Catherine of Russia - Who wants to Play?

[Harv]

Take 3 - Masonry Run
From Turn 49 to Turn 55

Looking back at what I did before, I forgot to make a save for when we finished Masonry, so I reloaded from the Turn 49 save. This run is almost identical, in terms of tiles worked and city build progress. Changes so far:

The extra Warrior in Moscow went to the northeast, where we are planning to build another city. Previously, it went southwest to explore a single tile where a city might be, if there is a seafood resource.

The dry corn resource might have been moved around. I did not take good notes on how much food there was in the city on different turns.

Spoiler :

The workers should develop the last flood plain tile first. It will take two worker-turns and while building the worker, the flood plain cottage will produce the same as a marble, except the cottage will grow. We have 7/8 flood-plains developed:

Hamlets - 1 turn to Village
Cottages - 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, and 9 turns to Village

Worker overflow in Moscow -
Last time, it was 33 hammers into Great Wall. This time, I believe we should quickly build two Warriors and skip the Great Wall.

 

[dankok8]

@Harv The level of micromanagement you're engaging in is a bit brain-numbing for me. I could never calculate food and all this stuff every turn. Or not that I couldn't but I just don't have the patience!

I think Gumbolt is right when he posted a while back that big misdirections are hurting you (and I...) more than turn-by-turn micro.

 

[Harv]

I believe there is a saying in his country: Penny wise.
-Winston "Penny Wise" Churchill

Hindsight says the decision back on Turn 25 to research Animal Husbandry was a disaster. Defeating the purpose of the sheep mine was minor. Ignoring the 8 flood plain tiles gifted to us turned out to be huge. I believe this turned out to be more important than founding four cities. The contrast is amazing.

At the time, I thought I was supposed to grab a few city sites with the best resources for later growth.

 

[Harv]

I take it this is my indication that the next unit I build will cost money.

Spoiler :

1 - unit cost
-1 - handicap

So my next question is, is it worth spending one or two gold per turn on warriors at this stage of the game or should we dump 29 hammers into a granary?
The same guy who spent 20% of the budget in the last run wants to know.

Added: The answer is quickly becoming apparent.
A warrior is ready in Novgorod in 2 more turns. That warrior is needed, and will cost the economy 1 gpt. Each of the next two warriors from Moscow will cost 1 gpt. So the drag on the economy will be 3 gpt when we are rushing towards Priesthood.

Okay, thanks!

....and that answers where the 4 gpt on unit maintenance came from in the first run - interestingly enough, not paying attention to costs as we keep dumping overflow hammers into more warriors to regrow cities after whips.

 

[dankok8]

^ If the Warriors are doing something useful like fogbusting or preventing a city from going unhappy then it may be worth it.

 

[Harv]

Take 3 - Rebuilding the Oracle
Turns 55 to 62

I think the extra soldiers would have cost another 13 gp. Based on the treasury at the end of the run, we could have afforded it. Here is what changed:

Instead of dumping Moscow's worker overflow into the Great Wall, we let it dump into a Granary, which got built on Turn 60. By then, we had researched Polytheism, so started on the Temple of Artemis in a bid for fail-gold. This time, we are collecting the Marble bonus. If we decide we need another Warrior, then we can build one pretty quickly. When Moscow was just about to grow into Size 5 unhappiness, I started on a Settler. If I have timed this right, we should be dumping most of the 30 hammers from a pop-whip into the Temple, which will be worth close to 60 gp, if we manage to collect the fail-gold. (I have had a pretty horrible history at collecting fail-gold.)

So far, we have 18 hammers towards the Temple of Artemis.

Novgorod will look at options for growing into unhappiness.

Turn 59 we researched Polytheism.

Turn 62 we researched Priesthood. At this time, a Worker was also ready with a bunch of overflow from a couple of chops the turn before. Two more chops allow us to insta-build the Oracle.

Spoiler :

The alternative to building the Settler in Moscow would have been to just let the city grow into unhappiness. Another alternative would have been to work a forest tile instead of the dry corn, but I did not like that option too much. Another option would have been to let Moscow be unhappy at Size 5 for a turn or two, then whip a Settler. In this case, when we whip the Settler, Moscow will spend one turn at Size 2, then a few turns at Size 3. Letting the city grow into unhappiness means we get an angry citizen who produces nothing, but consumes 2 food, 3 food if Moscow is also about to become unhealthy. (With the Granary, I do not remember if that is the case.)

