CFP Series

[ChienFou]

ok, I take the point about growing to size 4; basically I should have farmed bananas then rice then mined. ... and now I wouldn't be in the mess I'm in; but us Prince wannabees are making a smallish number of significant errors which when compounded lead to a lot of lost tempo. I know that because whenever i get to samurai, I'm up against longbowmen; and I know I shouldn't be.

Your comments are very helpful; really. I hope the other wannabees are finding the experience as interesting as I am, I hope they too are gaining from my painful humiliations cheers ChienFou

 

[TRJS]

Well in my shadow game I am learning the mistake of not taking the best site first.

 

[LlamaCat]

I am really liking this thread, good advice. Although I already knew the problems with your worker tile choices in the capital, I think that interchange was very helpful for newer players to understand the need for early growth/commerce.

The city micromanagement is something I don't see enough of on here. If you guys continue that kind of feedback for when the cities grow and more build choices come online, I think that will help me as well. I start to struggle when the cities get larger and I don't know when to build libraries or courthouses vs. more military, for example. Let's see how this game progresses and based on the objectives what our experts think should be done in the cities.

 

[ChienFou]

How I should have done it

4000- 1330BC

I said I'd replay the game, trying not to cheat and report back. This time I farmed the bananas then the rice then mined the gold. I didn't build the road. I got to BW in 2770 instead of 2710 (2 turns on Epic). This meant I could do Masonry before Mysticism. Because the city was growing quicker it got to size 4 before I started the settler. I had slightly worse luck with the warriors although I played them pretty much the same except I found copper this time using a slightly better route on the 2nd circuit and had to build a couple more than in my first effort.

I had to escort the settler as I was short of fogbusters at this point, so that cost about 4 turns I guess. Even so I managed to found Osaka in the same year on the approved tile without chopping the 1N hill and I got the marble up too. I've decided to chance the barbs That covers us up to where we are in the original game.

In the meantime research was going a lot quicker.I must have been about 6 or 8 turns ahead on that (bananas first and the marble). I was able to fit in Meditation and Priesthood while I was doing all this. I also must have gained about 15 production turns in all, some of which were lost on extra warrior production. I ended up with 4 warriors, one of which had the archery promotion in Osaka.

Osaka's worker chopped the monument and started a barracks, farmed a river wine square and built a road to the copper. The border popped two turns before the road finished and I started the mine.

I built the second worker while I was founding Osaka and then started a settler, which I chopped the 1N hill for then started chopping the plains forest South of Kyoto and I whipped the settler for 1 pop to finish it. I started Oracle for a few turns while Kyoto regrew to 4, except for one turn when I switched to worker as I finished chopping the plains forest. You can see Oracle in the build queue, the half completed worker, the two deforested tiles and a bit of road. I fitted Pottery in around here.

Then I sent the 2nd worker after the third settler with a view to chopping the monument in Tokyo which was founded in 1450 1 South of the wheat. The worker arrived about 3 turns behind the settler, and I could release the fogbusters for garrison duty, although the 4th one is starting South.

In 1420 I got writing and I signed open borders with KK - he's a city behind us I chose mathematics as I'd already researched Meditation, Priesthood and Pottery. Perhaps I should have chosen IW or CoL?

Here's a general view of the map for 1330 when I stopped; you can see a worker building the copper mine in Osaka, another about to start chopping the forest for Tokyo's monument, and the third is scheduled to build the road from Kyoto to Tokyo. I didn't think that bit through; he should build a road shaped like a ">" to get as close to Osaka as possible before cutting back to Tokyo. Finally the research slider dropped to 80% on this turn, after I'd used up the goody hut money.

I was not as successful at exploring, because I needed to keep fogbusting for the settler's trip to Tokyo which he did unescorted, and I had a severe Warrior shortage for a while. Here's the map of the known universe.

