CFP Series

[ChienFou]

[size=+1]ChienFou Prince Series 1[/size]

There are lots of us out here. We can manage noble, We get ok starts on prince (thanks Sisiutil) and somewhere along the line the sky falls on our heads. I'm starting this series since I've made no fewer than 7 starts with these parameters and every time something went 'orribly wrong. The idea of the series is to play an opening up to a specified point and micro-manage what we're doing, so each gameplay will be relatively short; maybe 10 turns or so. In this first series we're going to build a samurai and a cat, or there-abouts. After that anyone interested can have a go with the game from that point and compare notes, but the early game is what this series is about. We might try two or three games with these parameters.

4000BC
4000BC exposed
4000-3130BC
4000-3130, what I should have done
3130-2740
2740-2470

I chose Warlords 2.08; fractal, std settings, epic, Tokugawa. I chose Tokugawa because his UU kicks in after 15 or so tech advances and in general we'll know our Win strategy - domination rush round about when we get to rifling - so we can focus on the minutiae. We all know this is where we fail. Tokugawa kicks off with roads and fishes and we know that to bring in the samurai, we should tech to IW, Construction (for the cats) and CS, which suggests we should take the mathematics route to CoL. But which friggin' order?

The only "cheat" is that I set the warrior to auto-pilot, and waited till he found someone else and then abandoned, relatively unaware of what I'd found. It's not an isolated start - samurai AND Galleons seemed too far along the tech tree to play short series of moves.

4000BC I got a nice starting position, but on the coast, loadsa goodies and a hut in the FC:

and to save the inevitable 4 pages of discussion (peace, Sisiutil) I moved the warrior on top of the hill to see if the grass is greener over the other side.

So, settle in place for rice, sugar and gold immediately with marble and bananas in the FC; or move two spaces inland and wait for the second border pop to get the marble?

If we settle in place we can let the 1st border pop claim the goody hut, otherwise we may need to claim it with the warrior.

Gamefile start

 

[mice]

Gold , Marble , 2 food and Sugar ? Yes settle in place.
If it's fractal it could be a very watery map so being coastal will help with that.You have reasonable production, but really it's going to be a commerce giant.

With so many resources it's unlikely that you will get copper or horse in th BFC.

Second city can grab those.

Marble could mean Temple of Artemis in the capital, although it brings prophet points with it.

Certainly Oracle in your next city

 

[TRJS]

Great thread idea. I am another who falls in the category of "Prince" wanna be.

Agree with Mice, settle in place. Damn strong capital.

 

[yena]

If you settle in place you will get a commercial city, but if you settle 2E you will get a production power house. It seems to be at least five hills and enough food to work them all. Some tiles are covered by jungle, but you can easily get iron working before you run out of workable tiles. Combine this production with bureaucracy and you can get any wonder or built an army from scratch in no time.

 

[ChienFou]

Currently 2 in favour, 1 against; for settle in place. My thinking is that there's a river 4 to the East where we could potentially put our next city, with either no overlap or, say, 2 tiles overlap and this will pick up some of the hills mentioned by yena. That would give us a decent commerce city as capital and a production city a tad closer to any action. (Let's assume we're not bordering an inland lake or great bay and we're going to find action to the East.)

I'm inclined to settle in place but will give the thread another 24 hours to see if any of the "Gods" want to persuade me not to.

Assuming I do then we need to think about which 2 techs to research (we get about 2 techs normally before anything significant happens) and we need to think about whether we go warrior-worker or worker-warrior. It seems fairly obvious to tech Min and Ag. Since we have 6 forests in the FC, I fancy BW as well and we can chop out the first settler.

Finally where do we send the warrior - what's the best exploration strategy? I plan to play until we build our first unit (warrior or worker) and we can discuss what to do with him next. I'll play the next round in about 24 hours, based on any feedback.

 

[ABigCivFan]

I think settling 2E could be better long term wise since you get a lot more river side grassland tiles which you could farm/cottage later. If settle in place you have no seafood in BFC, so the water tiles will not be as useful.

