[BTS] BOTM 256: Maya; Prince - First spoiler to 1 AD

[kcd_swede]

BOTM 256: Pacal II, Prince - First Spoiler - 1AD

What is the weirdest thing you observed?
Use this thread to tell us what happened in your game, up to 1AD

Reading Requirements
If you are participating in BOTM 256, 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

• Do not disclose ANY events or information gained post 1 AD.
• Do not reveal your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• 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

 

[Donald Duck1]

Was feeling like playing a Prince-level game, so I gave this one a try.

I settled 1 north of the ice, so I could build lighthouse. It can be developed into a decent bureau cap, with 2 helper cities west and north east.

Quite some distance to nearest neighbors, and plenty of either green or resource-rich area, so I started to chop/whip settlers, cheap workers and warriors, to settle as much land as possible before my neighbors would take it.

With 2 mining resources, forges and the Ballcourt, the cities would have plenty of happiness to grow, no need for early monarchy. I almost never build colosseums in my games, so this seems like a fun variation on my usual playing style.

Had 7 cities by 1000 BC, at which point I had to pause expansion to fix the financial situation and to tech alphabet.
12 cities by 1 AD, and I got currency, metal casting and construction (for the ball courts)

Barbs were not a problem, they rarely attacked, and I think I built only 2 of those spearmen and 2 chariots, and a bunch of warriors for fog busting/MP

Didn't build any wonder so far.

I'm in slavery now, and think I'll stay there until a switch to monarchy/bureau/pacifism during a Music golden age.

Since I could get all the resources I needed, and the AI is teching so slowly, I didnt really bother to check out the AIs, so at 1 AD I had met only 4 of the 6.
Wasn't sure at this point what victory I would pursue, probably a cuirassier rush to vassalize the nearby AIs, but not sure if I would need astronomy. Or perhaps I would go for space race. But with 12 cities, both options should work out fine.

Compared to my usual games, I'm a bit behind in tech and GP generation, but thats becaused I prioritized settling of more cities.
And I was late with getting foreign trade routes, should have worked on that earlier.

 

[Tobiyogi]

Challenger save, Emperor, 1AD, 8 cities

Cheers, I like my game so far, thanks for "cooking" the map, really fun to play and deer on the summits are cute.

You definitely have to settle soon for commerce, since the capitol offers nothing. It is good for pumping settlers though and I chopped GLib in here. The surrounding land is kind of rich, just a little low in happiness. These problemes were more or less solved around 600 BC when I had confu in most my cities, gems and silver (settled straight on it to work the crabs) and finally TR into Cyrus. At 1AD, I am also starting to build forges everywhere (instead of ball court), since they will provide +2 happiness and hammer boost.

The only reliable trading partner is Hannibal so far. No war whatsoever.

Any thoughts of an early rush were put aside, since I can work decent land, my only neighbour is in the poor Tundra (he even became my brother of faith!) and I got very early OR. So I am still building up, using this civic to get a lot of infrastructure done while I am settling towards the other guys.

Interesting strat was to use very early caste (double switch with OR). Certainly a bit awkard not to be able to whip anything for about 30 turns, but it gave me two early scientists and there is so much food for several specialists in various cities. Plus easy border pops and merchants worked while waiting for better tiles to use. First scientist for math, second for Philo. No academy here. I am thinking of merchants later with all this food to upgrade HA > Knights.

Right now, I am about to build a couple of HA, since there are 3 barb cities in my surroundings which I'd like to take. The gold will help me and I plan to keep the cities anyway. After this, I will be teching to Guilds for a knight rush. Mounted units can bridge the distance to the other civs, plus on this level (prince starting units), I will definitely encounter regular archers in some of the cities. Will be fun, I love knights! (when YOU have them ;-)

 

[LowtherCastle]

12 cities, 62 pops. 4 main cities built early then I spammed wonders, Stonehenge, Oracle for MC, TGL and Colossus. Some may disagree with TGL but with so many spots for coastal cities I did it anyway. My goal is to hopefully grow three or four cities up enough to make those trade routes worthwhile.

Then I started spam in cities. Hannibal researched alphabet for me, and also gave me ironworking. Cyrus now has aesthetics so I might get that from him after capturing a few of his cities, which I plan to do soon. No Warring yet.

Incidentally, I didn’t move my warrior on turn zero to the south east so I didn’t realize there was coastal tiles there. I moved him southwest, and saw the other deer, so I settled off the coast with more food resources. Clearly that will make a much worse bureau capital but it has been good for spamming, settlers and workers.

I haven’t researched construction yet because I forgot about the ball court three Happys. I wouldn’t have even thought of it now if I hadn’t read it above. Thx DD1.

One more point, at one a D no one has monarchy yet. I have civil service, but I have been delaying my revolt to bureaucracy because I want to revolt to hereditary rule at the same time. Sigh.

Gandhi is Buddhist and has been spreading it to my cities, but I have not revolting to it yet. So that’s another happiness that’s waiting for the future.

 

[Donald Duck1]

Incidentally, I didn’t move my warrior on turn zero to the south east so I didn’t realize there was coastal tiles there.

