CBob01 AWM Training Day Game

[CommandoBob]

Let me get two dotmaps up for reference and discussion as we focus on where to put our next few cities.
In both maps, brown lines indicate planned roads.

North Russia 3000 BC

To our north I see only one good city site that will help us and that is Blue Dot. It is on a flood plain and it allows us to connect wines to our cities, which will give us happier people. Wine will reduce our need to keep units garrisoned in cities and let us send those fighters to the front line. Blue Dot connects to our closest luxury, does so quickly, and is far away from the Hittites. It will be a large, fast growing city, with a hill and some plains for rather good production.

Once we road to Silly St. Peteys, we need only two more roads to connect to Blue Dot.


South Russia 3000 BC

We have more city options in the south and also more obstacles, namely the Hittites. The rivers add additional movement problems also.

I cannot really decide which is better of the two pink dots. Both are on grassland, both have access to two BGs and the forest/game. One is on our side of the river, the other on the Hittite side. Both will take two turns of walking to reach. I slightly prefer being on the Hittite side of the river, just because a city on the far side is better place to end the turn than open ground.

Our second southern city would be the light blue dot, which will sit on top of spice, thus saving us the turns spent roading the jungle in order to connect to the spices. It also has access to two BGs.

Our third southern city would be the light green dot, which sits in the midst of three cows.

Other Stuff
I am anxious to get a luxury connected quickly, which means settling the north first and then the south. In the south we can wall off the Hittites from moving north with our wall of cities. We have many good tiles to grab before the Hittites do, which we can do if we keep them focused on war instead of expansion. We should have no problem in connecting to two luxuries (wine and spice) early in the game.

While we are at war with the Hittites, I am not overly concerned about taking them out early. We can easily blunt their first attack, which will probably be their strongest. Afterwards, we will occasional attacks by one or two units at a time, which we can handle. I think that if we build northwards first we will be stronger when we build south, because we will not need as many units in our cities to keep them productive.

I think that Mosiac Moscow will need to alternate between settlers and fighters. The city is shield rich but will not grow very fast. Right now it can produce a warrior each turn, as can each of the planned southern cities at size two (two mined BGs/cows each).

We have a very good starting location and by adding these four cities we will become an early power house. But it will take about thirty turns to get all these cities into place.

For no good reason, just a feeling really, I think we should wait until we get about 10 warriors before we go attacking the Hittite cities.

 

[Norton II]

Pretty good overall, but here's a few recommendations:
1. Blue Dot should not be founded on the FP. Instead, how about the plains 1 NE of the FP? We'll still get the wine, and we'll be able to irrigate the FP for additional food. Also, I'd rather expand south first before the Hittites expand north.
2. I'd rather see Pink Dot in the location I pointed out earlier. CB's locations would be better than mine in a normal game, but for a fronline city in AW, I'd prefer a location that can be reinforced in a single turn. Light Blue Dot and Green Dot are exactly where they should be, and at least one of those should be built (along with Pink Dot) before Blue Dot.
3.It'll be a while before we have 10 warriors, especially if we build a settler or two first. By that time, we'll need archers at the very least before going on the offensive. I'd prefer a defensive war to start with while we get some more cities up and research military techs, then a shift to an offensive strategy when we've got a substantial force gathered and can replace losses relatively quickly. I doubt very much that we'd recover from a failed early offensive.
4. If it's important for Moscow to grow quickly, we should irrigate the flood plains as soon as we can. That'll get us 4 surplus food per turn, but we'd need a higher population to get a lot of shields.

 

[Ansar]

4. If it's important for Moscow to grow quickly, we should irrigate the flood plains as soon as we can. That'll get us 4 surplus food per turn, but we'd need a higher population to get a lot of shields.

lurker's comment: That is incorrect. Despotism tile penalty downgrades it to +3 food, not +4. Just telling you for future reference.

And another question, I had ideas for a dotmap, could I post them (later) ?

 

[Norton II]

lurker's comment: That is incorrect. Despotism tile penalty downgrades it to +3 food, not +4. Just telling you for future reference.

Yes, which is why we'd need to irrigate both flood plains in Moscow's radius to get 4 fpt.

And another question, I had ideas for a dotmap, could I post them (later) ?

It's OK with me if nobody else objects. In fact, I'd like to see those ideas.

 

[Ansar]

lurker's comment: Well, here's my 0.02 :

Even though we are missing out on the hill wine, settling on the hill gives us several advantages: more defense, closer to home and not crossing a river, and we get an extra flood plain tile so we arent lacking food since we are in a desert area. The luxury isnt really necessary, especially at this point, because you have small towns and it is only Monarch-level. You are always going to have 2 defenders at town (one to guard homebase and one for backup) so the luxury isnt necessary.