The bad consequence of bad management of this situation is we end up with flood-plain cottage tiles that do not get used.
A two-pop whip with 1 angry citizen gets us back to the temporary happy cap, correct? Mostly?

Right now, I have a mentality issue about letting cities grow into unhappiness. Just like the AI, I tend to do crazy things to prevent this from happening.

Looking at St. Petersburg, I just realized that we chopped our way into another point of unhealthiness, so will not grow to Size 5 for two more turns. So we can grow the city, then figure out the situation. The same applies to Novgorod. We can either start a Worker or let the city grow unhappy. Or we can whip the Granary at Size 5.

I also noticed we have a population of 12 and they are all special tiles!

Spoiler :

5 flood-plain hamlets
3 flood-plain cottages
2 corn farms
1 marble quarry
1 sheep mine

Even with the third play-through, I am still very excited about this! Looking at my past run, it looks like I lost the use of:

Spoiler :

1 turn of flood-plain cottage. That is the one in the corner that is 3 turns behind.
1 turn of marble quarry. The flood-plain cottage was more important.
1 turn of sheep mine.

We also complete the Oracle next turn and will grab Monarchy from that. This brings up my next big question:

Do we research Monotheism in a bid to pick up Judaism and Organized Religion? We get there in 5 turns. If we win, we get Judaism and we can make a one-turn switch into Monarchy and Organized Religion. I thought of this earlier when I realized I was losing turns to revolutions with one change at a time.

I left three workers active on the save game. One of them can make it to the hills north of Moscow or the forest to the east. A chop is worth 40 hammers towards the Temple, but is it worth it? Otherwise, we build a road and connect Moscow to that river in the east. The Volga? Then we can either farm or cottage up that river grassland tile. The cottage might be better if we are sharing with the new city.

And what do we do with those cities to manage unhappiness if we are delaying Monarchy by what appears to be 4 turns?

 

[dankok8]

Played to 760 AD and practically won the game already.

Spoiler :

Caesar is dead! He was spreading like a plague through the land and I didn't want to conquer him until I could easily absorb his northern cities and had lots of Catapults to minimize losses.

Put a kind of rudimentary dotmap that I plan to fill out simply for Domination purposes as I don't really need more cities. Gonna rebuild for 20 turns or so then smash Ragnar and take over his land too, beeline Astro and continue conquering on the other continent. My production is just overwhelming and my GNP is tops too even if I have some crippling maintenance costs LOL. Ragnar is so useless right now it's scary. He's +10 with me but still Pleased and refuses to trade any luxury resources. Note that the AI always refuses to trade techs when you're the only civ they know unless they are Friendly or their name is Mansa Musa!

Oh and I managed to outdo myself with yet more sloppiness. Last turn before smashing Caesar I managed to let a wandering Archer of his kill two of my Workers.

The tech pace on the other continent seems slow. Nobody has Philosophy yet and the Pyramids were competed in like 200 AD. I collected a lot of failgold but couldn't wait anymore.

 

[Harv]

Played to 760 AD and practically won the game already.

It's a really fun map! How is your game going? I'll go check your updates.

I feel a little bad about all the replays, but maybe it is how I learn. I mess up a perfect situation and :banghead: until I either hit rock bottom or realize that I could have done things much better. It's also rewarding seeing the results.
(I kind of treat it like a puzzle to be solved.)

So far, the foreknowledge I have is the general shape of our continent and the location of some important resources, namely iron. I do not believe this is changing the way I am playing. Some foreknowledge like AI on the other continent being very slow to build wonders might be. However, if I moved a few units differently, that might radically change the behavior of an emperor on a distant continent.

So the decision to move my warrior to the northeast might prompt HC on the other continent to suddenly build Stonehenge.

Another thing I learned on this map that I should have learned on the last: The one turn on the Oracle means it is built at the end of the turn and no AI is taking that away from me.
In one of the last replays, I founded a city right next to a Barbarian Archer, then chopped a forest in a cheeky move to build the Great Wall in one turn. I should have taken a picture.

 

[dankok8]

It's a really fun map! How is your game going? I'll go check your updates.

I feel a little bad about all the replays, but maybe it is how I learn. I mess up a perfect situation and :banghead: until I either hit rock bottom or realize that I could have done things much better. It's also rewarding seeing the results.
(I kind of treat it like a puzzle to be solved.)

So far, the foreknowledge I have is the general shape of our continent and the location of some important resources, namely iron. I do not believe this is changing the way I am playing. Some foreknowledge like AI on the other continent being very slow to build wonders might be. However, if I moved a few units differently, that might radically change the behavior of an emperor on a distant continent.