So that's my report, I hope it's useful. With all your permissions I'd like to take the game forward from this point. In essence "having taken your advice" .... There's little point in us trying to play my original crappy start much further I think, and we'll learn more from here with a decent start. What was interesting was how much better everything fell into place and I sincerely thank everyone for their time and patience. If that's not satisfactory I'll continue with the original game. ChienFou

Gamefile 1330BC

 

[Validator]

I hope they too are gaining from my painful humiliations

There's no reason to be embarrassed by your decisions. One thing that you'll notice with this sort of online game is that you'll get conflicting advice from good players. There really isn't one right way to play Civ4, so you just need to find a strategy that works for you. (And wasn't it cabert who suggested the site you chose for Osaka so you can always blame him ).

With that being said, I also think you should have gone with namliaM's yellow dot for Osaka. From experience I know that at Prince you can get away with a border expansion in your second city to acquire copper in time to deal with barbs. This is something you'll learn as you play more games. In general terms, one of the more significant things you'll need to learn is what you can get away with at each difficulty level.

... and it's Decision time. More infrastructure, or a bee-line to CoL via mathematics? What about Oracle? Long term Pyramids?

One thing that's not clear to me from reading your posts is whether you are planning ahead and making a series of decisions to reach your goal or just making each decision independently. Early on in the game focusing on micromanagement to get optimal city performance is nice, but it's not how you win games. This is the time of the game when you need to adopt some sort of plan as to how you're going to gain the advantage you need over the AIs to win. You may need to adapt your plan to events as they unfold, but you should always have a plan.

With that in mind:
When do you plan to fight your first war? (axe rush, beeline to Construction for catapults, beeline to CS and Engineering for samurai and trebuchets)
Related to that, how much peaceful expansion do you plan to do?
What do you plan to do about developing an economy?

These are all decisions you need to make now (or should have already made) as they affect city placement choices, tech choices and city build choices.

Getting back to your questions, how does a CoL beeline fit into your long-term plans? Same for Oracle and Pyramids.

As to what I would do:
I'm not a super-aggressive player, so I only axe rush when I'm boxed in and need to do it to expand. In this case it looks like you can peacefully expand to at least 6 cities unless Nappy expands aggressively towards you. I'd advise going that route with the thought of beelining Construction to take out one neighbor with a cat based army and then using a Samurai/Trebuchet army to finish off the others.

I would build a settler after the worker finishes and look to settle to the ESE of Kyoto. The tile SW of the cow would be my choice. It doesn't look like much at first glance, but the cow and corn provide enough food to cottage all the flatlands, so it would be able to work 15 cottages at size 17 . Given the limited commerce potential of Osaka and the cities near the cow/wheat/horses a strong commerce site should be your next priority.

After that I would be looking to settle the gems/rice site next. You'll need IW by then, so you need to decide how to pursue it. You can either research it yourself or you could aim for Alpha with the thought of trading for IW. The only thing is I don't know if Prince level AIs will research it in time. (This is one case where you have to be careful about taking advice from higher level players. They've adapted their strategies to the performance of the AIs at their levels, and lower level AIs may not offer the same opportunities.)

You'll want to get Pottery and start building cottages in Kyoto and your third city. Once you've started to get your economy under control I would settle two sites along the coast. The first 1 W of the wheat and the second 2S or 2S1E of the horses depending on whether additional seafood turns up of the coast. It doesn't look like you'll face any competition for those sites any time soon, so you don't want to overexpand and kill your tech rate.

Additional city sites to the E or SE may be possible once you do some more scouting and see how the AIs expand. So you may need to adjust the plan.

With these 6 cities you should have the strong base you need (both in terms of production and commerce) to wage very successful mid game wars to gain control of the continent.

Edit:
Of course this advice was meant to be read before you played the next round. Oh well.

After reading the post for this round:

I think everything was going well up until the point of the third city choice. There was no competition for that city site so you would have been better off expanding toward your nearest enemy. You didn't need horses ASAP now that you have copper. Also by placing the city there you've marginalized the site down the coast that works the clams.

Of course this assumes your going for a relatively peaceful opening and aren't planning on rushing anyone. My point about the lack of a plan (or apparent lack) still holds. I think it would be a good idea to discuss that before playing too much further.

