BTS 3.13: Infinite City Sprawl 01 - Manhattan Empire

I still favour N over W, but not stronly. It seems better before first border pop and opens for expansion. W will become a great production city, but we need a fast and efficient city - we are building a lot of Settlers/Workers, so FP is excellent terrain. Also, 3N = 2 commerce from traderoutes.

That said, I wouldn't mind seeing how 3W works out. I have played a lot of these openings, so I would love to see someone else's take on the early game - free to make it a 'got-it', Betruger.

(We still haven't revealed strategic resources - we might end up settling 3E...)

Thanks for SS tips - I might just have to register, even as much as it pains me.

I think we need to at least reach a consensus on Delhi: The way I see it, we should set it up as:
- Size 8 = 4+Palace+StateRel+Temple+Ivory
- Food: 16 (Corn (6) + Sheep (5) + Farmed grass (3) + Centre (2))
- Production: 20 (3xMined PlainsHills (12) + 2xMined GrassHills (6) + CentrePlainsHills (2))

This will be subject to change if/when we reveal something in its BFC. I don't see any significant benifit to >8 Delhi pre-workshop/watermill.

However, Delhi getting the Oracle, we might have to juggle a bit to help it spit our first prophet. It is worth it to get him early, even if he's only making ~3 gold initially. He also helps spread the Religion to other empires, which might get us a Buddhist/Confucian ally out of nowhere. If somebody like Mansa picks it up, he will be a huge help in spreading it too. Then there's the question of the second Prophet, for our other religion. We will have the production to spread it, so I think it is worth it.

(Delhi for HE?)
 
I'm in favor of 3N. It grabs us an early lux and we can pump settlers/workers there while Delhi builds Oracle/military/temple. We can run two prophets in Delhi if we sacrifice some production, more after the first shrine, so getting those GPs shouldn't be a problem. Overall I'd favor priests as specialists in this game, because I foresee times, when we'll be desperate for an extra 5 gpt.

Also, I have to say that I'm very happy that our starting terrain doesn't suck.
 
Ok I've got it.
Will play soon. The consensus is to settle 3N so shall it be :)
 
I played 20 turns, which mainly consisted of more exploring.
We met Cyrus, then Alex and Genghis. Quite a warmongering bunch, it'd be good to spread our religion to Alex or Genghis ASAP.

Still, our explorers despite covering quite a bit of land haven't found any cultural borders so we don't have the idea who's where.

No industrious civs so far which is good, because I reckon the only way we can loose the oracle race is if there is and industrious civ with marble.

Onwards with the show, this is the highlight of my turnset:


Some bad luck here, I would have prefered we popped a tech, but oh well...
Needless to say, that brave warrior perished, but at least he took 2 enemies with him.

Tech-wise as you can see, we're researching BW, which will be of great use to chop those settlers.

At the end of my turnset the situation is as follows:
- 1 turn to BW
- settler just built and ready to go
- good land in the north


I think our initial four cities should go 3N, 6N, 9N
the location of bronze might change that though

Here's the overview shot of the land available to us:



As you can see, horses are out of the question. With our variant it'd take 6 cities to get to them :lol:
The good news is we've got quite a lot of room to expand. Let's hope there will be bronze nearby.

As of what to do next, I'd build another worker to help with the chopping and improving the land, then chop 2 more settlers and the oracle.
That'd mean researching priesthood after BW, but we might want to pick up archery first if there is no bronze.

Also, I don't think we're in such a hurry yet, and we could research the Wheel and Pottery before Priesthood maybe, which would allow us to build cottages on those juicy floodplains, and reduce the cost of Writing.
On the other hand, if we go for archery (we still lack hunting), we won't have time for that.

So it's up to the next player to get all these timings right. Good luck :)

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/131446/ICC01_BC-2400.CivBeyondSwordSave
 
Nice turnset. The key now is going to be not losing the Oracle->CoL and get some sensible cities out. 3N->6N is almost given, but will have to be adjusted to the location of bronze.

