City Placement - Blocking??

[chadxo]

Here's a game I got a great start on, including goodie hut popping Bronze Working, and I feel like I should have crushed this game, but now feel I am somehow behind. I'm thinking about restarting the map and playing it again, but would love some advice.

How's my city placement? The capital was SIP. I wanted to put my 2nd city by the bronze, but was beat by India. My 3rd (Mound City) & 4th (Choco Canyon) cities were placed to block India, was this correct or is this too far from the capital?

I built Pyramids in Mound City for the culture to push off India & wanted representation. I built GLib in Choco Canyon which was a huge mistake, it should have gone in capital. I'm moving the capital to Choco Canyon for the Bureau with all the cottages, but don't know if this is right.

The two northernmost cities were founded next, then the two in the SE. You can my next 3 cities dot mapped. I'm building workers because I'm way behind, I built 4 cities fast, but then threw up the last 4-5 late and at about the same time.

I would love any help. I've included the initial save as well as the save from 1160ad which the screen shots were taken from and the screen shot from 1320 to see how my building progressed.

I would love help.

BTS (fully updated), Monarch, Random Leader ( Sitting Bull ) , BAT 3.0

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[Ghpstage]

I wanted to put my 2nd city by the bronze, but was beat by India.

The most likely reason for this being that your second city was founded 800+ years later than it should have been! To be honest, all of your cities were settled very late, even if you build the mids you should be able to get at least 6 cities by 1AD without much effort.

Lots of other mistakes have contributed to being in a much weaker position than you could have had.

• The lack of workers is holding you back badly, there are lots of unimproved tiles being worked, a gem that isn't connected which you could trade for , and your cottages are all horribly undeveloped.
• As of 1160AD you have only 6 workers to 9 cities, this ratio is backwards. For 9 cities you should be looking at 12+ workers.....
• I don't understand your use of Free Speech here, your cottages are so underdeveloped that you don't have a single town, your actually quite some time away from getting any at all, let alone a decent number. For some reason your also moving your capiutal to a crapatacular cottage city, assumedy for Bureacracy, which you aren't running.... and in that new capital, why is it working desert mines while a riverside grass hill lies unimproved?
• Why isn't your current capital working those Gems!?
• That Wheat should be settled and improved.
• You should be making more effort to meet and trade with AIs, i'm guessing foreign routes were seriously delayed by not exploring with fishing boats, and not having hooked up your resources (Wheat, Gems and Pig) for trading is causing a great deal of resulting in low populations. At least trade maps once you get Paper...
• I have no explanation for why you allowed Etheopia to steal your island to the south-east.

I would have opted for Cuirassiers to kill India personally, rather than wait forever to get Cannons.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Well, without doing an exhaustive list on your game in specific, here's a few things to always consider:

1) What will the city eat? Is the best food I can get 3 on some tiles? Probably not a good location until I've used up all others.
2) How do I make sure to use all available food bonus tiles? Sometimes you'll want to let a few be unexploited, but rarely.
3) Am I working unimproved tiles? A good idea is every 5 to 10 turns (at your difficulty ;P) consider for each city which tiles is it working now, and which ones in the near future. Especially when they are small, this can make a big difference.
4) Build settlers slightly earlier than you are comfortable with.

Only specific point for your screenies I'll mention, because it is funny: You clearly have not enough workers, yet have some that are dedicating all their efforts to getting irrigation to that wheat square for a massive +1 food! I think.. that is a bit wasteful at this point.

 

[chadxo]

What about blocking? Should I have founded the 3rd & 4th city that far from my capital for the block, or should have I settled around my capital first?

 

[Zechnophobe]

Hard to see, I'm not sure what the game situation was earlier on. I definitely would not worry about the normal problems with blocking, having diplomatic damage, with Gandhi. He's too peacenick to worry about. But on the same side of things, blocking for massive cost is often not worth it if you could have easily conquered the land instead, which is also a Gandhi trait!

Since you had horses, I would have considered not worrying about blockign too much and just HA rushed Gandhi instead. Well, maybe not even rushed.... he's often a push over for a long time. Once again, depends on when you got animal husbandry to reveal your horses, or IW to see the iron. Playing the game again knowing those exist isn't the same game for sure!

 

[Sian]

Snaketown - useless
Mesa Verde - As good as useless as well untill Biology, true it catches 2 gems but theres better ways to do that (4w1n from cap if anything, with massive farms)
Nanih Waiya - Useless - Plain Spices, as the only thing not allready used. is that meh that you'd should just take it on Poverty Points 3'd ring)
Mound City - Not good, true it got Clams but those are fairly meh when its that far away

Chaco Canyon ... why the *** do you work Desert Hills (mined at least) ... they're just about the least usefull tile in the game, not accounting for unworkables (in other news ... the desert around there look suspicius ... in the mapdoctoring way)

 

[Zechnophobe]

That is an interesting point, chaco canyon there looks like it has exactly a city radius of grassland around it! Sorta funny, but I doubt the game generated a desert there and he changed it to.. grassland.