - no worries


I did a bit of a dotmap (for mysty's sake ) of the initial area. Not saying this is the way we settle but just want to get a clear idea of our plans and for discussion.

Spoiler :

I was uncertain exactly which spot for the clams we were referring to here. 1N of the spot I have marked at least gets the copper for some hammers, but deals with more culture pressure from Mansa. This is why I placed it where I did. It still gets the oasis immediately.

I assume Pigs/corn/fish would be next and looks like our future GP farm. Seems like the only place to settle that one. The spicy clam city I have marked might end up better being 1W should we spy something nice to the west there.

Pigs/Fish to the NW is obviously backfill. However, it is actually one of our better cities and adds some good early production. The place I have marked gets more land and hills and is ultimately the better site. However, in the likely case we don't go for AH early, it might be better 1N to get fish first. That spot would make this a decent Maoi site should we decide to build it.

Unfortunately, the cities to the south do not provide much in the way of defensible positions, but as Rusten mention, that may not be an issue with copper.

 

[Rusten]

Clam/spice is too soon to decide, but as it stands it looks good (nice to get overlap for both corn and pig).

I'm unsure about Clam+oasis, but I think it goes next to oasis for me. Having some natural production in the BFC can be very useful to help whip the bigger buildings early on, and it has fresh water. It also allows for a city on the southern tip if there's more seafood there that we don't know about.

The other two look good.

 

[lymond]

dang...thought I edited my post to mention spicy/clams maybe being good 1W if we show something nice to the W.

I agree that having the hammers will make whipping more efficient in clam/oasis city. I'm just concern having the city center tile adjacent to Mansa culture. Should not be a huge issue with Peri though.

by the way, not sure if this has been mention, but it appears that Mansa and Rag have met no other AIs. Looks like no early religion in this game for us.

 

[Rusten]

Mansa won't reach the city tile until he's at 500 culture -- shouldn't be a problem.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

I'm unsure about Clam+oasis, but I think it goes next to oasis for me.

I was thinking 1 N of lymond dot too. Having the oasis in the first ring is also nice for the initial wb whip. Unlocks also another whipping site south of it.

 

[mystyfly]

Looks great. I was thinking settling clam city 1N too but because we can share the copper and get some hammers. After we whipped the initial settlers we'll have athenes pop the first GS I think, until our other cities have their infra in place, then athenes won't work it anyways. Too bad we lose the forest but keep the jungle though.

Since we seem to agree mostly on next city site, the most pressing matter is tech path. As we're settling clams next we don't need AH yet though we would see horses. I'd still tech that first, followed by writing (discount) to get our cheap libraries up ASAP, to get onto GP generation and fight for clams. Then we may backfill wheel/pottery. With so much food granaries will just lead into -problems anyway. We won't be able to hook up gold for quite some time though, which means we'll have to do our whipping more careful and at lower pops.

 

[AJ11]

I assure you that the initial saved game has the Barbs knowing Archery, as well as Hunting, Agriculture, and The Wheel. It was also generated from a World Built file as a Custom Scenario with Deity selected and all of the AIs started off knowing those 4 techs in addition to whatever other techs they normally start with.

If that process fails to produce Barb Archers, then common wisdom on the subject on the forums is flawed.

I chose to not comment on the game itself, to avoid accidentally revealing things, so I will just wish you the best of luck.

Lurker: *facepalm* I thought that map looked familiar...

Spoiler :

And NO! No more Decepticons! And no more Mario Bros either! Shoo!

 

[Rusten]

Since we seem to agree mostly on next city site, the most pressing matter is tech path. As we're settling clams next we don't need AH yet though we would see horses. I'd still tech that first, followed by writing (discount) to get our cheap libraries up ASAP, to get onto GP generation and fight for clams. Then we may backfill wheel/pottery. With so much food granaries will just lead into -problems anyway. We won't be able to hook up gold for quite some time though, which means we'll have to do our whipping more careful and at lower pops.

No way. The wheel is super for commerce and we need to hook up the bronze as well. The wheel as next tech is a no-brainer for me.