Its much different than CB's dotmap. To begin with, I added a yellow dot:

• On a hill, which means it provides extra defense
• On a hill also means it doesent waste a grassland tile
• It is adjacent to freshwater
• An extra town never hurts, especially in this nice spot

Second town, Pink Dot:

• Next to a river
• Near BG's (Riverside BG's)
• Has a game for food, which it can share with yellow dot too.

Third/Fourth*, Light Green dot:

• Settles on luxury, so direct connection.
• Bad tiles, but its not a bad spot.
• If my eyes arent wrong, I think its coastal.

Third/Fourth*, Light Yellow dot:

• Cow on a river.
• Nearby BG's.
• Earns an extra tile N, NW, which is a BG.
• On a river.

*Third/Fourth means that I was undecided which would come first, so either or.

 

[Tribute]

Ansart the King is correct. CBob, if you settled on the FP, you'd not be making a 'fast growing city' because the max surplus is 2 fpt and everything else around it is 0 or 1 fpt.

Not so sure about his plan down south though. Yellow and pink are fine. But with more exploration, the plans will likely change. It would also probably be more painful but much better if you settled on the hills SW of pink because that would make your attacks on the Hittites easier (but rather hard to defend against earlier on). Then again, you'd want to do that, or else they will be able to use the hills against you.

 

[Ansar]

Not so sure about his plan down south though. Yellow and pink are fine. But with more exploration, the plans will likely change. It would also probably be more painful but much better if you settled on the hills SW of pink because that would make your attacks on the Hittites easier (but rather hard to defend against earlier on). Then again, you'd want to do that, or else they will be able to use the hills against you.

lurker's comment: I thought of that when I finished the South Russia dotmap. I noticed that lonely hill that was just CxxC and realized it would work great. Maybe switch the light green dot from spices to that hill. It does make a great killing zone for the Hitties, like you mentioned.

 

[Norton II]

Ansar's plan, but with Light Green Dot moved to the hills SW of Pink Dot as he and Tribute suggested, looks good to me. I wanted Pink Dot closer to Moscow, but maybe the game and the extra BG make up for the additional reinforcement time. Also, Pink Dot won't be on the front line once LGD is built. What does everyone else think?

 

[CommandoBob]

I have no problem with the Revised Ansar Plan (Yellow-Pink-Lonely Hill-Spices). It is bettter than mine. Yellow is a good blocking city.

My more recent games have been at Emperor, where luxuries are almost a fetish. Settling on the flood plain up north was just be able to put the wines within easy reach.

I haven't had time to examine Mosiac Moscow's build sequence, will try to do so soon.

 

[Ansar]

lurker's comment: So...dotmap revised checks out looking like this:

South Russia Dotmap 3000BC

 

[Aabraxan]

I have no problem with the Revised Ansar Plan. I was concerned about not being able to reinforce with foot troops in one turn, but that's not an insurmountable problem, I don't think.

I don't expect any questions of city placement to arise during my turnset, which, incidentally, I hope to play either tonight or tomorrow night. I wanted to play it yesterday, but the weekend got away from me. I haven't had a chance to look at build orders for our empire yet, but if anyone has looked and has suggestions, I'm all ears!

 

[Tribute]

Not perfect from Moscow to yellow and pink, but at least when troops arrive, they are allowed to fortify. That's good.

 

[CommandoBob]

Some things to consider (all guidelines, all open to discussion)

Build Orders:

• Mosiac Moscow granary -> warrior -> warrior -> settler/worker
• Silly St. Peteys warrior -> warrior -> warrior -> warrior (every five turns)

Worker Orders:

• Mine the grassland (current tile) 6 WTs, 3 game turns.
• One worker roads the mine (3 turns).
• Other worker moves onto flood plain (1 turn).
• Irrigate the flood plain (4 turns), then road (3 more turns).
• First worker moves onto the oasis and roads it (4 turns total).
• Same worker moves adjacent to SSP and roads it (4 turns total).
• Second worker moves to make a road/mines towards Yellow and Pink Dot.
• First worker will irrigate towards SSP.

Fourteen turns to connect to SStP, which means only two turns of travel between MM and SStP instead of four. Twenty or more before the new cities are connected.

Other Stuff:

Yellow Dot makes warriors or better.
Pink Dot builds a barracks and then builds military.

It may be best to finish the turnset with MM building a warrior each turn, as it grows enough to make a settler. Can't tell from work at lunchtime.

 

[Norton II]

Sounds good to me, but I think SSP should build a worker before pumping out warriors. That worker should then build a road Mosaic Moscow. Gotta leave for work now, so no time to analyze other worker moves.

 

[CommandoBob]

Sounds good to me, but I think SSP should build a worker before pumping out warriors. That worker should then build a road Mosaic Moscow. Gotta leave for work now, so no time to analyze other worker moves.