 

[ChienFou]

Validator, I really do appreciate the effort you've put in here. As you'll see I replayed the game, based on the advice generally given and it's so obvious how much better it's going. I wasn't being obstinate about my decisions, what I wanted to do was demonstrate to myself how badly I play this game. I had felt the need for an early game micro-management thread for a while, and I knew I was losing tempi everywhere. Already I can see major errors in even the Prince games I've won. Much as I drool over the ALC games I had no real idea how Sisiutil was generating so much so fast - and he'll forgive me for saying he's not even the best player on this forum, even though he's one of the most educational. I look out for your comments in other threads, thanks for bothering with mine. ChienFou

 

[yena]

This time it looks much better. I also think that you should focus on peaceful expansion for the time being, and possibly plan a war with catapults in the medieval era. The important thing is to actually make this decision, and then base your research and production decisions on it. So what's the plan?

Edit: by now you should be able to consider your most likely victory condition as well. Domination, cultural (less likely, I guess), space or diplomacy? The earlier you set a goal, the easier it is to reach it.

 

[mice]

Good job focusing on the micro. It's what's missing from most online games.
It could be hard work to keep it up, but would make for a very interesting thread.
I agree with Yena about sorting out a victory condition, and also it's getting time to start thinking about National Wonders.

 

[namliaM]

I know that because whenever i get to samurai, I'm up against longbowmen; and I know I shouldn't be.

There is no problem with beeing up against LBs when you have samurai....
Samurai require much more beakers than LBs do and AI do tend to beeline Feudalism.

In your replay why did you put Tokyo there??? 1 tile from the coast is mostly a bad/less obtimal/wrong choice. 1 W or 1 NW would have been superior IMHO, less of a food shortage and Coastal => Harbor => More commerce eventho missing the horses.

Also on your replay... You researched BW but still havent used the whip I dont think...

All in all a better job tho... I will try and do a shadow to 1330 as well....

Edit:
Replaying the same game with the advice allready given doesnt learn you anthing, some of the advice is specific to this game.
If you really want to see if you are going forward, start a new game... (IMHO)

 

[ChienFou]

Also on your replay... You researched BW but still havent used the whip I dont think...

I whipped the 3rd settler in Kyoto for 1 pop and then let Kyoto grow back to 4 before starting the 3rd worker. I have noted that some players suggest you should take slavery after your first settler is complete, while it's travelling as you get the settler a turn earlier, that makes sense to me and i usually do that. Whipping the first settler seems to screw up my games even more than usual

In your replay why did you put Tokyo there??? 1 tile from the coast is mostly a bad/less obtimal/wrong choice. 1 W or 1 NW would have been superior IMHO, less of a food shortage and Coastal => Harbor => More commerce eventho missing the horses.

I plonked Tokyo down on a square with only one water tile; this is worth discussion as I know the Gods hate putting a settler 1 tile from the coast, but I was treating it as an inland city which i want to grow very big. This is a point worth discussing.

Edit: by now you should be able to consider your most likely victory condition as well. Domination, cultural (less likely, I guess), space or diplomacy? The earlier you set a goal, the easier it is to reach it.

Having got this far it's likely we're on an island with 4 civilisations including ourselves, unless there's a choke point somewhere. In terms of land area that's likely to get us over 50% but not up to 64%. So domination will require a navy. We can do that presuming we've taken out Nappy and one of the other two by the time we get to Astronomy, as hopefully we'll have a SoD with loads of experience and while we're taking the 4th civ we can build our fleet then put the SoD on it. I am inclined to domination, though space race is a possibility. Diplomacy and Tukogawa? "Your excellency, may I present you with a ceremonial dis-emboweling dagger?" doesn't quite have a consistent ring to it

In terms of domination, I fancy an axe rush on Nappy and a treb and samurai war on one of the others.

Whilst i agree that one should have a plan, the very early game seems to be about getting the first 3 cities up to minimum size 4, securing an income stream so that the research slider doesn't bottom out and having a poke round to see what's where. The Victory Conditions of necessity are dictated by the map and the AIs though one starts Tokugawa with a pre-concept of domination, I think.

To be fair I've never gotten a space race victory, so that'd be part of our learning curve if we went that way.

Anyway, I'm planning on leaving Kyoto on the Oracle, except I will have to whip an axe, which should happen as Kyoto reaches its happiness cap, building Monument, Barracks and Granary in the other two and pumping as many axes as I can. I can use Kyoto to build axes to control its size and use them for garrison duty - they're good enough to hold off the barbs. The micromanagement of that is, in itself, interesting - How does Sisiutil produce SoD's the height of the Eiffel tower so quickly?

