[BTS] BOTM 147, First Spoiler, to 1 AD

[Deckhand]

BOTM 147: Ivory Joao

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

What was your tech path?
Have any trouble with Barbarians?

Stop! If you are participating in BOTM 147, 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

 

[High King J.J.]

No trouble with barbs. No animals, one warrior seen/killed. What raging barbs?
What tech path? No, I don't have Optics yet. Didn't go for religion this time and so far 4/7 are founded elsewhere. Still chopping jungles. Failed to get any wonders. Starting to look like one of those impossible maps where the elite prosper and the rest don't.

 

[Pangaea]

Not much joy here either tbh, but plenty of boredom and frustration. Hopefully the game will open up once we can actually make contact and *do something*. Probably a great map for the Deity isolation players, but with so few choices, it's not so awesome for us others

No issues with barbs either. Fogbusted the west with the starting guy, and got the east sorted later. Nowhere near Optics yet. Happy cap is woeful. Monarchy and Calendar would have helped, but am thinking it's more important to make contact, so I've been beelining Optics really.

With one exception. I tried to get the Great Lighthouse. Missed it by 2 friggin' turns Nearly tossed in the towel there and then. Don't know if I'll play on much further and submit, but we shall see. With a map like this, you may as well divide up the results between those who got the GLH and those who did not. A massive difference maker. Even in total isolation, that baby can really help you out.

So, have filled out the land with 7 cities. Which reminds me of another annoyance. I settled 1E, so in T0. Which, as it turned out, happened to be right top of iron. Since it's on grassland, it doesn't even give me an extra , and that is usually an awesome tile to work (2 4). And it of course means that it's impossible to build cheap warriors.

Oh well, we're slowly moving towards Optics, mainly with scientists and the slider off, since the economy is poor (guess I should have settled fewer cities). At least I have a Great Scientist for bulbing Optics when the time comes. Need to crawl through the rest of Compass, plus Machinery first.

If demographics is a good judge, everybody else are in total isolation too, and not doing that much better tech-rate wise (except one guy, which probably got the GLH). So hopefully it will be possible to backfill on contact. Hopefully it won't be too long, and at least the Carracks are pretty darn sweet.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Similar early game: settled 1E on the iron, crammed 5 cities on the mainland plus 2 on the islands, no barb troubles. Luckily, I did get the GLH, in 900 BC; Colossus went to an AI in 50 BC, the turn I got Metal Casting. Yeah, happiness a problem, best addressed by HR, but I also detoured to Calendar for an extra happy and hopefully to build MoM. First Great Sci went for an academy 275 BC; I'm hoping to use another to partially bulb Astro, but am still a few hundred years away from Optics at this point. Personally, I like isolated starts--fewer decisions and the game goes faster!

 

[LinkDinkin]

Found myself in a similar situation, 6 cities with option of 7th on an island. Only barb so far was a panther. Decided to get Alpha to build research because I ran out of other things to build. Skipped Hereditary Rule, which might have been a mistake. Didn't attempt any wonders except for fail gold, but planning to try for MoM. After building an Academy, I'm hoping to use the 2nd GS for Optics, Machinery, or Astro; but right now it says it bulbs Math, so I'm hoping I understand the bulb preferences correctly...

 

[Deckhand]

welcome to gotm!
but I see you have submitted three times before

math is 2nd highest ranked great scientist preference (after writing)
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/great-people-tech-prefences.140952/

 

[LinkDinkin]

Thanks! And thanks to you and others who organize/contribute to gotm. It's fun... adds that extra bit of pressure. And I learn a lot. No excuse for not playing it more.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Deckhand…. You’re evil!
I think you’ve taken the crown off kcd_swede

I settled E-SE on the hill to get the river, and of course almost immediately discovered that this was basically going to be a game of, how quickly can you get to optics with almost no land.

Worse – jungle everywhere meant there were only two good city sites before iron working, plus the 1-tile island to the SW once I had sailing.

I had to think for a while about the best approach, and decided that I would have to use caste system to get as many scientists as possible. Lots of people here are saying about aiming for optics, but I was a bit sceptical about how useful optics would be without astronomy because of the risk of wrecking your economy with overseas cities that can’t have trade routes before astronomy. So I decided I wanted to get to optics as soon as possible AND have scientists ready to bulb astronomy – ideally the turn I discovered optics. That would probably require 2 scientists for astronomy, and a 3rd scientist for an academy in the capital to speed up getting to optics. So caste system really would be a must.

