Calling all CE enthusiasts

[Dirk1302]

No these tiles are given back to the capital as it reaches full potential.

 

[futurehermit]

sweet dave played!!! looking forward to looking over everyone's games later today.

 

[futurehermit]

Spoiler :

Hmmm...ok, i screwed this one up pretty good. i went for early pottery to get some cottages down on the floodplains and, as always, this really gimped my ability to expand quickly at the beginning. as a result, roosevelt beat me to two important city spots. #1 the production city i had planned nw of my capital and the only source of metal (iron) available to me sw of my empire. both times he *just* beat me to them i researched archery and built a crappy horse city to the north for barb defense (no copper). i built a city to the se that took awhile to develop with lots of jungles. my small empire was putting out a fair bit of research (good capital) but no gps, which sucked (no academy, lightbulbing). i launched a suicide war once roosey got longbows because i felt like i was pretty much screwed. my main weakness when going for ce is early expansion so i will be interested to see how others have approached things.

 

[Jet]

Futurehermit,

Spoiler :

I'm not quite sure what you meant. Do you mean you played your game onward from your 520 save, but then resigned?

Spoiler :

I tried it from the 520 save.

Spoiler :

..and had to whip several Longbows but got the Iron city, hooked up the Iron, and whipped a couple Berserkers. Got peace + gold after killing a couple of pillaging stacks. Then you were seven turns from Gunpowder anyway. Did your position just look too difficult at that point? It certainly did look difficult, like you'd have to scramble with a couple more wars and then go Internet or something. But it seemed like you might be able to use your tech advantage to help win those wars.

 

[frob2900]

Here's my 2000BC-ish save (I missed the exact date by a turn or so)...

Why is everyone posting saves well past 2000 BC? I'd like to read some discussions but everyone seems to discuss their game well into the ADs. What's the point of having checkpoints if everyone plays ahead?

(Have I missed something? In that case I apologize, I've only got one checkpoint to post).

I'm very much looking forward to discussions on tech rates. I saw in another thread that futurehermit generally gets CS around 200 AD (the fastest space race thread, I believe). Is this possible while still performing aggressive warring (going for two conquered/beaten AIs before 1000 AD?)

While I have got CS that early at times. I'll often shrug off getting it till around 600-1000 AD if I think expansion/war rather than teching will buy me a bunch of extra cities.

Fast teching usually starts once I have enough land. (I still generally can get spacerace aroung mid 1800's so I have so far been satisfied with the teching power of this approach).

I don't know what I'm going to do here, though. Normal speed is unfamiliar to me.

Spoiler :

No bronze, which sucks, and Roosevelt got the nearest horses. As its looking I will have to settle the horse city north. I'm looking forward to IW in a few turns, see how that works out. Otherwise not much to say, its early days yet.

The only thing I did here that I don't usually do is got pottery before BW (I popped a Wheel hut early). Those early floodplain cottages are a real boon for financial. All in all I think I'm better off techwise more than I would have by beelining BW off the bat (Vikings dont start with Mining so that factored in a bit too).

 

[Agent Cooper]

Don't think of it as overlap, think of it as getting 3 very nice resources in the fat cross.

Exactly - besides, my scouts (got two extra from huts) found only two other nice cityspots but they were too far away from the capital. The one to the west with horses and cows is very close to Roosevelt's turf.

City 2/Uppsala will be my military production powerhouse while my capital will be busy with the GL and city 3 will be the 'connector' to whatever strategic recourse I find and hook up with. When the GL is built, I plan to show the Americans just how sharp the horns of a Viking helmet can be...

As a sidenote, I'm unfamiliar with playing at normal speed, just as frob2900 expressed in the post above. I have a hard time judging how well I'm teching lol. It will be interesting...

BTW - did we decide the next checkpoint - 1000BC? Sorry if I missed it...

 

[Kennigit]

Well i probably shouldn't have jumped the gun for this thread, but I'll still try to comment.

@early expansion- I think people are prioritizing very early cottage economy>expansion. For me, its better to get out good cities, even if your research goes way down for a little while, then once you get heriditary rule you can work your way at cranking it back up. At the start of my game, i farmed 2 flood plain squares. This helped early settler production, so that I got my third city @ 1960 BC and just lost Boston's spot. My capital was able to work 2 4-food squares (the farms), the pig, and 1 mined hill, making 4 good squares for settlers.

@Uppsala/second city- I think its better to found it 1E of the rice, which is the grassland tile. You take less from the capital and keep 3 hills for mines, while losing only 1 grassland square and the cow. But, the cow is useful for getting a rice/cow city as a third city to take away roosevelt's rice. Then, a horse city just needs to be founded up yonder to use coastal squares, and the iron city can be founded. One more advantage of Uppsala being 1 square away from the rice is that you can immediately farm the rice and grow faster, which let me to build a settler there to help further expansion. On the flip side, I could have used this growth to work mines, and crank out early military if I wanted.
edit- Also, if you take cow in Uppsala, you get stuck with junk up north that doesn't really seem appealing at all. In addition, Boston is founded before you most likely get a city up there (if you take Uppsala), and it gets even harder to compete with him if you don't take the cow/rice.