So, that's my plan; domination; axe rush Nappy; poke around in the South to see where the others are and settle, maybe 3 more cities. Do we need another city for axe production now, however?

 

[namliaM]

Tokyo
Well look at the food situation there... I think you have to many hills and Plains for a really big city, but thats what I think...

To produce a SoD quickly, simply skip everything else.... Get 3 cities, put a barracks in them and start getting units....

 

[ABigCivFan]

I have never played Epic speed b4, so I played it until 1300BC. I figure the best micro-build order can only come from actually playing in the game.

here is the result at 1300BC. Just researched writing, built Oracle and taking COL as the free tech.



Here was my built order:

Worker-Barracks(grow to 2, 3)-worker(chop 1 tree)-worrior(grow to 4,5)-worker-settler(chop 1)-settler (chop 1)

Research: Agri-Mining-BW-AH-Pottery-Myst-Meditation-Priesthood-writing-Alpha

Worker actions:

farm banana
farm rice
mine gold
chop 1N hill tree
road 1N hill
2 workers quarry Marble
2 workers chop settlers
1 build a cottage
1 worker to Osaka to chop monument
1 worker to Tokyo to chop monument
1(3rd worker) worker stays in Kyoto chopping 1 tree for Oracle

Net difference:

3 workers - faster growth for every city.

I only have 1 worrior(well promoted) per city now, but have a barracks in Kyoto to pump out quick Combat 2/cover worriors, a few turns from Axeman

1 worrior had jungle 2 from attacking animals which allowed him explore the jungle forrest tiles 2 times faster.

Tokyo started settlers after reaching size 5, with chopping it built 2 settlers back to back. and each settler had 1 worker to support its growth/border pop.

Oracle built timed well with discovery of writing allowing access to free COL

COL researched enabling much easier peaceful expansions.

Got Confusion religion which allows more happiness and religious bonuses

The possible GP from Oracle allows shrine for more gold income

now you can get Alphabet then IW to settle the Gem city.

here are some other pics during the game

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

2230BC capital, have all the possilbe high food/hammer tiles worked to build settlers.




-----------------------------------------------------------------------

1990BC: Unit positions. You dont have to escort your settler 1 tile at a time, use worrior's sight of view.




-----------------------------------------------------------------------

1575BC: 3 cities view, each city has 1 worker to improve/chop






again, smart use of scouting worriors is very important. only now I start to see barb worriors who are no match of our worriors, soon build some axe for full protection and expand...

 

[ChienFou]

I have never played Epic speed b4, so I played it until 1300BC. I figure the best micro-build order can only come from actually playing in the game.

here is the result at 1300BC. Just researched writing, built Oracle and taking COL as the free tech.

Edit: I removed the duplicated image here

Here was my built order:

Worker-Barracks(grow to 2, 3)-worker(chop 1 tree)-worrior(grow to 4,5)-worker-settler(chop 1)-settler (chop 1)

Research: Agri-Mining-BW-AH-Pottery-Myst-Meditation-Priesthood-writing-Alpha

Worker actions:

farm banana
farm rice
mine gold
chop 1N hill tree
road 1N hill
2 workers quarry Marble
2 workers chop settlers
1 build a cottage
1 worker to Osaka to chop monument
1 worker to Tokyo to chop monument
1(3rd worker) worker stays in Kyoto chopping 1 tree for Oracle

Net difference:

3 workers - faster growth for every city.

You definitely got oracle before I did, but I did less chopping than you. Maybe I shouldn't whip, but rather chop. I think 2nd and even 3rd worker before 2nd settler does make sense. Another lesson learned. I'd guess I got Osaka more developed than you; the copper was nearly on-stream by now, whereas Tokyo was a bit behind. The idea of getting settlers back to back had not occurred to me previously, but it does make a lot of sense.

again, smart use of scouting worriors is very important. only now I start to see barb worriors who are no match of our worriors, soon build some axe for full protection and expand...

