BOTM 94 Diety First Spoiler to 1AD

[DynamicSpirit]

I am a bit confused by your first point... From memory (I am away from the save, TM), about 16 of my 22 mines where on precious metals. These should obviously beat cottages for, especially early, research.

That's because I'd forgotten how many of the mines would be on high-commerce metals, I was just thinking mines = production

I now have access to my save, so can compare some of my statistics with yours

My first GS came in 525, and became an academy.

None. It seems in my rush to expand, I never ran any scientists at all before 1AD

Units: 10 Workers, 15 military (warriors, chariots, catapults, swords, etc.) and one WB.

9 workers, 11 warriors, 1 scout, 1 settler (Zara got to that settler's spot first ).

Buildings: 8 granaries, 5 libs, 4 courthouse, 2 forge, 1 university

7 granaries, 3 libraries, 2 lighthouses, 4 barracks (all very recently built at 1AD), 6 monuments.

Improvements: 22 mines, 3 farms, 3 pasture, 2 nets, 2 camps, 2 cottage, 1 village, 1 workshop, 1 quarry and 1 plantation.

10 mines (7 on metals), 4 farms, 4 pastures, 5 nets, 2 camps, 2 cottages, 4 hamlets, 5 villages, 1 town, 2 quarries, 3 plantations. Some of these differences reflect differences in our tech orders, but mainly it looks like I went for cottages where you went for mines. I suspect you were prioritizing quick commerce over future growth more than I was.

Of the three gems that you grabbed with your 2nd city, I was only working 1 at 1AD. One of the others was awaiting completion of a monument so the city (recently settled) could get a border pop, and the 3rd was permanently outside city borders - sacrificed so I could have high-food tiles in the borders. Probably not the best move with hindsight.

My FOREIGN trade routes were bringing in 54 gpt, and I was selling 2xgold for another 9 gpt

Wow! That must be one of the key differences. I was getting just 11 gpt in foreign trade, and couldn't sell anything due to lack of trade routes. I think what hit me here was not just the playing on emperor not deity, but also Zara's cities on my coastline, occupying the spots where you need your own culture to cross the ocean to enable trade routes (and galleys for that matter). This was not only blocking my trade routes but preventing me from even having met some of the AI. Clearly, on the basis of those figures, I should have prioritized building military to take those cities earlier.

On the second, going that far for city two is certainly not normal, but this case was not normal:
-No barb of foreign threat, as you have mentioned.
-Gems is an ultra-power, which needs ONLY mines to get going, so is worker cheap as well.
-The long river will make connecting it less of a pain then usual.
These 3 things combined made it a very strong play, I think.

All good points, and I think you're correct that that was a big early-game boost for you.

On 3... Interesting.... I would NEVER have considered self-teching Masonry here. Calendar, maybe, at Emperor, but also not at Deity.

Why do I need masonry? It comes too late for Oracle, and with no food resources and tons of metals, this is not a representation map, so no need for Mids. Since I am planning an early Sci-Meth, the GLib will obsolete too soon to be worth much... I could consider the Hanging Gardens, but it + an Aqueduct are a pretty big investment, and I am unlikely to get it with more than 8 cities. I am going caste system anyway, so no need for stonehenge, and GW is clearly useless.... Bottom line is I need stone on-line for Oxford, not before, and I certainly was going to be able to trade for it by then.

I probably went for it early because I wanted the Oracle - but never got the chance to build it.

Calendar is generally pretty easy to traded for, and its resources are ho-hum, and only really useful for the Happiness. With Gold, Silver, and Gem, was the extra happiness really very useful? The metals give a happy cap of 7 (8 in capital). I dont remember how many of my cities were above that, but 62/11 = 5.5, so cannot imagine very many. I doubth very much it being worth enough to pay for the cost of teching Calendar to get it a few turns earlier.

On emperor I usually regard calendar as a good early tech to research to give away in trades - doesn't help the AI militarily, and if I'm planning to attack them soon, it means I'll get ready-made plantations. Obviously that's more of an emperor strategy though - would never work on deity.

So in conclusion, it looks to me like some of the things that lead to your game to 1AD being so strong were:

• Good use of the metals.
• Good, imaginative, placement of the first cities.
• Getting early scientists, for academy and bulbing education.
• Research path that enabled good tech trading.
• Getting those foreign trade routes (which perhaps was in part thanks to taking Zara's cities early on).

I think that broadly agrees with your analysis.

Thanks for that discussion - it was very interesting. I think I'm now going to try replaying, settling nearer the wheat, and paying more attention to foreign trade, to see how much difference that makes.

 

[Jastrow]

I was puzzled for a while... How can you get 11 from FTR?? Obviously you have open borders with Zara to get any, but then his network should connect you to the rest of the world???? Then it hit me. The big difference is that I have paper... This allowed me to buy maps (with techs) and thus reveal a ton of trading partner cities.