So the decision to move my warrior to the northeast might prompt HC on the other continent to suddenly build Stonehenge.

Another thing I learned on this map that I should have learned on the last: The one turn on the Oracle means it is built at the end of the turn and no AI is taking that away from me.
In one of the last replays, I founded a city right next to a Barbarian Archer, then chopped a forest in a cheeky move to build the Great Wall in one turn. I should have taken a picture.

Agreed. This map is so fun!

I'm still playing a few other games so I've played this one quickly. I kind of took the opposite approach of you in terms of not analyzing and never reloading even after errors. Even stupid ones where I put two Workers beside an enemy Archer.

My learning game is the other Isabella game. That one I plan to play and then replay if it doesn't go well. There is nothing wrong with reloading for the purpose of learning although foreknowledge can taint the results and give you a false impression of great play when you're actually benefiting from knowing the map or flow of the game. Like you said you gotta be careful with that one.

 

[Harv]

Religious Riots all over Russia
Take 3 - Turns 62 to 67

If I'm bent about founding Judaism and combining Hereditary Rule with Organized Religion, here is what it looks like:

Turn 62 - I switched production in Moscow to Warrior and allowed the city to grow into riot territory.
I was having a lot of trouble figuring out how to make the most use of tiles.

Turn 63 - The Oracle was built. We were told that a multitude of rulers is not a good thing.
We had rioters in Moscow and Novgorod. This means we have citizens eating food and doing nothing.
We shifted production from a marble tile in St. Petersburg to a forest silk tile in Novgorod, losing 1 hammer and 1 commerce.
The idea of this was to keep the number of hammers in the St. Petersburg granary below 30.

Turn 64 - The riots stopped in Moscow and we had an extra citizen and a newly built cottage tile to work.
We whipped the rioters in St. Petersburg to build the Granary. We lose production of the marble quarry again.
Moscow calmed down. We still had rioters in Novgorod.

Turn 65 - Rioters in Moscow again as it grew to size 6. So we whipped the Settler.
Riots persist in Novgorod.

Turn 66 - Still riots in Novgorod. Right now, they are the only ones left.

Turn 67 - Monotheism.
Sure enough, Judaism is founded in the city causing all the trouble.
Riots arise again in the city of Moscow, causing the Russian government to collapse.
Amid all the turmoil, Rostov is founded by pilgrims trying to run away from the nuts, but they will find no shelter.

Here is what the situation looks like now:

Spoiler :

I don't know how holy cities are chosen. Perhaps Novgorod's size gave it an advantage. I would have preferred St. Petersburg to be the holy city, since we are planning to make that the capital and that would go well with a shrine. Also, we are building great prophet points in St. Petersburg and a shrine would help us build more if we wanted. On the plus side, we are building a Granary in Novgorod and Organized Religion will give us our first bonus hammers.

It took five turns to get from Priesthood to Monotheism. Is the combination of Hereditary Rule and Slavery and Organized Religion worth it?

Anarchy will persist for the next two turns.

How long will it take to spread the religion everywhere?

 

[Gumbolt]

You have happiness issues and you have not switched to HR? I guess if you can spread the religion to make org work. Personally I wouldn't have tried for mono.

Sampsa settled on the marble. You did not so I think your 2nd and 3rd city are too close.

Losing the corn/pigs site to barbs was a mistake. I think you should of been building more settlers once you had monarchy. You need to fogbust key sites or barbs will create cities 2000bc or sooner. Corn/pigs was a great city site.

I think you have reloaded 20 times on this save now. Not sure it's added a huge amount here. Key thing was to rex to 4 cities quickly. Grab monarchy through Oracle while working the flood plains cottages. Then rex and grab other sites.

What is your plan here? What exactly are you hoping to do now? City sites? War with JC? Techs? You won't win game on 4 cities albeit your cottages will give you a strong commerce base.

 

[Fippy]

Harv in case you wonder about the optimal way on this map..HAs.
Cathy is great for them.
I would not bother with Reli stuff.

 

[Harv]

Harv in case you wonder about the optimal way on this map..HAs.
Cathy is great for them.
I would not bother with Reli stuff.

I was wondering about horse archers as I was thinking about the game today. It is a diversion for two techs, but the economy is moving very quickly.

I do not know how strong they are against cities compared to swords. The stable adds to the investment.