I do try to send unescorted settlers using fogbusting warriors, but at the dritical point when my 2nd settler was ready I'd had some serious problems with bears and had only a single warrior, so he had to do escort duty. Tokyo settler just went straight there, as I had fogbusters again by then, although because they were fogbusting, I didn't get so much exploring done.

Thanks for your input, this thread really is turning out as I'd hoped.

1330-820BC

Plan axes and cats for Nappy; he's going to build my cities for me.

I decided to play on from the 1330 save. I figured that Tokyo could be left undefended and sent its warrior off on a recce to the SE, along with th 4th warrior who'd already started; they were scheduled to do the 3rd and 4th circuit.

1150 saw the Monument chopped in Tokyo, and we switched to a Barracks. In hindsight I think it should be a Granary. You're going to be whipping units, so growth is necessary; the Barracks should come next, then you can start on military production; whipping axes and using overflow to create a build queue of oven ready axes.

Next turn in 1120 we signed open borders with Napoleon; he's got 3 cities too, more of that anon.

... and the turn after that we had another visit from Rameses; also 3 cities

Since the copper was on-stream, I'd put one turn into axes in Kyoto and Osaka, just in case I needed to whip up some defence. I had the workers connecting up my 3 city network to gain any bonuses, and for more speedy moving of troops. I was monitoring the pop cost of whipping the Oracle but was confident no-one else was close - 3 pop looked way too expensive at this point. You can see the axe in the Build queue

In 955 I whipped the Oracle (it had 3 turns to go) but Kyoto was size 5 and the 6th tile wasn't doing a lot for me. On completing the road network I was to send a worker back to put a cottage on the plains 1S of Kyoto, and that's still in progress, but until Kyoto has another gooed tile I'm happy to whip from size 5 to size 4. Annoying thing here, i wanted to save and discuss which tech to take, but you can't do it. So I agonised for tem minutes, made a coffee and juggled CoL, Metal Casting and Monarchy. Metal casting (c. 900 beakers) is forges and faster military production but the lead time is too long for an axe rush I thought. Monarchy (c. 430) would help a bit in Osaka with the wine and CoL (c. 750) seemed to have the most advantage

1) If I got it first I'd get a religion (I know we're going to be first here) and I wouldn't need monuments
2) I'd get a free missionary who might cause sedition in another civilisation.
3) I'd be in line for some free income a bit later on, when my research will be really suffering
4) I can whip courthouses in the cities Nappy's building for me.

Now this is probably completely stupid thinking more humiliation? but that's what I did.

and we got Confucianism in Tokyo. That's good, we'll get a quicker border pop and I can go milk cows once the corn's finished. I figured cows not horses as I'm not planning on mounted units. Again I should know, but don't, which tile develops better. I'm not going for the popularity stakes here so I converted to Confucianism; a good choice for Tokugagwa, I reflected. Animism and lots of Gods; let's hope Mars is one of them.

When Osaka was a couple of turns from growing I whipped the granary for 1 pop. The 4th tile is not yet developed, so it wasn't doing a lot, but I need growth here to size 4 or 5 so I can churn axes.

By 1000 BC the 2 warriors had found KK; he's South of Nappy, and I'd sent the missionary off to subvert him. Might as well keep him onside for a bit; I thought. Rameses has Buddhism, so I didn't see any reason to look further. I used the exploring warriors as fogbusters to get him safely over to KK's manor, it's 880 in this shot.

... and he got to Karakorum in 820. Since it was the capital I subverted it. Would you have explored a bit further guys? Here's karakorum; 2 archers and a spear.

Here's the map. Look what that evil Frenchie has done. He's planted a city on MY cow city. He's just gotta go. I've built a road towards him, to speed things up a bit.

In all my travels so far i've seen just one barb warrior, and avoided him. They don't seem to be anywhere in view even yet. Clearly my paranoia was overstated. Osaka is now on axe production, slow at the moment, but I'm working on it; Tokyo's about to get free milk, and the first cottage is being built in Kyoto; I'll let Kyoto grow to 6 (cap) and chop it back to 5 in due course, once its got a Granary. I'm wondering where Rameses is hiding; I can't see him at all. We're still a few turns from Construction and axe building is slow at the moment, but be warned Nappy; I've got you in my sights.