Build: worker, worrior (grow to size 2), worrior (stop after grow to size 3), another worker, settler

Research: Agri (farm banana and suger first), mining (Gold hill), BW, AH, Pottery/Myst/Mason/Priesthood.

scout near the fish and marble for good 2nd and 3rd city sites. 2nd worrior explore East.

Try time to get Priesthood+hooking up marble at the same time. And go for Oracle. Take Monachy as free tech.

Make sure you have enough worriors to defend you cities. Until you reveal more map...

 

[cabert]

Also note that if you settle in place you will never be able to work the fish.
I vote for 2E or 2N.

 

[Killroyan]

OK, radical idea, why not settle on the sugar? It gives you everything you want from a riverside city, to lots of production/food/commerce. And you could even settel a fish village later on (you need to check what is up there though). I don't know if sugar is going to give you 1 extra food in your city square but since it is not the best special resource tile it won't be a big loss comparing to what this city will do with riverside gold, plains marble, bananas and rice.

 

[cabert]

OK, radical idea, why not settle on the sugar? It gives you everything you want from a riverside city, to lots of production/food/commerce. And you could even settel a fish village later on (you need to check what is up there though). I don't know if sugar is going to give you 1 extra food in your city square but since it is not the best special resource tile it won't be a big loss comparing to what this city will do with riverside gold, plains marble, bananas and rice.

actually I had thought about it too. It's just one "lost" tile, with the coastal tile, but you get a head start on settlers, workers and growth.
It may be the best option here (+sugar is a weak tile even after calendar).

 

[bluedevil99]

Settle in place. This is a terrific start. A plains hill gold mine, rice, marble, and two food resources you can farm initially (giving you the equivalent of flood plains w/o the health penalties) and whip, whip, whip for early rushing/REXing.

From what I can see in the screenie, I wouldn't do 2N as it looks like you'd have a bunch of ocean squares. 2E would be a good city but I'd rather put a second city near there and get cottages or farms and specialists going ASAP.

Suggested initial paths:
Agri -> Mining -> BW -> Masonry ...
Worker -> Warrior -> Settler -> Worker ...

With all those food resources I have a hunch there's an ideal second city site nearby (don't be afraid of overlap). Get that second city up ASAP and don't be afraid to whip/chop to do it. If you run into other civs soon and there's bronze nearby, make your 2nd city production for an early axe rush. If not, make it a high food city, get a library up there ASAP and try for an early GS, then put up a 3rd production city and chop Oracle there or in your capitol (forget Stonehenge as you're going to want early Calendar).

 

[ChienFou]

4000BC exposed: Well, the wanna-be Princes vote for settle in place and the "Gods" want to move. I'm not convinced about the 2N play onto the goody hut; it looks a bit watery round there, and whilst the Japanese love raw fish I'm not going to pander to a war-monger that much. Since I would have settled in place and I suck at this game and since I respect cabert's opinions, I've moved the settler onto the sugar to give us an option on the sugar tile or the 2E tile and all we've got is Fuji-san to the South, no real help.

Will play next round tomorrow; based on any more posts

 

[ABigCivFan]

Settle on Suger looks good as gets all the res into BFC. One more hill to the south is nice. Lots of forrests. It is better now another city can actually claim the fish with some workable land tiles.

This capital will have very nice production potential for wonders. I would try to build Oracle/TOA/GL/NE/Academy/Oxford in the capital and turn it into a GP farm/Super science city. Try find a nice production city as your second or 3rd city.

I would also suggest to save some forrest for future lumber mills and bonus, I can see Kyoto growing into a monster city.

 

[pigswill]

I'd have settled in place but who am I to argue with cabert, the Warmonger God p ).

More seriously, if you're kind of ok with the start and begin to notice you're running into problems around 1000-1500 ad do you need to play the first hundred turns in great detail?

 

[r_rolo1]

I would go for settling in the sugar. ABigCivFan already stated the main reasons and there is another one: if you don't settle in the sugar, you'll lose one turn. Not much of a reason, but the first turns are critical.

 

[bluedevil99]

I'd have settled in place, but it looks like Kyoto will be a monster city either way. It actually looks like one of those rare sites that could be good for any of production, commerce, or GPF. Which one it ends up as should depend on what other good city sites are available nearby.

