[BTS] BOTM 142 First Spoiler: 1 AD

[DynamicSpirit]

BOTM 142 - First Spoiler to 1 AD

Use this thread to tell us what happened in your game, up to 1AD!

Where did you settle? What was your strategy for coping with the jungle?

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 142, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not disclose ANY events or information gained post 1 AD.
• Please do not reveal your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Please do not discuss the location of resources that may not show up before 1 AD. (Iron is OK, coal and oil are not)
  
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games

 

[kcd_swede]

Oh, I did sip and do the fishboat stuff and IW beeline and all that. It makes me see all kinds of military options and go all-in on devestation. The nearest neighbors faced my wrath, but Hannibal is suprisingly resilient, by getting LB's before anyone else. I have WE and cats, but just 1 or 2 short of a quick win, and so my domination plans are slowed, the chance for a domination medal is gone, and its time to rethink my aims. KI think I only founded 2, maybe 3 cities by 1ad, but capture enough that this is a dealer's choice for VC.

 

[High King J.J.]

Hannibal is suprisingly resilient

You may be in the wrong thread. I certainly never faced Hannibal in this BOTM. Or may be you recognize civs by the color? That's never a sure way to go in a BOTM, sometimes there are several AI civs that are from the same civilization or just (almost) the same color.

 

[kcd_swede]

You may be in the wrong thread. I certainly never faced Hannibal in this BOTM. Or may be you recognize civs by the color? That's never a sure way to go in a BOTM, sometimes there are several AI civs that are from the same civilization or just (almost) the same color.

Yeah, the orangey guy. If not Hannibal, then maybe I meant Brennus. Anyhow, some weird names in this scenario, so I can be forgiven for unsuccessful face recognition.

 

[High King J.J.]

Yeah, the orangey guy. If not Hannibal, then maybe I meant Brennus. Anyhow, some weird names in this scenario, so I can be forgiven for unsuccessful face recognition.

Nope. It was the French best dresser, the banker civ. However I share your sentiment for the weird names. I guess they are more for the Mapmaker's amusement than ours but since he is the Mapmaker and this Botm is enjoyable we should not hold that against him.

About this thread, I settled on the warrior location. Eventually chopped some jungle, founded more cities and built the Moai on the capital although that may have been after 1AD. Even managed to build cities close to the 2 closest neighbour capitals, effectively preventing their expansion toward my empire. Then I filled in the blanks with cities. Can't really remember how many cities I had 1AD, it was too long ago, before this thread ever came to be. No wars for me before 1AD.

 

[LowtherCastle]

I also settled on the warrior, focused on three cities to collect all those goodies, plus an iron and a marble city. Just started warring at 1 AD. Probably too slow. Buildermania.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I saw with Espionage that Miss-Oracle-Loving Isabella was going to beat me to that Wonder, and I had nothing with whip (or which) to stop her; even a couple of hastily-whipped Archers wouldn't have arrived in time.

The Barbs had given me some trouble, having used one of their Axemen to capture my only City with a Strategic Resource (Copper) before I'd built any Military Units to counter the invader. I'd just gotten Copper online, so I couldn't cold-whip a Warrior, and the City didn't even have a Warrior defender, so I didn't have time to stuff in any reinforcements there, either. All that I could do was 1-pop-whip my Granary and hope that the Barbs would keep the City and the Granary. Fortunately, I'd beelined Feudalism, so I ended up using 2 Longbowmen (1 died) to retake my City, and I got to keep the Granary, too.

At 1 AD, I owned 10 Cities, with most of Elizabeth's empire having been gutted.

Catherine had declared war on me and was sending large stacks of Units my way (large for Prince Difficulty, anyway), in stacks of about 6 to 7 Units at a time.

I was 3 turns away from switching Civics into Bureaucracy + Mercantilism, with 8 Knights to my name.


The scenario has been fun, with the predictable, but enjoyable, challenge of having such a nice start with great nearby City locations to settle that it took a while to settle any Cities for Strategic Resources.

Invariably, when I write a First Spoiler, I have trouble finishing a game. Let's hope that it will be a different story this time around.

 

[Deckhand]

Fun game with very generous land.

Focus was on developing my cities and building key early wonders.
No wars at all. Scrooge's Dad (Louis) just went WHEOOHRN, probably vs Marlene (Liz).
I'm waiting for Engineering's road movement and Trebs.

