Choked start w/Ragnar

[krikav]

If he does, then you are less in a hurry to settle that silver spot because of two reasons. First is that you get lesser of an immediate benefit (no instant happines from the silver).
Second is that you need to be ready with a bunch of workers to get that city up to speed fast.

So if Toku ruins silver settle spot, push forward the settler abit in the planning.

 

[Jellybug]

Spoiler Sight of Toku's party 2520BC :

It's safe to assume he's settling for the cow at this point, even with foreknowledge (they don't usually plop cities with no resources unless it was iron, which he doesn't see yet). The problem is, if given Toku's gross transgression we push back the settling of silver city , what's plan b? more workers? Three chops are going somewhere to make room for the cottages, so it's either worker or settler or (in six turns) granary, but two of the forests won't last that long.

 

[krikav]

Lets see... the worker is done in Uppsala next turn, then it takes 2 turns to road the cow, then 2 more to road the flatland plains, then 4 turns to road the silver.
At that turn, the silver city is ready to settle. (It can be settled earlier though, as long as it has the road there it's almost certainly net positive.)


The worker is done abit earliy I think...? Did did you built it with the corn?
Can you explain the micro, tile juggling, between Uppsala and Nidaros?

 

[Jellybug]

Not much juggling at all. I pretty much worked the corn in Uppsala, but I switched over for one turn to pop Nidaros to size four a turn faster

 

[SillyGoat]

I don't understand growing to two at all, unless the point is to whip the worker. Best play is what gets the worker out fastest.

The whip turns 22 food into 30 hammers. It works out tothe same number of turns but you gain 4 turns of production towards something other than the worker, some overflow after the whip and you start the whip anger clock ticking.

 

[krikav]

Not much juggling at all. I pretty much worked the corn in Uppsala, but I switched over for one turn to pop Nidaros to size four a turn faster

Ah, you should juggle tiles more! Food is utilized best when it is used to grow population.
A big advantage with sharing food in two cities like this is that you can allow one city to grow on the food all the turns the other city stagnates on workers/settlers.

 

[Fish Man]

@Jellybug thoughts on your save:

Spoiler :

I forgot to mention, the other reason I advocated settling your second city 1 north is because it blocks off Toku from accessing the silver/fish spot, and also otherwise settling an annoying PRO hill city that will eventually waste dozens of your hammers to dislodge, all for nothing. I went worker -> barracks (because no fogbusting was needed on this continent) -> settler (at size 3) -> settler, with my first two expansions going on the grassland 1N of the PH, and then the PH 2E of the clam. This basically gave me a safe 4-5 cities from which I could rush any way I wanted.

My game, to finish:

Spoiler :

t236, 1630AD space win. I took out EVERYONE except for Monty and Washington with horse archers, and then basically sat back and teched. These things are absolutely broken on emperor or below, especially when the AI refuses to go feudalism for 1000 years.

Late game, I capped Monty with tanks vs longbows, because his culture was annoying and his capital was really sweet. And also I was kinda wary he'd go after me...it would be little more than an annoyance since knights vs tanks/marines/infantry is downright comedic, but having to deal with his stack would've been a huge pain, so better to just take his stuff while he was busy with Washington. I actually had to give up most of my captures to Washington to avoid tripping the dom limit, but just his capital alone was a worthy prize, being the only city able to 4-turn the spaceship life support when the time came.

Also, with 5 food sources, Amsterdam was by far the most OP great person/NE spot I ever had...WITHOUT philosophical, I got ten great people from that city, and I know because everyone except for my first GS was popped there!!!

My capital and IW city were above average too, with over 650 bpt from the capital and over 100 base hammers per turn from the IW city, in a golden age.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Then just for fun, I took out Washington with modern armor vs longbows after the game ended. Because why not .

Spoiler :

I guess the lesson here is, if you need to break out on below immortal, check for horsies .

 

[Jellybug]

@Fish Man yeah 1N of the hill would have been better for first expo. now it feels like cheating to go back and do it. they are so stupid sometimes. he's never going to see that cow.

 

[krikav]

I don't see settlement 1N being sensible without map knowledge. On the hill is just so much better.

 

[Jellybug]

Spoiler 2200BC :

Moved the scout west of toku's second since a border pop will push him to freedom.

Last save i had three workers, two near capital and one just completing in the second city. The second city one went to road up to silver site, the other two chopped into the capital settler. Then i pulled one from capital to go chop the tundra forest before it got settled on, then hook up silver and double up the cow once AH comes in. The other stays in capital to chop and build cottages. This way i whipped granary in capital after a chop and can regrow as cottages come in. Maybe would be better to keep two cottagers in capital though and just let the northern worker do his thing.