I'm afraid we will have to, unless we find available bronze, think of researching straight for Iron. Archers are rather lousy, even for anti-barbarian purposes.

[Regardless, we do not really need any metal if we can get Contruction. We will get Ivory, and Elephant/Catas is more than enough for the early game. From there on, the way to Musketeers isn't very long.]

I don't see any reason to rush towards 9N - well, gems are nice, but we'll need Iron to gain its benifits. I think 3W or 3NE should come first.

Roster
Zherak_Khan (CET, GMT +1)
Betruger - just done
shyuhe - waiting for a got it
ungy - on deck?
stuge
mystyfly

[6N might just be a good candidate for Science City/Palace. Though we have more important considerations to make.]

[Last overview screenshot makes it look like Delhi has ice 2S. Do note than that whole horizontal line is non-ice. 3S of Delhi is off the map.]

[We are not going to want to settle too tight in desert/peak/lake zones. We should try find some cities to skip in those areas, for instance NE of 6N.]

How do you activate the drawing-function inside Civ? I wanted to mark off the settle-able spots, but I couldn't find it in my turnset.
 
I'm afraid we will have to, unless we find available bronze, think of researching straight for Iron. Archers are rather lousy, even for anti-barbarian purposes.

I really don't think we'll have time for iron working before grabbing oracle, and defending with warriors vs barb archers is just too risky. Not to mention we'd get pillaged into oblivion.
We surely want to get Priesthood, Writing, Wheel, Pottery and Hunting before going for IW, not to mention we might not have iron in a reasonable spot. Moreover, it'll take a lot of time to research it, then to settle and connect it.

There's no other civ in the lands around us, so I expect the barbs to be arriving from every direction in great quantities. So, if no bronze, I'm afraid archery is a must.

Come to think of it, I should have played one more turn to reveal bronze which would allow more concrete discussion about what to research next.


How do you activate the drawing-function inside Civ? I wanted to mark off the settle-able spots, but I couldn't find it in my turnset.

You need to go into Globe View, and then, it's one of those little icons in the bottom right corner of the screen.
 
I played a turn. Here are the city spots:



bronze is available with 2 settlers so I'm going to skip archery.

Also - Betruger, it's common to move all of the units before you hand off the game to the next player :)

Tentative plan - spit out a second settler while teching priesthood. Then build the oracle in the capital why the other 2 cities try to develop themselves. In the meantime go priesthood --> writing --> CoL (sling) --> pottery. Pottery may come in before CoL if we have the turns to spare.
 
I guess 3rd city will have to grab that bronze, even though it's certainly suboptimal spot.
 
3NW sure isn't a pretty sight, but 13 (?) hammers at size 5 will give us our barbarian defence.

Copper is sure a blessing. Makes these decisions a lot easier.

(I think we'll pop Iron at capitol. Or maybe there is Uranium/Coal/Aluminium there instead.)
 
Great going guys!

I think we definately want to settle 3n-w to get the copper.

I suspect we will have barb trouble big time. If I remember correctly, emp barbs break culture around 1800 and as has been pointed out, we have a lot of terrain for them to spawn. So we need to get the copper connected in say 12 turns then we can whip an axe in 3n city. We are fortunate to have the river connections.

I'd pull our NW warrior back for closer fogbust.
Another thought would be to get a couple of fogbusters out asap--kind of a conflict with hurrying to the copper tho.
 
3N is great for our situation. This will be our main settler pump, togethere with the capital I think. It'll still get us some commerce via Trade Routes and riverside FPs. Remember building improvements on FPs takes much time - even with our UU :goodjob:
3W of 3N looks good too, only there is no food which I consider most important early on.
The following settlers should follow those two rivers north. Riverside cities are huge. The map is really good for ICS I think. 10 cities Betruger marked out are riverside and only 4 aren't :D. And only one city will be on top of a ressource, this city in the bottom-right corner, on the wheat.
 