Played pretty much as planned from pre-game discussion:
sailing, hunting, mining, bronze, iron (2160BC), mysticism, masonry
boat, boat, lighthouse, worker, warrior, warrior, settler, warrior, worker, boat, worker, worker

1st warrior killed 6 panthers, all attacking at bad odds
3rd warrior died early, killed by bear at 25.7%

City1 (SW hill) 3920 BC, pop11; City2 (hill between Silvers) 2080BC, pop8; City3 (1N of Iron) 515BC, pop2; City4 (gems, clam, gold, sugar) 100BC, pop1
Settler heading to Horse/Whales spot and another being built for Dye, Fish, Bananas NW of Bohemians.
Capital has GLH (775BC), Pyramids (425BC), Maori Statues (200BC), Colossus (25BC) [see screenshot]

Whipped 5 population to build Pyramids, but haven't switched my government civic. [No specialists, Happiness is ok, forgot, etc] I think I will switch to Police State when ready to build army. For now still founding cities.

Bad news, 150 BC; Scrooge Dad circumnavigates; good news, implies I won't need astronomy.
Haven't explored much (see screenshot)

Adopted Organized Religion, but no Religion. I founded Confu (825 BC) and whipped Oracle (City2) for Civil Service (700BC).

What should I do with my Great Merchant? [Bulb Paper, Trade Mission, Golden Age, …?)

Spoiler Map and Capital :

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Whipped 5 population to build Pyramids, but haven't switched my government civic. [No specialists, Happiness is ok, forgot, etc] I think I will switch to Police State when ready to build army. For now still founding cities.

Adopted Organized Religion, but no Religion. I founded Confu (825 BC) and whipped Oracle (City2) for Civil Service (700BC).

What should I do with my Great Merchant? [Bulb Paper, Trade Mission, Golden Age, …?)

The game is over, but you posted your message right around the time of the submission deadline, so I will treat your question as though you are looking for advice for the future.

Lightbulbing techs is great when you have trading partners, since one Lightbulbed tech can be traded around for multiple techs. You then get the Flasks for the Lightbulbed tech and the Flasks for the traded techs, which can often be far more than the on-paper value of the Lightbulbed Flasks, assuming that you have techs to get in trade and that you don't mind trading away your Lightbulbed tech advantage.

When you don't have much to get in trade, which was likely the case here when on a lower Difficulty Level, a Trade Mission, in my opinion, is usually stronger than Lightbulbing a tech which you cannot use for trading, as you can use it to do something that you need to do, but probably earlier than you otherwise would have done by not having the Gold. Examples include:
1. Stay at a 100% Science rate for longer, to get you to the techs that you really want (not just whatever you can Lightbulb)
2. Massively REX without worrying about Maintenance for a while
3. Whip your Cities to the ground to create a large and expensive (Maintenance-wise) army that you can then leverage to take down your opponents that much sooner
4. Pay to upgrade your existing troops to a stronger type of troop

That said, you seem to have avoided switching into important Civics and avoided switching into a Religion even though you are paying for the expensive Organized Religion Civic, meaning that you're just paying for the convenience of avoiding building Monasteries. Thus, I assume that you are hesitant to lose turns to Anarchy and are thereby denying yourself some useful Civic benefits. So, a Golden Age is a reasonable option in this case, to get you playing around with your Civics (hello, Pyramids) and State Religion that much sooner. You can generate another Great Person (or more than one) using the Golden Age's extra Great Person Point generation rate in order to have your cake and eat it, too (use the Great Merchant on a Golden Age but get another Great Person or two back during the process).


There's also the possibility of saving a Great Merchant for Food-based Corporation. Let's assume that you want to found a Food Corporation (Sid's Sushi or Cereal Mills); if you don't want to found such a Corp, then don't consider this option for your Great Merchant. Depending upon whether you can confidently research the Economics tech first, which doing will also give you a Great Merchant, or whether you have a City that can hire enough Merchant Specialists to reliably get you another Great Merchant, you may consider saving your Great Merchant until it is time to found the Corp.

Finally, you can settle a Great Merchant. Since a settled Great Merchant provides Food, Gold, may provide Flasks when you run the Representation Civic, and may provide Culture when you own The Sistine Chapel World Wonder, you should consider settling in a City that can multiply the value of one or more of these items. Your National Epic City can get increased relative value of the extra Food. Your future Wallstreet City can make the best use out of the Gold. When evaluating whether to settle a Great Merchant, I take a hard look at the other options and the relative situation of my empire; for example, the extra Food is of less use if my National Epic City is close to its Happiness cap. A slow trickle of Gold is generally less useful than a large shot of Gold, assuming that I can find a use for said Gold in the short term, but if I have no use for a stockpile of Gold, there's also a minor risk that an AI will Demand/Request it from me.