Second city will whip a worker into a granary regrow. Silver city will start a work boat, then switch to a monument after myst.

Tech path is AH-myst-masonry. If we have horses, how does that change things? Currently im playing this thinking construction with archer-catapult. Writing-math after masonry

 

[pigswill]

Settling on the hill is the obvious move, if you do that Toku settles north. If you settle north of the hill Toku doesn't settle south which on the face of it as just as good. However there's absolutely no way of.predicting or anticipating irrational AI behaviour.

 

[krikav]

@Jellybug
I might have gone for a quick city on the clams-plains hill before silver tbh. It's close by and easy to settle and could help juggle tiles with capital (cottages+mines).
Such a city could then build a workboat for silver-city too.

Chopping the tundra forest before settling on it got to be a big mistake. How many turns was that...? 5 turns to get 8 hammers in Nidaros? Compare that to if you would have instead chopped around the capital. Those 5 turns would have yielded 25 hammers during that time.

Two workers up by the silver is required imho, so it's good you sent two. That you only have one down south is too few though. This is why I think that silver city might have been abit premature. Or perhaps it's possible to squeeze out more production and get more workers/settlers done earlier.

Regarding horses... Either they go alone as HAs. Tokus capital is flatland so that could be a thing really.
Or at worse you have HAs+catapults, which is alot better than archers+catapults! Catapults defend okay against spears, so it's a solid stack.
But I would wait until both AH and IW to make a plan for that. Or until after pyramids is done. Police state powered mass HAs might be lovely.
Failgolding bonanza with all the forests could power a nice tech push and there is room for 5 decent cities on the peninsula, a nice compact empire.


I would worry abit about Toku getting funny ideas early on. Monitor if he gets metal... Won't get any early red fist warning since we don't know anyone else.
Going archery some time in the near future and loading up Uppsala with 3-4 archers would be safe.

 

[Jellybug]

Pyramids done at 1160, pretty safe even on Imm, according to Major Tom's charts. Now to finish infrastructure and get started on HA's.

I went back to last time and settled the clams before silver on Krikav's suggestion

1040BC

Spoiler :

 

[krikav]

Big jump in turns now!

Did clam city work out ok? Did you get alot of failgold from TGW?
I spot 5 workers on the screenshot, did you feel that was enough or where you starved for worker turns still?

 

[Fish Man]

Pyramids done at 1160, pretty safe even on Imm, according to Major Tom's charts. Now to finish infrastructure and get started on HA's.

I went back to last time and settled the clams before silver on Krikav's suggestion

1040BC

Spoiler :

View attachment 607403

There is one way to check if Toku's capable of plotting. You can go into the diplo screen every turn and keep trying to talk to him until he says "soon my numberless X shall destroy you all!", or "fear my X". If X is chariots or archers, he doesn't have metal, and you're safe. If X is axemen/spearmen...that's when you should be more careful.

 

[krikav]

@Jellybug I did a playthrough up to T74 now. Took alot of screenshots and made notes/comments in them, feel free to browse around and ask any questions. But it's abit too much work to do a proper writeup.
I have especially tried to illustrate the point of juggling the corn back and forth between capital and second city.
A trick utilized extensively is to clear the build queue (just press any number button, 1 for example, while having the city selected) that rolls overflow or chops forward in turns, but natural hammers in the city is lost the turns no production is in queue.
It's super useful to get the overflow into the builds you want and when you want.

Also attached saves and all autosaves.


T74 Screenshot

Spoiler :

Going writing before HBR was probably wrong. No open borders and I haven't had any time at all to put hammers into libraries. Could have had some stables ready to whip by now and be more ready to go right away.
Still at 1 warrior here (standing in Nidaros) but have to spam some to get happines now.
Nidaros will probabl not be whipped but instead work all mines and continue to mature cottages, the other cities will whip as crazy.

 

[Jellybug]

Thank you for this info, esp the insight into juggling, as I wasn't sure how to do it

 

[floydmcw]

Thank you for posting this game, it was very interesting. Like a classic English novel in which a young person is prevented from engaging in normal society by his twisted guardian:

Ragnar: Auntie Toku, shall we go into town morrow next?

Toku: Whatever you want that fer? Mr. Crothers and I be all the company you'n need.

Ragnar: Auntie, "Mr. Crothers" is a stuffed panther. He died in 3200 BC.

Toku: Fool boy! Mr. Crothers be a better man than any of yer favorites in that d----d village!

Spoiler :

I didn't try anything fancy with Mids, I just teched AG -> Mining -> BW -> AH, built 3 cities, declared on Toku on T90 with horse archers. On T95 I left him with the worthless city to my northwest and got Alpha and Sailing.

 

[krikav]

What a lovely novel