Note that hovering your mouse over a tile will tell you if it has access to fresh water. The tile south east from settler starting location is adjacent to water, but has no access to fresh water, which means it must be coastal. So no need to move the warrior there to spot

 

[Frederiksberg]

I sent warrior SE, and he spotted the sea food so I settled on the ice moving away from the double grassland deer. It was a bit of a gamble, but it allowed me to postpone research of hunting and do research of fishing instead, and this helped my early economy a lot. That said, it seems I more or less ended up in the same place at 1AD as everyone else .
@1AD I have 10 cities with 69 pop. Only wonders are Stonehenge and the Oracle. Got Feudalism from the latter. Currency in 1 turn.
I'm at war with both Cyrus and Hannibal, have taken two cities from Cyrus and stolen a couple of workers from Hannibal that were building a copper mine. Gandhi has spread Hinduism to my cities, so he is going to be my best buddy in what I expect to be a conquest or domination game.

The weirdest thing so far are the "Marsh Lands", that is the many small lakes. Made me think of the "Dead Marshes" in LotR. And, of course, the abundant grasslands near our starting position. This is clearly the work of a friendly mapmaker.

 

[LowtherCastle]

Since Hannibal is financial, I’m thinking of keeping him as my research buddy. Problem is, he built the pyramids for me which I covet so I may come have to capture that at some point. Also, he hasn’t teched anything for me for quite a while. He’s way too slow.

 

[Powerfaker]

Emperor Save. At 1AD 11 cities of which 1 conquered barb city, 55pop.

Settled 1N of ice, 3 good food resources + commerce from lakes shouild make up for a nice play. 2nd city south to capture gems and silver 2nd ring, 3rd and 4th city south-west up to copper/marble.
Then Oracle (900BC) => MC => Colossus (450BC). Meanwhile Genghis got Alphabet which set off some minor tech trades. Headed for Literature next. So at 1AD just finished GLib and NE, as well as Moai and 1T away from Construction, I spent the GM I got on Currency. Working on Parthenon in city 1N of wine, great hammerspot with lots of forest too.
This leaves me, apart from ball courts, pretty much done with infra+wonder building in the core cities for now. I'm a bit in doubt what to go for from here, the nearest neighbours are freaking far away.
Also I just got Buddhist and Hindu spread to me = something else to decide on.

Barbs were tricky, I lost some warriors, but glad I didn't see any axes. My axe attack gamble vs archer-on-hill (68%) to get to 10xp unit failed unfortunately.
Apart from Hannibal the tech pace of the AI is already hopeless. They have Alphabet/Math (Gandhi only writing, Math they got from me) and that;s it.
Ah, and I learned a civ rule => chained lakes provide trade routes, didn't know/expect that.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

I settled 1S to get the coast. Lakhamba SW to grab the gems and marble and then Chichen Itza South to get the coast, seafood and (after border pop) the gems and silver.

I figured with financial plus all the metals, it was worth an attempt to Oracle Civil Service – which did work out, although I was quite late in the end - something like 800 BC, so a bit of a nail-biter to build Oracle before anyone else did.

As at 1AD, I have 6 cities: 5 in the fertile area around the starting area, and one more plus one settler on his way to the SE where there’s lots of deer and coast (That took a war with Persia to free up that land as he just beat me to settling there). I’ve also built Stonehenge, Oracle, Great Lighthouse, Great Library and the Kong Miao. To be honest, with tundra all around, I’m not seeing many other places I massively fancy settling, so I have focused heavily on science rather than expansion (currently 182 bpt at 100%, 127 bpt sustainable at 60%), hence all the wonders.

Not entirely sure how to proceed from here. I normally go for space, but I haven’t figured out how best to deal with all the tundra. There also seems to be a complete lack of calendar resources so far, which isn’t going to help my happiness :-( Once I have paper (3 turns away), I will be able to get maps of the rest of the World, which hopefully will give me a better idea what to do. At that point, I also intend to switch off science until the Great Library gives me an academy.

 

[Bemep42]

challenger save, emperor level. on 1 AD - 11 city, 63 pop.

settled in tundra 2 SW from start (between corn and deer). Did not built any wonders. Not very good land and financial problems forced me to stop expansion of about 500 bc or even early. in 925 bc I learned priesthood and started saving money for monarchy. I was lucky, I got about 150 coins from ToA and Oracle and finish learning monarchy in 500 bc and writing 450 bc (after the revolution). Since then I have been saving money for something else, I have accumulated now 300 gold only. Need more) In 125 bc 2 AI learned alphabet and one of them (maybe Cyrus) did not have monarchy and polytheism. So I traded the alphabet, IW, archery, mono, sailing and AH and later medi. It got a little better, plus AI tech also bad.

the map clearly hints at the need for a military victory. I will do so )

 

[nocho]

I settled WSW from the starting position. I tried to concentrate on growing my cities, so went for earlyish monarchy and built stonehenge in my second city for the free border pops. As a rule I never build cottages on non-riverside tiles but this time I did with the northern grass fields available, to get commerce going and at least being financial it didn't feel all that bad. I oracled currency, wasn't quite sure about the CS sling when I got priesthood. I also built GLH as there were more coastal cities than might have been expected from the map. At 1AD I'm at 11 cities and 77 pop. Not sure where to go from here, any VC was still open at this point.

Spoiler :