Buce01: The Slavemaster

Pre-turn:

Let's take a look at who our opponents are by pressing F10:

Zulu
Babylon
Iroquois
Portugal
Korea
Hittites
Ottomans
Dutch
Egypt
Arabs
Inca

Athens is about to riot; adjust lux slider to compensate.
Switch build to Warrior (3)
Pottery now in 9.

Enter:

Turn 1)

Begin to mine sugar - finding that beef has changed my mind about Worker tasks; I believe getting out a Settler asap is the best way to go, making shields a priority over gold for research at present.
Warrior'A' reaches the river estuary; Warrior'B' continues in a Westerly direction.

Turn 2)

Production overrun on Warrior allows me to switch citizen to work the lake for 1 extra gold. please pay particular attention to such mm niceties - every gold piece is critical in this game

Turn 3)

Athens completes Warrior'C' who is sent due North;
Citizen reassigned to Sugar;
Athens begins Settler;
Warrior'B' finds a stand of Wheat;

Turn 4)

To answer CivA's question, the water to the North is coastal.

Turn 5)

Warrior'B' meets Babylonian Spear; Hammurabi is annoyed; he is up CB; he has 2 cities;
Bingo! - Warrior'C' exposes not one, but two Wheat directly North of Athens; can you say, 'Settler factory'?

Turn 6)

Warrior'A' has scouted the peninsular to our NE; no lux's but good qualty land.

Turn 7)

Worker completes mine; Settler in 3, growth in 3 - perfect.
Begins road.

Turn 8)

Warrior'B' spots Bab border.

Turn 9)

Pottery finished. I'm going to set research to WC; a second tier tech is beyond us at present, and we can't be at all sure of trading for WC, which I believe we need for our early game strategy. We will discuss this before any more turns are played.

Turn 10)

Athens completes Settler, begins Rax.
Worker completes road, moves to BG due North of Athens;
Settler moves due North - we will discuss positioning, but it looks like a no-brainer to me.

Spoiler :
Slavemaster3000BC.JPG




>>SAVE<<
 
Elephantium: Although you are 'up', I'd like you not to play until we've all had a chance to digest these developments, please.

@ team:

Finding a Settler Factory on our door-step is huge; I would like some input as to what we must do to exploit this opportunity - I'm specifically thinking of Worker turns, and of course city positioning (dotmaps, please.)

Bear in mind short-term strategy now we've found Babylon relatively close by.

It's late here so I'll post my own thoughts tomorrow.
 
Err, I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow, so I'll need to either play before bed tonight (i.e. within the next three hours) or wait until the 16th, after I'm home from vacation.

Settler position: I vote for settling Breadbasket on the hill adjacent to the two Wheats. Culture from the capital will allow Breadbasket to work the cow before too long. While the hillside defense bonus probably won't be needed, it will be nice to have just in case.

Any other locations also require us to build culture or settle a third city before the second wheat can come online.

For other cities, I think some good locations include:
* 2SE of the cow, still along the river
* 1S of the lake by Athens. Yeah, it crowds the capital. However, it won't need a 'duct.
* 1 SE of the southmost Sugar we can see (or a square next to it if there's a bonus resource on THAT square)
* the forest barely visible 2SE of the eastermost Sugar.
* The riverside grassland our eastern warrior is on (coastal + river, nice)
* The regular grassland 1N of our western warrior (tobacco and whales)

Edit:

For worker turns, the following options seem appealing
* Road from Athens to cow, then irrigate cow->grass->wheat(x2)
* Road/irrigate from Athens BG (current worker location)->grass->wheat (via new city)
* Road Athens BG->grass->wheat (via city), then backtrack (1 turn's movement) to the cow to start irrigating.

Also, I went ahead and played 10 turns. I founded our settler factory, built a road between our two cities, and had our warriors explore. I've sent the turnlog, the save, and the screenshots to my gmail, so I can post them here tomorrow before leaving on vacation.

Since I forged ahead so precipitously, it may be best for CivA to pick up Buce's save and proceed based on team consensus. I'd be perfectly happy with having played a shadow turnset, but I'll leave it up to the team to decide.
 
Elephantium, although your enthusiasm is admirable, I was quite clear with my intentions on this.

The next moves are crucial to how this game will develop; where we place our factory, and the worker moves played thereafter will echo down the Ages.

I'd rather that you didn't post your set, as it will give spoiler information regarding exploration.

If you wish to do so for comparison once CivA has played, which I'm sure he will only do once the team has reached some decisions, that will be fine.