Also - Betruger, it's common to move all of the units before you hand off the game to the next player :)
I've noticed that seems to be the SG etiquette but I'm not entirely sure why.
Often some of the unit moves are obvious but others depend on which direction is chosen which is decided between sets. So it seems to me superior to do whatever makes sense from a game flow perspective.
 
Fair enough. I just prefer to only have to look at cities on inherited turns - not units too :) I made a slightly weed move during my set but I highly doubt it'll hurt us.

Inherited turn: I finish moving the units around. Not much action.

Turn 41 - BW is completed. I've already posted the pic of where bronze is.

Turn 43 - Bombay is founded 3N. We also get a lucky Buddhism spread on the IT :lol:

Turn 46 - Priesthood is completed. I'm finishing up a buddhist monastery in Delhi so I can't start the oracle immediately.

Turn 50 - Wheel is completed.

Turn 55 - Pottery is completed. Things are looking good here as I haven't had to chop a single forest for the oracle (the research was the bottleneck).

Turn 57 - The warrior to the north has rounded the northern edge of the inner sea and found Wang.

Turn 60 - Writing is 1 turn from completion as is the oracle. Since research comes in before builds, just hit enter and we'll get CoL + oracle (I checked F9 - it's ours).

I've whipped out the second settler in Bombay and it's heading west to claim the bronze. We should scurry the two workers over as well to go mine the bronze. We have ample food on this map with the floodplains. This is a great starting location. Once the oracle completes, I'd recommend whipping out a granary in Delhi, then growing it to max size as it builds a library. Bombay should grow to size 3 and then build more settlers. The 3rd city can crank out axes. The tiles can be juggled between the cities (this game is going to be a MM festival) so that production/food can be emphasized.



Oh yeah, the weed move is that I didn't notice we weren't in Buddhism until turn 60. I just revolted (we haven't met anybody else who has a religion yet) but if one of the warmongers picks up a different religion, just swap out to no-state ASAP. If I had noticed earlier, I would have grown Delhi to size 6...

Techwise, I think hunting next for the ivory. I don't have a strong preference after that. We can try chopping out the pyramids using math enhanced forests as early representation will be great for an SE but it may be a bit of a stretch. However there aren't any industrious civs so far...
 

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I think building a few missionaries in Delhi > trying the mids.

Sending a missionary to every neighbour we reach before another one does is important. The AI helps spreading that religion (Buddhism) and increases our income. And of course, religious warfare is fun :evil:

Bombay can grow to be whipped for a Court, grow again and, and help cranking out settlers. Due to city placement and UU we won't need that many workers me thinks.

I suggest Hunting > Aesthetics. We have ivory, and we will war a lot. Why not deny the SoZ and build it ourselves? And Aesthetics is nice to trade around.

PS where's the save? :confused:
 
I think building a few missionaries in Delhi > trying the mids.
yes that might be true but what about the barbs?
honestly it would not have occured to me to build a monastery now when so many things are mission critical--top on my list is securing the copper city.
I think we want to run OR here so don't need the monastery anyway.
I'd have built more units--warriors are not great but they can fogbust and a pair can hold a city.
Anyway it seems we dodged a bullet here with the barbs--I'll look for the save then post up something tomorrow.
 
I thought settling copper site was first priority. Shyuhe built a monastery in Dehli. Bombay can help building more settlers via FPs. I think somebody mentioned that the copper site will take care of barb protection.
For OR we need Monotheism first and I think we lack Masonry as well. So only Delhi would produce missionaries.
But you're right, military before missionary. But as we lack Archery and have a Monastery, I thought Dehli could build a Missionary next... But if the settler for copper site hasn't been built, it would be that first of course.
 
I built the monastery because there was nothing better to build while waiting for priesthood to come in. I built it for the 10% research bonus. Not to spam missionaries. If I started a settler, it would have seriously delayed the completion of oracle --> col sling and we have enough workers for 2 cities.

I didn't build more barb busters because I didn't see any... I think you're confusing immortal barb border entry ungy. Emperor is pretty late. We can chop out an axe if we need to as well.