So I'd say settle where you are now; with as good a site as you've got here there's no need to waste a turn.

 

[ChienFou]

The reason for this series is simply that when I compare with other games here, I'm just a few turns behind the expectation. I get to 500 AD much as expected, but I'm certain I should be there at 300 AD, so to speak. The micro-management is the skill I know I lack. The grand picture I handle ok. Not well, just ok. It's why Noble is easy and Prince is tough for us wannabes.

Right, it seems we should settle where we are; and save a turn - sugar doesn't come on-line that early that it's crucial in the early game. We're going to go worker-warrior and boil the rice followed by pocketing the gold and build the roads to bring them online and will research Ag then Min then BW

The warrior is going to claim the goody hut and spend 10 or so turns in the North (I suspect it's sea past the goody hut) then circle round to pick up what's in the South which should give us an idea where to plant city 2. I'll try to micro-manage the warrior build to give us Kyoto City size 2 as it completes. That looks like 20 or so turns. Just a thought, another warrior or a second worker then? Fancy the warrior to escort the settler who probably comes next.

As it's one of the two MLB baseball nights on uk tv; I shall watch the game, sleep, check this thread then play through till I've got to the point where the warrior's ready for his presumed march East, and I've got a better map.
Thanks for help so far and meantime we can bet on whether the Hanshin Tigers are likely to beat the Yankees. Any more thoughts from the hitting and pitching coaching teams are welcome of course.

 

[TRJS]

I would say worker after warrior at pop size 2. Unless of course a need is seen to fogbust.

 

[ds61514]

Coast + Marble screams Great Lighthouse + Temple of Artemis. You can expand very fast and still maintain reasonable research speed.

 

[ChienFou]

4000-3130BC Well, to summarise, the game starts late; I built on the sugar. we got Ag, Min and have started BW. The rice is perfectly sticky and I'm building the road to connect it (is this wrong, should I develop the gold immediately?) but the growth to 3 and the second warrior (if we go this route) are due in 8/9 turns and I'll be digging gold by then. The first goody hut gave us a map and the second one 52 gold. I beat a panther, beat a lion, took Woodsman 1 and finished the first circuit being attacked by a bear while in a wood and just survived (thank you Woodsman). We also met Napoleon and Kublai Khan to the East.

I've taken a few screenshots - micro-managing the co-incident worker build and growth of Kyoto to 2 was interesting - is it worthwhile? Anyway, here's the blow by blow account:

We got a map of some empty ocean from the 2N goody hut. and then we found a panther and a goody hut. I waited one turn for the panther to attack, then took the goody hut for 52 gold and healed for 3 turns.

Then we found Napoleon. I suggested he should do something about his 5 o'clock shadow. He wasn't impressed. He found our cultural area rather than the warrior, ESE of our city

Agriculture was researched. I'd jiggled with using the gold tile to speed Ag research (it reduces from 12 to 10 turns) but decided getting the worker out fast was more important (it would have delayed the worker about 4 turns)

Next we bumped into Kublai Khan, East of Kyoto. The three of us stood around and had a little chat and I recommended a visit to the temple of Nara. "Bhuddism? waste of space!". Peasants!

By now my worker was knee deep in the paddy and I was playing with building the warrior on the same turn Kyoto grows to 2. 3 turns of forested hill;

several turns of forested grassland;

and we noted Bhuddism was founded in 3340 (distant land); 2 turns later we got mining and started on BW

We survived a bear thanks to Woodsman 1 and when the rice was ready we jiggled again, so the warrior would be born as Kyoto grew:

so here we are, 2 units built, worker and warrior

We now have a worker building a road from the rice to Kyoto; a very sick warrior healing South of the city, scheduled to go South; another warrior scheduled to go East; contact with Napoleon and Kublai Khan; Ag & Min with BW under way and a map of the known universe.

worker or warrior? forget the road and develop the gold? It's bottom of 3rd; Cards 0, Mets 2 and I'm going to watch the game.

Gamefile 3130BC

 

[TRJS]

If I was playing at this stage I would chose worker. That however, is a wanna be option, so let's see what others chose.