Enjoy your vacation. :)
 
When I was discussing the differences at DG earlier in the thread, there was something that I omitted to mention, and that is that the game is much less forgiving of mistakes and bad choices than it is at lower levels, particularly in the opening phase.

It should be borne in mind that our self-imposed restriction on building Workers adds even further to the level of difficulty; think of it as DG and a half.

It will be a while before we have enough slaves to fully develop our land, so our choice of initial city placements and subsequent Worker moves are absolutely critical, and they must not be rushed.
 
Well, here are some initial thoughts. It's a quick map. I think it takes advantage of the resources we can see. We want to get a pump going sooner than later and the river is key as well although it will be pretty corrupt to the far East until we get an FP up.

Slavedotmap.jpg
 
This is just from looking at the screenies, since I'm at work now and can't open the save.

- I normally like settling on hills for the defense, but I think our settler factory will not be coming under much attack, seeing as we have plans to settle all around it. I'd settle on Phaedo's #1 spot. First build - start on a granery?

- Worker moves. Is it more important to get up to the new city to irrigate those wheat for the factory than it is to mine the BG the worker is currently on? I would think yes, so my worker moves would be Road the BG he is on, Road the tile 1NE, then move to the cow and Irrigate and Road the cow. Then, since the city is placed in the #1 spot instead of the hill, the worker can move directly to the wheat without using another worker turn. Let me know what you think - this is probably where I trip up the most, with early worker moves. I'm actually not sure we need to road that tile in the middle (between the cow and the BG N of Athens) since we have no luxes (connecting our cities is less of a priority?), but would it be a waste of worker turns to move without roading?

- WarriorA was done exploring the peninsula and is moving back S to explore, correct?
 
Elephantium, although your enthusiasm is admirable, I was quite clear with my intentions on this.

The next moves are crucial to how this game will develop; where we place our factory, and the worker moves played thereafter will echo down the Ages.

I'd rather that you didn't post your set, as it will give spoiler information regarding exploration.

If you wish to do so for comparison once CivA has played, which I'm sure he will only do once the team has reached some decisions, that will be fine.

Enjoy your vacation. :)

I'll post my shadow turnset on the 16th, then.

Even from what has been posted so far today, I can see significant differences in what I did and what the team is gravitating towards doing with the settler factory and worker turns. It will be instructive to compare the two after CivA's turnset.

Good luck while I'm on vacation!
 
The first thought that I'd like to offer is to say what a wonderful starting position this is; if it turns out that we have horses nearby then it will be nigh on perfect.

Bearing in mind that with one Worker we can only realistically expect to develop two cities initially, but those cities are ideal.

Athens is food neutral, shield and commerce rich; at size 3, it will give three turn Archers, perfect for what I expect to be our early game strategy, something which we will discuss later.

Sparta, our soon-to-be second city, will be commerce poor, but shield rich and food super-rich - a perfect Settler factory once developed.

It is not necessary to irrigate the Wheat, which would require a chain of irrigation, wasting many worker turns; irrigating the beef will give the same results and could be done straight away.

I fully concur with the placing of cities one and two on Phaedo's dotmap; we need not concern ourselves with anything beyond that until we have our Settler factory up and running.

As regards worker moves, I think it makes sense to mine then road the BG it currently stands on; this BG will be within the compass of Sparta's BFC.

Because we need a third city in place (number two on Phaedo's DM) in order to make use of the BG's east of Sparta, I think Sparta's first build should be a Settler; if the first citizen works the Beef, Sparta will grow in 7 and put 14 shields in the bin. Upon growth, if the second citizen works the BG that the Worker is currently on, we should have a Settler ready just as it grows to size 3.

Then, if we build a granary, and concentrate our worker turns on developing Sparta's land, we should have a Settler factory in place by the time it grows back to size 4.

In the meantime, I'd like to see Athens grow and begin to pump out Archers, once it has a Rax; my suggested strategy would be to send out Archers in pairs towards Babylon, with the intention of picking off any Settlers that they come across;

They are sufficiently far away for it to be a short lived war, peace in 5 turns or so.

We will probably need to self-research WC, though trade if we can; the same goes for the Wheel - if we have Horses, our strategy will be so much more flexible.

However, once we have those two techs, I recommend going zero Science, because we need to save gold to take advantage of Workers for sale.

CivA, give it 24hrs to see if we have a concensus on these suggestions, then play at your convenience.

I would like to pause between sets during this vital early phase, to ensure that each player maximizes his turns; things will speed up soon enough.

@Miles Teg: Don't worry over the Settler Factory; when the time comes we'll instruct you in it's operation.
 
lurker's comment: Nice dotmap, Phaedo! :)

Just something I noticed while looking at the dotmap. Why not place Dot 5 one tile NE so you aren't wasting any tiles? (I know it's minor, but I've always been told you shouldn't be wasting any tiles).
 