 

[lymond]

yep...i lean towards the wheel as well in this case. In fact, with seafood and corn in our likely next 2 or 3 cities, AH might be worth taking a pass on to get to writing and scientists sooner.

ras - the oasis is workable immediately by the clam city regardless of the spot. 1N is still fine with me, but I don't think a city directly south is all that great - unless the unlikely chance of more seafood in the 2 possible fog tiles. (note that my clam city spot saves a forest for a WB chop - while at the same time losing a jungle)

 

[Rusten]

I don't care much about the oasis city, both are good. Up to the turnplayer for me.

Forgot to mention that the wheel is also needed to hook up gold for +1 happy.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

I can play in the evening:

-> whip settler for 2 asap (one turn of anarchy first) and go settle on the forest (@lymond: I still prefer that site since we might find another seafood in the fog south of the little peninsula)

-> then build worker (might not be whipped if the grass mine is ready) -> axe -> settler 2 (maybe i will stop before that anyway).

-> city 2 : wb whipped then either axe for exploration or third worker (partial axe or wb in that case to regrow size 2).

worker: finish mining, hook up cooper, road it, road gold, road toward city2
techs: TW -> AH -> writing? I am always puzzled to skip granary but it might make sense since we are both cre and philo.

Is that OK with u?

 

[Rusten]

I don't think we should skip pottery. It provides a bonus to researching writing and we have both fishing and agriculture for pottery. Researching it is not a big delay. I'm not sold on delaying granaries either. So much food can work both ways -- it means that we have enough production to warrant putting hammers into granaries early on. Granaries are free once constructed, unlike additional cities, so they are a good thing to put extra hammers into.

I would hook up our cities for +2 commerce before hooking up the gold. Also remember to road towards MM if he researches writing before us.

And as we are settling Oasis city now I don't think we should whip the worker.

Maybe it is better to build work boat with copper to reach size 4 sooner for the granary whip? Not thought much on it.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

I don't think we should skip pottery. It provides a bonus to researching writing and we have both fishing and agriculture for pottery. Researching it is not a big delay. I'm not sold on delaying granaries either. So much food can work both ways -- it means that we have enough production to warrant putting hammers into granaries early on. Granaries are free once constructed, unlike additional cities, so they are a good thing to put extra hammers into.

That is how I would do it too. It seemed to me that the team wanted fast libs, though I am all for doing pottery before wirting.

I would hook up our cities for +2 commerce before hooking up the gold. Also remember to road towards MM if he researches writing before us.

sure

And as we are settling Oasis city now I don't think we should whip the worker.

Maybe it is better to build work boat with copper to reach size 4 sooner for the granary whip? Not thought much on it.

Yes and I don't know. I will see what nets us the faster {city size 2 +clams up} combo.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Mansa is gonna beat us to the clam site. I am going for the corn/pig/fish site then.



That means it should be better to whip a second worker right away (that's a couple of turns without working the gold). edit: it's done in 4 turns with the overflow from the settler -> forget that whip
edit: I am gonna TW -> AH -> pottery then. We need the pig up asap.

 

[mystyfly]

Well I assumed we wouldn't be connecting our cities by roads so soon since we lack improvements on good resource tiles. Getting the wheel done already is fine too though.

Bummer on clams site. Might mean MM is left with a tiny empire or just that we had some bad luck with AI picking settling spots. Makes exploration towards south yet more important.

Are you still playing on ras?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Nope I am just done with it.

I finished TW and AH and stopped in 2000 bc.

Settled the corn/fish/pig site and improved corn. Roads are up between cities and copper will be up next turn.

There is partial warrior done in the capital for barb protection since there is a warrior incoming from the north who destroyed our grassland mine. Second settler is underway.

Southern city has whipped a wb for the fish (I worked it a couple of turns since it didn't delay growth and gave some more coins). Also working on a warrior since it needs something to grow. With two units, we can use them too.
Since we will have the copper next turn, we can choose to have a spear instead of the warrior in the cap, even if it means the next couple of turns will be more critical

I couldn't do any kind of scouting though.

Overview:



Ras

 

[AJ11]

Lurker: Look on the bright side - Mansa just guaranteed you your 3rd city

 

[shyuhe]

We can probably steal all of the techs we need from Mansa's stupid border city.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

A small roster (that's weird, I thought Thrar was in the team, but I don't see him? did he post somewhere?)

Rusten
Raskolnikov -> just played!
Shyuhe -> up!
Lymond -> on deck!
bbp
mysty

@Shyuhe: yeah, I agree that would be a good way of leveraging this.

edit: hum it seems bbp removed him from the roster