Gamefile 820BC

 

[ABigCivFan]

I have decided to play until 1AD. Warning, please do not look if you are playing a shadow game this might spoil your game.

Spoiler :

achievements:

AIs were weak, so aiming for building up some quality cities:

Kyoto: Science, mix purpose
Osaka: commerce
Tokyo: Production

These cities have so much potential, I only whipped granaries first thing and let them grow quickly so they can actually PRODUCE everything quickly while providing more commerce to the empire, whipping is not that cost efficient in this case. Especially after getting early Heri. Rule, You want them to grow grow and grow to reach maximum potential the fastest way.

Reserched:
sucks that no AI trades, they are so behind.

Monochy, IW, Math, Literature, CS next

865BC: see the power of extra workers, all resources are improved giving great boosts to growth/production in all 3 cities. I realized on slower speeds more workers are needed.



ran 2 scientists in capital




805BC: researched Alphabet


645BC: GP born, 595BC used him to build Conf. Shrine. This shrine converted MAny Many cities from all 4 civs later, giving great gold income.



490BC: switched civics to HR + OR to help building GL soon to come.

490BC: start a war with Ramasis to steal a worker. My woodsman2 worrior walks his woody terriains with inpunity, he is untouchable by Egypt archers.



310BC: this worrior picked up more xp in Egypt territory, enough to open up HE.



295BC: 3 quality cities with high pop and high output. A few turns away from both GL and HE. That is why i stress that each new city should get 2 workers to get it to grow extremely fast.




200BC ca: Built HE in Tokyo. later it is the back bone of military, pumping out lots of chariots for happy factors for all cities and Axe for war. It also produced 2 settlers 1 worker. The production cities are the most important as your 2nd or 3rd city, they relieves your capital from worker/settlers so the capital can focus on more important science/wonder buildings.


160BC: Ramasis settled on horse, has War chariot, i better stop this war for now ...
Peace reached next turn.




1 gold popped in Tokyo at 385BC, check it out at 85BC. Look at all the improvements in all 3 cities at 85BC. Peaceful for now.

Capital:




Osaka: Note Conf. spread to 9 cities already actively and passively. Got great intel from these cities. KK and Nappy were influenced so much they converted to my religion.



Tokyo:





5AD settled stone and fur cities, here are the view



5AD scores:



5AD Dem Chart:




4 turns until Civ Service, then Kyoto will be a powerhouse. See all the resources hook up.

 

[ABigCivFan]

You definitely got oracle before I did, but I did less chopping than you. Maybe I shouldn't whip, but rather chop. I think 2nd and even 3rd worker before 2nd settler does make sense. Another lesson learned. I'd guess I got Osaka more developed than you; the copper was nearly on-stream by now, whereas Tokyo was a bit behind. The idea of getting settlers back to back had not occurred to me previously, but it does make a lot of sense.

Actually you were already much behind my game at 1300BC for the following reasons:

1. My capital was size 6, yours was size 4. This means my capital was woking 1 more mine and 1 more cottage than yours. My capital was at size 5 at 2300BC. working one more mine than yours. That was a huge difference since the capital early is EVERYTHING. You should not whip anything from it unless you have a granary. In my game, i did not whip from Capital.

2. I had an extra worker than you which is around 10-15 turns of hammers from your capital. I had 1 worker/city which means much faster city growth than yours.

3. I just built Oracle, got Conf. several hundreds years before you did. This means more GP pts, and more culture.

If you keep playing until 1AD then compare our result, these 3 subtle leads could translate to a much bigger lead over your game.

I do try to send unescorted settlers using fogbusting warriors, but at the dritical point when my 2nd settler was ready I'd had some serious problems with bears and had only a single warrior, so he had to do escort duty. Tokyo settler just went straight there, as I had fogbusters again by then, although because they were fogbusting, I didn't get so much exploring done.

Thanks for your input, this thread really is turning out as I'd hoped.

You are welcome, you are very patient running this thread, it is turning into a very interesting thread.

given the situation of this game, you dont need to rush anyone unless you see they settle the Gem or some other good res. You have plenty of good land to settle yourself for a while(just make sure you have plenty of chariots to defend everything), that was what i did in my game. So an early rush is not for every game. In my game i set up a very strong infrustructure before 85BC by carefully micro build/research/religion/explore, had a huge score lead over AIs, at that point, it is pretty much cruising to any victory.