You're right, irrigating the cow gets the 5 extra food per turn needed for the factory.

Got it, will play tomorrow night if there is consensus.

Plans:
Worker - mine then road BG, then move NE toward the cow.
Found Sparta on site #1, work the cow then the mined BG after growth.
Athens will continue on with the Rax.
Warriors will continue exploration.
 
Pre-Turn Strategy:
Worker - mine then road BG, then move NE toward the cow.
Found Sparta on site #1, work the cow then the mined BG after growth.
Athens will continue on with the Rax.
Warriors will continue exploration.

OOB:
1 Settler
1 Worker
3 Warriors

State of the Empire:
Athens (1) grows in 10, Rax in 14

Babs are up Warrior Code and Ceremonial Burial on us.

Warrior Code is due in 25, but we are makin -1gpt at 100&#37; Sci. Going to leave it as is, since founding Sparta will help that.


PreFlight:
Just for kicks, set science to 0%, see if Babs will trade WC. They won't, as expected. Sci back to 100%.
Nothing else to do, so off we go.

IBT
Bab spear moves onto gold near WarriorC
Hittite Warrior appears near Bab borders.

2950 BC Turn 21 (1)
Contact Murry. Hittites are also up WC and CB and will not trade them. They have 20 gold and 3 cities.
Warrior C moves W toward hill
Warrior B S to mountain
Warrior A S
Worker begins mine
Settler moves toward #1 spot.

IBT
Hittite Warrior and Bab spear exploring.
Our Treasury is running dangerously low! No matter, we'll be fine.

2900 BC Turn 22 (2)
Warrior C moves to hill, sees between the Bab border and the coast.
Warrior B S to another mountain. Looks like a fairly large chain.
Warrior A S.
Settler to #1 spot.

IBT
Bab spear moves

2850 BC Turn 23 (3)
Warrior C moves to next hill, see the general outline of the Babs. We know they are up there now, I think we can start heading back S.
Warrior B SW to mountain, kkeping the coast in sight.
Warrior A SW
Sparta founded. Work the cow, will grow in 7. Build starts on settler due in 15.
Warrior Code now in 15, we are breaking even.

IBT
nada

2800 BC Turn 24 (4)
Warrior C S, sees Bab settler/warrior pair.
Warrior B SW to mountain.
Warrior A S to begin busting fog again.

IBT
Bab Settler pair heading S

2750 BC Turn 25 (5)
Warrior C S trailing Bab
Warrior B S
Warrior A S

IBT
Babs found Ellipi, quite a distance away from their borders (looks like CxxxxC).

2710 BC Turn 26 (6)
Warrior C moving around Ellipi
Warrior B S, spies bluish green border, betting that is the Hittites.
Warrior A S

IBT
nada

2670 BC Turn 27 (7)
Warrior C S
Warrior B S
Warrior A to mtn, sees spices next to a river.
Worker finishes mine, begins road.

IBT
zzz

2630 BC Turn 28 (8)
Warriors all move S.

IBT
See that Bab spear N of Sparta again.

2590 BC Turn 29 (9)
Warriors move S, A finds more spices, B sees more outline of Hittite lands.

IBT
Babs are building the Colossus.

2550 BC Turn 30 (10)
Athens and Sparta both grow. Lux to 10%, WC still in 6.
Sparta works the BG N of Athens, and it looks like it will not be timed right - the settler will complete in 5 but growth is not for 7 more turns.
Athens works the mined sugar, Rax now in 2.
Worker NE
Warriors still busting fog.


State of the Empire:
Athens (2) grows in 10, Rax in 2
Sparta (1) grows in 7, Settler in 5


End Notes:
- We can set the 2nd citizen in Sparta to work the grassland next to the river and grow in 8, with the settler still due in 7, but I'll let the team discuss this one. I'm still trying to work the numbers as to why it didn't work out.


And the file
>>FILE<<.
 
The Settler will be fine, we'll just need to work the Wheat to drop a shield or two, though in all truth, it's no big deal to waste a few shields at this stage;

I'll take a look at the save in a while.
 
@ Miles Teg: You are 'up'; can you confirm with a 'got it'?

Your turns should be straightforward:

Athens: Complete Rax, begin Archers.
Sparta: Complete Settler, begin Granary. (note that Sparta is about to riot; you will need to adjust the slider accordingly.)

Worker: Irrigate, then road the Beef.
Settler: Found city on #2 on Phaedo's dotmap.
Warriors: Continue to bust fog.

Any questions?
 
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