I beelined caste system – actually discovering it and founding Confucianism about 900BC when I still only had two cities. Since I needed code of laws anyway for scientists, and happiness was going to be a problem, I figured I may as well try and beeline it to get the religion too. So the only detour I allowed myself on the way to code of laws was bronze working – and that was only so I could rush two libraries to start running scientists quicker. With nowhere else to settle, there wasn’t actually anything else worth whipping anyway! Once I had caste system, I then got iron working and sailing so I could settle the remaining cities.

My strategy of aiming for astronomy rather than optics forced me on to a tech path that probably wasn’t optimal for beelining optics alone: I had to side-track to alphabet and calendar, as both are required for astronomy (though calendar is useful for the spices and alphabet for building research anyway). Also, monarchy because without hereditary rule, I won’t be able to get my cities big enough to run enough scientists. And checking the great scientist research preferences revealed I absolutely must not research either civil service (which would’ve been useful for research) or meditation (which would’ve saved me a turn or so on the way to code of laws) because those would prevent scientists from bulbing astronomy. Actually, thinking about it, I guess I wouldn’t have even gone for code of laws if I’d been aiming only for optics.

The 1AD result is shown in the picture shows … 5 cities, 26 pop, sustainable research 60bpt. Got code of laws, monarchy, iron working and 3 turns from calendar. More to the point, I have an academy, and my 2nd scientist is only 3 turns away . And I’m very confident I’ll be able to get a 3rd scientist before too long, so bulbing astronomy will be easy. It’s just getting to optics that is going to take the time…

 

[DynamicSpirit]

With one exception. I tried to get the Great Lighthouse. Missed it by 2 friggin' turns Nearly tossed in the towel there and then. Don't know if I'll play on much further and submit, but we shall see. With a map like this, you may as well divide up the results between those who got the GLH and those who did not. A massive difference maker. Even in total isolation, that baby can really help you out.

Interesting. I took pretty much the opposite approach - didn't even bother thinking seriously about the great lighthouse because I figured that pre-astronomy it would make very little difference - with my settling pattern it would've been two 1-commerce trade routes per city so 10 commerce in total). Set against that, to build it required an early diversion to sailing and masonry, which would have significantly delayed my being able to start running scientists (and probably have killed my chances of founding confucianism, though that's not as serious). I had been hoping that I'd be able to capture it soon after astronomy, but it didn't get built by anyone nearby

I guess we'll see when the results come out whether my decision to ignore the great lighthouse hurt me compared to anyone who went for it and got it...

 

[Deckhand]

@DS,
I see room for another city N of the lake. Plus you could settle the island 2S of capital. Each could run 2 scientists.

What part of "Carracks are awesome! They can carry settlers to islands long before astronomy.", don't you understand? Sheesh, I build a map for carracks and you reject them and call me evil.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

@DS,
I see room for another city N of the lake. Plus you could settle the island 2S of capital. Each could run 2 scientists.

Yeah, I looked at those locations during my initial dotmapping. But the trouble is, I figured they could only run scientists by taking food from the capital, thus preventing my capital from running those same scientists. Also, remember I didn't want just one great scientist - I wanted at least three, ideally four. That means you need to run a lot more than 2 scientists to get the 3rd one in a reasonable time: I wanted cities with multiple food sources so I could run 4 or 5 scientists per city. Also, there's an issue of more cities reducing my science rate because of city maintenance. I imagine though for people trying to beeling optics and not worrying about bulbing astronomy, more cities might possibly make sense.

What part of "Carracks are awesome! They can carry settlers to islands long before astronomy.", don't you understand? Sheesh, I build a map for carracks and you reject them and call me evil.

Ha ha. Yeah that's about right. Can I call you evil again pleasy? Oh I'll do it anyway. You're evil.

I'll have to reveal in the final spoiler how many carracks I actually built.

 

[Deckhand]

Ha ha. Yeah that's about right. Can I call you evil again pleasy? Oh I'll do it anyway. You're evil..

How does that saying go? "You aint seen nothin yet".

I've been thinking about these ideas "barbs with stealth destroyers" (kaitzilla) and "some nice fish lake tiles next to the capital with a barb submarine beneath the surface." (LowtherCastle) Maybe I will give you a galleon from the start with these barb units to offset it.

Truthfully, when I saw the email alert about your post calling me evil - I thought you were commenting on botm 148.