 

[pigswill]

I've largely gone off Oracle because of GP contamination which lasts throughout the game; its a real pain in the neck to have glib, run a couple of scientists on top and still pop a prophet because of Oracle.

I've been running a quick shadow. I actually defied convention and settled on the spot; coastal capital is ok, harbour gives you extra health and a major trade route boost, lighthouse helps making water tiles at least marginally useful,.
I went warrior first while growing to size 2 then a worker then another warrior up to size 3 then a settler. Techwise I went agric, mining, bw, AH, pottery, myst, masonry. Not optimal but ok so far. I founded Osaka to nab the corn and copper and chopped a monument.

Edit: I'm not totally convinced by the placement of Tokyo. I think that either you should have gone 1S for plains hill hammer bonus or 1sw for coastal location (particularly as Kyoto is non-coastal in your game).

 

[ChienFou]

Edit: I'm not totally convinced by the placement of Tokyo. I think that either you should have gone 1S for plains hill hammer bonus or 1sw for coastal location (particularly as Kyoto is non-coastal in your game).

That's interesting comment.

[as an aside I'd bought my son-in-law and my daughter a Civ 1V as a Christmas present (My daughter and I played Civ together in the late 80's when she was a kid, we were pretty good at it, railroading oceans etc) and I thought they'd like it. For birthday I upgraded them to Warlords. Inevitably, since son-in law is 30 years younger than I am, he picked the micro-game up far more quickly than I did, and is a tolerable Monarch player. He introduced me to the ALC series about 3 months ago with the comment it had helped him a lot and I quickly realised just how badly I suck at Civ IV. Hence my frustration and desire to see how I could improve.]

Son-in-law comments that to win, all one needs to do is march your initial settler close to an AI, settle on a plains hill and take him out with warriors. "You now have two capitals" Well, that's not exactly the case but he experiments a lot, and he did comment that almost regardless, he goes to find a plains hill before he settles, since the extra hammers early on make a huge difference. I was thinking this when I did found Tokyo, but the dot map suggested the square I did choose as did some of the posters, and I guess one water tile only hardly counts as the obvious disadvantage of "1 from the ocean". I'd been thinking "plains hill or coastal, minimum ocean" but I was very happy to listen to comments and get the feedback.

2nd aside, I'm playing a Toku game on the side at the moment. Leading the field in 1600, have vassalised Mehmet and about to take on Montezuma (running 3rd), in about 10 turns when I get Cavalry. About level in the tech race. I'm good friends with the Korean (lying 2nd) who's at the other end of the 5 Civ island and have high hopes for a domination win. By the end of the opening I realised just how much better I'd played it than usual, simply based on this thread.

... so it's not all wasted and I'm hoping the Prince wannabees are finding it useful too. ChienFou

PS. Real life will interfere for a couple of days; I'll be lurking, but won't play again till Tuesday evening earliest. I'm looking forward to running through to 1 AD and I'd been thinking I'm a bit late to axe rush Nappy, so should go grab some of the land to the South of Tokyo and Osaka first.

 

[yena]

Son-in-law comments that to win, all one needs to do is march your initial settler close to an AI, settle on a plains hill and take him out with warriors. "You now have two capitals"

Your Son-in-law must play on chieftain or warlord. Don't try this on the higher levels where the AIs start with free archers (or even better defenders)

 

[ChienFou]

Well, I've played through to 5-AD and have 6 cities and a research slider at 60-70%. I've got an axe in each city, a couple of cats in Osaka. I'm going to read the spoiler now, and will then write up what I've done and compare it. I should get this done in the next 18 hours.

 

[oyzar]

i am sorry but i read somewhere down the first page and saw your capital at size 1 working a forested grassland when it was a 3 food title avialiable at size 1. This just feels sooo wrong to me it is not funny so i cant not comment on it. Sorry i cant comment on the current gamestate, maybe i can do later though you seem to get some great help from others as always maximize at the start and know what you are gonna maximize(which most of the time is food).