The settler for the copper site has been built. He's right underneath the warrior west of Bombay. We can go monotheism after hunting - that sounds good as we'll be building lots of infra shortly. I wouldn't worry about the missionary thing. If our neighbors hate us... oh well. We can always build the AP later and force war :evil:

SoZ isn't worth the hammers. If it's not infra, it should go to an army or settlers. Honestly the pyramids probably aren't worth the hammers either. It's basically 5 cities that we'll be giving up which isn't worth it.
 
When reading about the weedy move I was sure you meant building a monastery ;)

I think chopping a settler and then chopping Oracle would have been better. Otherwise having those 2 workers is unncesary at this point, so another option would be not to build 2nd worker but a settler immediately.

Spreading religion to our opponents via missionaries will be difficult because of huge distances they'd have to journey. And we don't have a 2-move unit to cover them, so effectively they'd travel at speed 1.

Bombay can grow to be whipped for a Court

Way too early for that, we should only start building courthouses when maintenance goes high, which will be at ~6-8 cities I guess.

shyue said:
Once the oracle completes, I'd recommend whipping out a granary in Delhi, then growing it to max size as it builds a library.

I'm still under impression that we're gambling here, regarding our barb defences so far. That being said I'd recommend to build a pair of axes in Delhi while growing to happy cap, then start spamming settlers.

Running 1 priest for quicker shrine seems to be strong.

We don't really need granary right now, as we're almost at happy cap anyway.

We don't need library that much now, because we have COL to trade for virtually every tech, once we hit alphabet.

What we lack is produciton, specifically military & settler production.
Delhi is production powerhouse, so use it to our advantage, to grab lots of land as soon as possible.

Because of doing oracle sling we're behing in development and ahead in tech, so now is the time to start spamming those settlers. The whole point of that sling was to allow us for an early settler spam, was it not?

With that in mind, next tech after hunting should be the good ol' Alphabet.
We need to be able to trade techs while we have such tech advantage.
Another idea is to rely on Wang to research it early, and go for something useful, like Monotheism or IW instead.

Aesthetics is inferior, because we already have good trading material, and that tech is completly useless here.
 
If I'm remembering the roster right, ungy is up.

I generally agree that our first priority now is nothing but a prophet, settlers and axes, plus/minus a worker or two. We should be discussing where to found - after copper, 6N seems to be a natural choice, but I think we should be working towards eight-ten cities ASAP, trying not to bunch them too tightly - which means trying to do some snaking.

We can actally found in a pattern like this, but, because of the variant, I think we should do the backfilling of the 0's eventually, unless there is too much desert/hills.
x-0-x
x-0-x
x-0-x
x-x-x
 
I'm still under impression that we're gambling here, regarding our barb defences so far. That being said I'd recommend to build a pair of axes in Delhi while growing to happy cap, then start spamming settlers.
Agree (and basically also with the rest of your post). Just because we've been lucky so far we're far from safe on the barbs. I'd take a 3rd axe I think before another settler.
With that in mind, next tech after hunting should be the good ol' Alphabet.
Question I have is what will the AI be likely to trade by the time we get alpha? Ideally we want to trade COL around for monarchy, math, maybe IW.
I don't think emp AI will have those for trade if we hurry to alpha.
I'm thinking we can delay it and go for monotheism to let the AI catch up a bit.

As for builds, we're definately in the expansion phase where the only builds that make sense are settlers, workers, and units to protect from barbs. Settlers and workers give exponential growth which we badly need.
The only building might make sense this early is the gran--(and I tend to build those too early) but I think not on the next set--we have too much else pressing.

So I would propose to research mono after hunting--it's really too cheap to trade for in an all-contact game anyway followed by alpha. That way we'll have it for the next set when we will want to start on some buildings.

As for IW--I'd rather wait and trade for it. Since we are limited on where to settle and have bronze, it's just not that critical now.

As for running a prophet--this seems like a good idea however it does require a temple which we don't need atm (we'll pick up another happy with the ivory). Do you guys think it makes sense to build that as well before another settler?
 
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