 

[kcd_swede]

That is right... there is nothing BAD you can do with a Great Merchant. There is only good and better and optimum. Thank you for sharing the way to maximize different usages. Of course, my biggest problem is deciding what my goals are... I like to keep all options on the table, even the stupid ones.

 

[Deckhand]

...
What should I do with my Great Merchant? [Bulb Paper, Trade Mission, Golden Age, …?)

Note, I played to 1Ad when game came out and wrote up my notes but didn't post in spoiler (until much later). Waited 2 weeks, then finished it right before botm141 deadline (got confused wrt deadline).

The game is over, but you posted your message right around the time of the submission deadline, so I will treat your question as though you are looking for advice for the future.

Thanks for reply.
This is what I did last couple games IIRC: GM for Trade for Cuirrassiers upgrade and GM for Paper for Liberalism path for MT.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

You can generate another Great Person (or more than one) using the Golden Age's extra Great Person Point generation rate in order to have your cake and eat it, too (use the Great Merchant on a Golden Age but get another Great Person or two back during the process).

Extra generation rate? Really???? I didn't know about that! You learn something new every day. How much does the rate go up?

 

[Deckhand]

Extra generation rate? Really???? I didn't know about that! You learn something new every day. How much does the rate go up?

Double, times 2, 100%, iirc

good players (not me) in caste system and pacifism starve their cities during GA running lots of specialists and time various city generations to maximize GP

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Extra generation rate? Really???? I didn't know about that! You learn something new every day. How much does the rate go up?

During BtS Golden Ages (i.e. not in Vanilla or Warlords), Great Person Points get an additional +100% boost. Note that such boosts are still additive, instead of multiplicative, with other boosts.

For example, if you have built Stonehenge and you hire 2 Scientist Specialists in the same City, you'll make a base rate of 2 + 3 + 3 = 8 Great Person Points (GPP).

During a Golden Age, you'll make:
1.0 base GPP + 1.0 Golden Age boost
= 1.0 + 1.0
= 2.0

8 base GPP * 2.0 multiplier = 16 GPP per turn


If you, say, already own The Parthenon, which gives an additional +50% boost, and your City has the National Epic in it, for an additional +100% boost, during a BtS Golden Age, you'll get:
1.0 base GPP + 1.0 Golden Age boost + 0.5 Parthenon boost + 1.0 National Epic boost
= 1.0 + 1.0 + 0.5 + 1.0
= 3.5

8 base GPP * 3.5 multiplier = 28 GPP per turn


In Vanilla and Warlords, there's a strong incentive to fire Specialists during Golden Ages, since raw Hammers and raw Commerce earned from worked squares are increased, while Specialists are not boosted.

In BtS, you need to make a choice for each City, with Specialists still being de-emphasized in Cities that are not going to produce a Great Person, since earning extra GPP doesn't do anything for you in a City that won't produce another Great Person before the game will end.

 

[Deckhand]

^

During BtS Golden Ages (i.e. not in Vanilla or Warlords), Great Person Points get an additional +100% boost.

BtS Golden Ages are soooo much better than vanilla/warlords: civic/religion changes without disorder, +100% GPP,
anything else? I don't recall any (ah, 1st is more expensive)

from this thread: Here is a link to a list of the differences between Vanilla, Warlords and BtS.

Anarchy can occur during Golden Age, first Golden Age uses two Great Persons (not one), no +100% GPP

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Thanks Dhoomstriker - that's really informative and useful.

Deckhand - the only other thing I can think of is 50% longer golden ages in BtS with Mausoleum of Maussellos.

I remember when I used to play vanilla/Warlords, I regarded golden ages as basically not worth it until near the end of the game - close to building a spaceship, when great people tended to get born quite regularly, and there wasn't much else they could do that was worth it at that stage in the game. With BtS, if I can get any spare great people, I will tend to use them for golden ages much earlier in the game - especially to avoid anarchy when changing civics. I will quite often delay a golden age until I have the mausoleum though - that's one very useful wonder! If an AI builds it, I will usually try to prioritise the city they built it in for capturing!

And now thanks to you guys I have a new strategy: Use a golden age to try to accelerate producing more great people. Something like: Golden age; immediately revolt to caste system; lots of specialists in the one or two key cities next in line for a great person; revolt back on the last turn of the golden age. Fits in quite nicely with that slavery isn't so good in a golden age because the last thing you want to do is lose population when each tile gives you more production than normal.