For New York, or the horse/cow/rice city that roosevelt founds, its too early to beat him to it looking at world builder.

 

[futurehermit]

Spoiler :

I really like your tech choices this game. I think you really approached it the best way possible. Getting IW and Calendar early with those city spots really puts you in a great position to explode through roosevelt while sustaining a v. nice economy.

Spoiler 2000BC :

With 4 plantation resources on my doorstep, I wanted to get Calendar ASAP. This meant having very fast research.

Techs:
Animal Husbandry - from the hut.
Wheel, Pottery - to start cottages
Writing - for trade routes with Roosevelt
Mining, Bronze Working, Iron Working - to whip, clear jungle, and find the copper iron

I built 2 workers before my first settler to get started on cottages/chopping.

Spoiler 1000BC :

The next 1000 years went by fast, and I got Calendar in 975 BC.

 

[futurehermit]

Ok, first checkpoint is done. I don't think it's that big of a deal if people post later saves tbh. If you don't want to watch them, no problem

Next checkpoint is 1000BC. Let's discuss the 2000BC saves now!!!

I want to start off by saying I really think DaveMcW's (and anyone else who settled there) 2nd city choice was a solid one combined with researching IW early (no copper and horses situated in poor location).

 

[Dirk1302]

Spoiler :

I did go for IW immediately after archery but looking back i think i should have gone alphabet immediately, didn't meet much barbarians and effectively wasted 10 turns.

 

[futurehermit]

Spoiler :

Imo it's move for revealing iron asap. I went alpha first and lost the iron spot to the USA.

Spoiler :

I did go for IW immediately after archery but looking back i think i should have gone alphabet immediately, didn't meet much barbarians and effectively wasted 10 turns.

 

[futurehermit]

Spoiler :

I could've played on and probably even won, but I felt I had really messed the early game up quite a bit and that it wouldn't make for very entertaining discussion in this thread really. Roosey got the two main cities sites I wanted. I simply didn't expand fast enough. Instead of the early cottages I should've worked specials and whipped to get cities out and then ran cottages after that. I also didn't tech properly. DaveMcW teched extremely nicely and seems to be in very nice position for launching war on the USA.

Futurehermit,

Spoiler :

I'm not quite sure what you meant. Do you mean you played your game onward from your 520 save, but then resigned?

Spoiler :

I tried it from the 520 save.

Spoiler :

..and had to whip several Longbows but got the Iron city, hooked up the Iron, and whipped a couple Berserkers. Got peace + gold after killing a couple of pillaging stacks. Then you were seven turns from Gunpowder anyway. Did your position just look too difficult at that point? It certainly did look difficult, like you'd have to scramble with a couple more wars and then go Internet or something. But it seemed like you might be able to use your tech advantage to help win those wars.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Spoiler :

Hmmm...ok, i screwed this one up pretty good. i went for early pottery to get some cottages down on the floodplains and, as always, this really gimped my ability to expand quickly at the beginning. as a result, roosevelt beat me to two important city spots. #1 the production city i had planned nw of my capital and the only source of metal (iron) available to me sw of my empire. both times he *just* beat me to them i researched archery and built a crappy horse city to the north for barb defense (no copper). i built a city to the se that took awhile to develop with lots of jungles. my small empire was putting out a fair bit of research (good capital) but no gps, which sucked (no academy, lightbulbing). i launched a suicide war once roosey got longbows because i felt like i was pretty much screwed. my main weakness when going for ce is early expansion so i will be interested to see how others have approached things.

My progress - in 1100's or so:

Spoiler :

I'm in the 1100's now, took Chemistry from liberalism and am punishing the last AI on the continent - Ghandi. Made a mistake of letting Catherine live in exchange for techs so I could concentrate on Ghandi. Silly mistake because she then vassalized to Ghandi. She wasn't a threat but I had terrible war weariness for a while. Shes gone now and Ghandi's cities are falling one by one to grenadiers. Next stop Astronomy and the Armada will get launched at the other continent - hopefully before they have Chemistry.

I haven't loaded your game, but I do have some comments from your spoiler:

Spoiler :

Early pottery is great for financial - don't regret that decision! Your research skyrockets and you have floodplains so you can divert food for building settlers easy. Grow to size four, build settlers for a while, whip them and quickly grow back.

With this start I concentrated my cities - one took the N cows and could share a FP cottage, and one took the marble and rice. I see a lot of people had one city working the rice, marble and cows - I think that was a mistake as they missed the opportunity to prework the cottages for the capital.