I should have gone AH immediately after PH if I was going this route. Early religion tends to be a losing strategy.

Why do you say Cathy is great with horse archers?

I was planning AH next, then Writing, then Fishing....... then Alphabet, because I thought I would have accumulated some tradeable tech and they would likely have IW.

The reason I reloaded T49 was I was at T98 and researching the Alphabet and realized I added a whole bunch of tech I could have traded, instead.

Question on Barbarians: what turn is it when they invade?

 

[dankok8]

I was wondering about horse archers as I was thinking about the game today. It is a diversion for two techs, but the economy is moving very quickly.

I do not know how strong they are against cities compared to swords. The stable adds to the investment.

I should have gone AH immediately after PH if I was going this route. Early religion tends to be a losing strategy.

Why do you say Cathy is great with horse archers?

I was planning AH next, then Writing, then Fishing....... then Alphabet, because I thought I would have accumulated some tradeable tech and they would likely have IW.

The reason I reloaded T49 was I was at T98 and researching the Alphabet and realized I added a whole bunch of tech I could have traded, instead.

Question on Barbarians: what turn is it when they invade?

What Fippy said... HA's are optimal.

HA's get slightly worse odds than Swords in attacking Archers in cities but you know you have Horses (and not know if you have Iron) and Caesar has only Archers fairly late. And HA's give you mobility where you can often hit deeper core cities that are weakly defended and also kill any Archers escorting Settlers. It would be kind of an exploit to replay the map and go for HA's now though. You planned a peaceful option and played through the map to turn 98 (?) with that mindset so when you're replaying again you should still play with the same mindset. And I think that's what you're planning to do anyway and that's good for the sake of learning. It is definitely very possible to win this map with a peaceful approach early.

IIRC barbs enter borders when the number of cities is more than the number of civs times two. So in this case when there is over 6 cities on your continent, barbs start entering borders. Not sure when exactly barb cities end up getting founded.

 

[Fippy]

Why do you say Cathy is great with horse archers?

She has early game traits (+GG generation). With Cre every city can get it's bfc (forests), libraries are easy for HBR research, settlers are cheap for good HA production spots.

 

[Harv]

This is actually the first time I built the Oracle specifically to get Monarchy.

 

[Harv]

Take 3 - Horsey, Horsey!
Turns 67 to 72

Turn 67 - With all the riots, there was no choice but to convert to Judaism.
Do they allow vodka?
Elsewhere in the world, somebody built the Great Wall. We collected nothing from this.

Turn 68 - A deal was cut between the civil and religious leaders.
We adopted Hereditary Rule and Organized Religion.
This is what I was thinking when going straight from Priesthood to Monotheism:

Spoiler :

It is a one-turn revolution. It is an expensive civic, but hopefully our newly founded religion spreads like wildfire.

Turn 69 - Our government is finally back in order.
Interestingly enough, the whip anger counter keeps going in anarchy. We are also able to build with our workers, of course. That part goes without saying.

Turn 70 - I think the Vikings have developed sailing. We set up a trade deal with them, corn for clams. This is very good timing. All of our cities were unhealthy.
Also, BuG is a wonderful thing!
Elsewhere in the world, somebody built Stonehenge. We were in a position to collect 32 gp from it.

Turn 71 - We collected 32 gp from no longer being able to build Stonehenge.

Turn 72 - We finished research on Animal Husbandry.
Amazingly enough, we had four workers in a position to put a sheep pasture up near Moscow.

Those workers will split up again. Rostov is due for a border pop and it would be good to grab those sheep as well.
Novgorod has pigs and we are working towards pasturing those as well.

Here is what our situation looks like:

Spoiler :

Novgorod is due for a whip. It will benefit a little bit from the bonus from OR.
St. Petersburg runs out of whip anger in two turns, but appears to be rapidly growing.
Moscow runs out of whip anger in three turns. We can grow this city.

Writing is next on the list. I do not see ourselves whipping a Settler to run to the coast before we are able to build Fishing Boats. Otherwise, Fishing is a couple of turns to research.

After that, I think we should make a run for the Alphabet, because we might be able to pick up some good stuff through trades.

St. Petersburg hammers - Should they go to Warrior, Barracks, or Pyramids?
Novgorod whip overflow - same question? Or do we save that whip for when we can build a Chariot?

Moscow runs out of whip anger in three turns. Here is my idea:
Start a Settler and whip in three turns.
I think I know exactly where to place that settler. I think I know where the next two settlers are going.
Dump the overflow into a Chariot. We are likely to need at least two of those.