SSP is size 2, grows in 15. If we make a worker, it will be done in 5 turns. If MM makes warriors for a while, this may be OK. This worker would road to MM, freeing up the other two to road/mine to Yellow/Pink and beyond.

Man, I wish I had thought of this.

 

[Norton II]

SSP is size 2, grows in 15. If we make a worker, it will be done in 5 turns. If MM makes warriors for a while, this may be OK. This worker would road to MM, freeing up the other two to road/mine to Yellow/Pink and beyond.

Man, I wish I had thought of this.

Yup. We should still finish mining and roading the tile the workers are on now, of course (especially since it'll keep them out of the path of the advancing Hittite warriors). And at some point in this game, you're bound to think of something I wish I'd thought of.

 

[Phaedo]

Sorry I've been silent lately (RL stuff). The discussion has been great . Just to make sure of some things:
We are planning on using Ansar's Revised Dot map with cites in the order of Yellow, pink, green?

SSP builds on a worker (5 turns) who will road to Moscow then start on warriors

MMoscow will finish its granary then build warriors until it can support a settler (I'm assuming we are planing it to be size 4 when it pumps out the settler)

So this is what I gather from the worker discussion:

• The workers finish the mine (3 turns)
• One starts road (3 turns), one moves to FP
• SPP worker is built and moves S and raods (4 turns total)
• Worker starts irrigating FP (4 turns), then roads (3 turns)
• After the worker on the mine finishes he crosses the river and then heads to road the yellow spot? (working the other BG is an option, but with Moscow pumping out settlers when it can, this square won't get worked for quite a while)
• SPP worker keeps roading to the oasis

After that is it best to have the worker that was on the FP help the SSP worker work the other FP or follow the mine worker down to road and prepare the land for the new cities? My guess is that preparing our new city spots is the priority but that's purely shooting from the hip.

As for that southern warrior of ours, putting him on the mountain makes him pretty tough and it looks like the Hittite warriors are seperated. He could take one out and maybe even heal (or run away) before the other one gets there.

 

[Aabraxan]

It looked like we had enough of a consensus for me to play my turnset, so I started. I got about 14-15 turns through it last night. However, I hit a snag or two that I thought warranted some group decisions, so I stopped.

First, RL demands on my time. I hope to be able to finish & post my turnset tonight (Tuesday), but RL might get in the way. On Wednesday, I have to make a 300+ mile (roundtrip) roadtrip for my job, so it's very unlikely that I'll get any playing done Wednesday. Not impossible, but very unlikely. So if I cannot finish & post tonight, it will probably be at least Thursday before I can finish and post. IIRC, my time to play and post runs sometime Wednesday. If I cannot finish and post tonight, I see three options: (1) grant me a small extension; (2) skip me; or (3) nominate someone to play out my turnset. Obviously, my first choice would be #1. But if y'all think that will slow the game down too much, we can go with either of the other choices. IIRC, Phaedo is after me in the line-up, so he would seem the logical choice if we decide to go with #3.

Second, what do we want after WC? I don't want to give away too much outside of the spoiler tags, but I stopped my turnset at the point where I got WC because I felt we needed more consensus on what the next research is. I have not yet invested any beakers in the next tech. I lean towards The Wheel and Horseback riding. What say you?

Now, for any of you who want to know, here are some highlights of my turnset so far:

Spoiler :

• We have 3 sources of iron nearby.
• Yellow Dot sits on iron!
• I lost Warrior 01.
• I lost Scout 01.
• I captured a Scout.
• I killed 5 Hittite Warriors.
• Warrior 04 is Elite.
• We have the Warrior Code.
• I met the Germans.
• The road to yellow dot will be done by the end of my turns.
• So will the settler destined for YellowDot.
• The road between Mosaic Moscow and Silly St. Petey's is complete.

 

[CommandoBob]

I goofed, I should have stated that we would be playing 10 turns each from here on out. My mistake, not yours.

So let's make your trip easier. Go ahead and post your turns so far, along with your thoughts and plans. This will give everyone a chance to see where we are at as we debate on what to learn next.

And don't worry about playing extra turns. I'm sure it will even out.

 

[Norton II]

@Aabraxan: It looks like your turnset went pretty well. As for the extra turns, we can probably just each play 11 turns until it evens out. Also, if I understood CB's earlier posts correctly, we don't have a strict 24/72 rule in effect for this game.

As for research: Earlier, I suggested Masonry-Alpha-Math, and given what Aabra found out in his turnset, that remains my recommendation. We might want to sidetrack to The Wheel first, though, so that we can see horses. Why not HBR first? Two reasons: first, while we're on the defensive, speed isn't quite as important as when we're advancing. Second, I want to get Masonry soon for walls and a Great Library prebuild. That wonder will be very helpful since we can only trade techs with each AI once. It'll let us zero out science and build up cash for a while, and it might be better to learn monarchy from the GLib rather than researching it ourselves.