I probably messed up a bit by not going Ironworking earlier and plonking a city by the iron. Roosevelt claimed it before I found it - didn't matter though because my marble city stole it through its culture. Oracle + Confucian holy city. I admit this was pretty lucky.

With floodplains and marble, three cities is enough for early construction and you weren't short of production with this start. Take the enemies iron first and you can get axes before any counter attack.

I really like Dave's opening with early Calendar though - I scored it from trade reasonably early, but if I'd aimed my cities with this in mind I would have gotten the iron too! Calendar can easily replace early Monarchy on this start.

 

[Kennigit]

Spoiler :

I could've played on and probably even won, but I felt I had really messed the early game up quite a bit and that it wouldn't make for very entertaining discussion in this thread really. Roosey got the two main cities sites I wanted. I simply didn't expand fast enough. Instead of the early cottages I should've worked specials and whipped to get cities out and then ran cottages after that. I also didn't tech properly. DaveMcW teched extremely nicely and seems to be in very nice position for launching war on the USA.

Just one point I'd like to make- I don't quite understand how specialists would have helped. For whipping, working food will be better, and cottaged flood plains is as much as 1 scientist immediately w/o pyramids, and gets the food for whipping. For settler production, working tiles will be better than specialist since they generate more toward the settler + would help finance it.

DaveMcW has done a very nice job, and it'll be very nice to see his game. One problem I did in my game that was stupid is that since i didn't plan for early war and had plenty of cities, I just assumed I would have iron in one of my cities. When I tried to found my iron city, Roosevelt beat me to the spot by 1 turn. I just moved east and beat his culture.

 

[Dirk1302]

@Futurehermit

Spoiler :

You have a point there about the iron spot being important, and i also thought it important to know where it was asap. Still having build so much cottages i could beeline to almost anything fast, instead of going iron or alpha i could also have gone math/masonry -> construction, i would always have been in time to spank the americans with cats only. I remember that i was afraid of barbs pillaging the cottages so i played safe but not very adventurous.

I'll post 1000 BC save tomorrow.

 

[xanadux]

I don't like all the spoiler buttons. If you are playing a main game, show it!

As far as whipping goes with a cottage economy, it can be very powerful. As long as you have enough food that you can run a 5 or 6 (or more) food surplus, whipping is great to build the buildings you need for your infrastructure.

Another point is that just because you are planning on going CE does not mean you should beeline pottery. Early game, production is king, and you need to get BW early for slavery and chopping. getting those first 2 or 3 cities out plus military is far more important than quick teching. Especially on monarch and below, get your 1 or 2 worker techs, then BW, then beeline to alphabet for tech trading.

 

[DaveMcW]

Another point is that just because you are planning on going CE does not mean you should beeline pottery.

Partly true. But financial + floodplains = beeline pottery.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Finally got to posting my saves:

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Progress at 1515 AD - not as promising as my last post.

Spoiler :

War with Ghandi did not go according to plan. I got overconfident and lost some of my early conquests. Eventually I ground him back, but I lost several of my highly promoted grenadier/ex-beserkers and didn't make nearly the rapid progress I was hoping for. Eventually he teched to Chemistry and I vassalized him after taking half his cities (including 2 holy cities and his most valuable cities). I also let myself down with poor city management during the war - too many cities to micromanage.

I would have done better to finish Catherine off first properly and get Grenadiers fully online and attached him with overwhelming force.

Still after the war I am in good shape and should be able to raise an army to invade the mainland. I'm going to take out as much of barbarian island as I can first while I raise the numbers and tech to Communism. I might face rifles, but I should have overwhelming numbers by the time I invade. I doubt I'll get domination before 1800 unfortunately.

 

[Agent Cooper]

OK, here's my game at 950BC - 4 cities:

Spoiler :

North:

South:

Researched BW+IW next and discovered that the nearest bronze resource was too far south.

Luckily Iron was nearby and I had a settler ready to my 'strategic recourse city' - I had another settler in the works for a city to grasp the horses and rice to the north.

I can't get much pleasure of the + resources at iron city, since I don't have Calender and won't get it for some time. The techs towards The Oracle and Writing, Alphabet + Literature and Monarchy for Hereditary Rule are next. I think I'm gonna get happiness problems soon, but I'll have to focus on building axes, spears and possible a couple of swords and chariots over the next 1000 years.

I'll have to think about what trades I'll be interested in when Alphabet is done and send out more scouts - especially to the south and perhaps a chariot into american territory just before I strike. If I'm lucky I won't need catapults for my first offensive - actually I won't get to Construction in time no matter what.

I'm last in everything, but that is going to change soon I hope...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/96862/Cottage_Economists_BC-0950.CivWarlordsSave