We probably need at least one more Worker. Maybe that will come from St. Petersburg.

 

[Harv]

When in Rome....
Turns 72 to 76

I played four more turns, because I thought they were simple enough. This was about how long it took to get the next settler ready.

Turn 72 - Whipped the granary in Novgorod.
Turn 73 - Started a Settler in Moscow.
Turn 74 - Writing. Open borders with the Vikings and Romans.
Turn 75 - Whipped the Settler in Moscow.
Turn 76 - Fishing

I figured I needed that for the next city.

Spoiler :

Moscow - I am planning to use the whip overflow to build our first Chariot. I believe we need two or three of these for now.
They might also double as a mobile police force.
St. Petersburg - has reached happy cap. I would like it to grow a few more turns, then whip out a Worker. A Settler might also be good.
Novgorod - I dumped the overflow into a Barracks. I was trying to decide if that was better or a Temple. I decided on the Barracks, because the Temple costs 80 hammers, but a double whip only generates 75 hammers and Novgorod so far is only producing 2 hammers. So we will get a bunch of overflow back into the Barracks. We can grow Novgorod into unhappiness, size 6, I think, then whip it back down. This might affect tile usage.
Rostov - is still growing, not much to see here.

Judaism - still has not been spreading much. We only have two cities.

Sailing - I think we need it, because there is that city site to the south of Novgorod that can capture the lakes. With a Lighthouse, we will get three tiles producing 3 food each. Also, we will need it to trade with the Vikings, if I understand correctly. It will take us a few turns to get it.

I really don't know much about how to play a Monarchy, either. I think we have the military in our best city and the rest get whipped. Right now, we are supposed to be expanding, since I delayed that by quite a few turns.

The replay - I wanted to replay a bunch of turns, because from Priesthood, we teched:
Animal Husbandry, Writing, Monotheism, Fishing, Sailing, Iron Working, Mathematics, Calendar - I think I got them all, excluding Monarchy, which came with the Oracle.
We were on our way to researching the Alphabet. I wanted to see how much we could save by researching the Alphabet earlier so that we could trade with our neighbors.

So far, it looks like we are already self-teching five of the eight on the list, so it looks like it did not matter. If we save anything, we might pick up Iron Working or Mathematics, most likely if both JC and Rags have researched it. For Iron Working, I believe this is very likely.

As a punishment for the replay, the Barbarian city that spawned is in a worse location for us. It was one turn to the north before, where we really did not have to worry to much about it. I thought I knew exactly where to put the next city, then realized the location of this Barbarian city prevents it. Ironically, as it was pointed out, all I had to do from that Turn 49 save was leave the Scout exactly where he was.

 

[Harv]

Today I learned.......

Out of 12 options:
Both my opponents know:
Archery, Sailing and Iron Working

One opponent knows:
Horseback Riding

Nobody knows:
Code of Laws, Alphabet, Theology
Feudalism, Aesthetics, Mathematics
Metal Casting

I'm not sure:
Meditation

Spoiler :

We have a carryover of 3 to the next technology. If the slider is at 0%, then we will have 4 beakers towards that technology. However, for three of the above listed, we get 5 beakers.

So based on that, we know both of our opponents know Sailing and Iron Working.

Does this make a run for Alphabet worth it? We might have trade bait to get Sailing. I do not know what to use for Iron Working, which we need.

 

[Gumbolt]

Why not try playing your own game instead of worrying about ai and relaoding each few turns?
Your having to reload so much as you don't focus. You had no real plan what to do after Oracle here. You had not considered issues you would have before they hit you such as happiness.

AI always get IW circa 1000bc on emperor. HBR is a little early. Are you in dire need of alphabet now? Not sure what sailing adds here. You have no coastal cities yet. You already have AI trade routes.

Your expansion here has crawled to a halt.
Once you completed Oracle Moscow should of been spamming 2-3 settlers/worker/warriors. Warriors for HR happiness.
Once you had writing you chop libraries. Creative so you get double production on them?.

Not sure why you want mids here. You lack stone. No idea why you want chariots. Unless barbs are a big issue? I can't see any.

Mylene suggested HBR and HA working well. You could rush either of these AI with HA. None have metal yet.

Monarchy/HR is simple. Build warrirors and this raises happiness cap in cities by 1 for each unit in the city.

I would take the sites Romans might steal first. SW of St Petersburg? The northern site with fish looks good. Why are you not using that 30H towards a settler? 45H with settler bonus?