Climb the Ladder 2: Prince - Zara Yaqob

[JTMacc99]

Originially the concept of May Day 10, I will try to stay a close as possible to his original goals, although I have modified what said slightly to fit with my style:

Climbing the ladder will be a series of games starting at Noble, and progressing as high as possible. If a loss is experienced, the level will be repeated. Each game will use a different leader, allowing the random generator to determine our fate.

I think this exercise will serve a few purposes:
First, personally I have pretty much stalled out at Monarch, so usually play Prince but with interesting Maps to keep it interesting. So, I look forward to playing the middle to higher levels here.
Second, these games can help anyone succeed at these levels/refine their games. I played out the Noble game the best I could with explanations of why I was doing things and why they worked or didn't work. At Prince, I have some level of comfort with conducting war, but certainly have some goals I would like to achieve. I will occasionally post savegame files when it seems like I'm at a point where I think people might like to take a more detailed look.
Third, the variety of leaders will give myself and others a better skill set when dealing with traits and UU's.




So with that in mind, I start game 2 at Prince. My specific goals are:

- To refine my use of specialists.
- To actually build a Great Person Farm. Of all the standard things I have learned from these forums (like the early rush, proper stacks of doom, specializing cities) I have never figured out how to build a great person farm. I almost always just see all that food rich land and cottage the hell out of it.
- To not waste the opportunities given to me by the leader's traits. Financial, Aggressive, and to a lesser extent Charasmatic I've figured out how to use to great advantage. The rest of them? Not so much.

With that in mind, let's see who the random generator has given us this time, shall we?


Yep. Zara. In my experience, this leader normally does quite well in the hands of the AI, so I see no reason why we couldn't also do really well with him. The traits are Creative, (which is +2 culture for every city and double speed production of every library, colosseum, and theater) and Organized, (which is -50% city maintenance and double speed production of Lighthouse, Factory, and Courthouse.)

Wow. That's a lot of cheap buildings, isn't it? I never noticed that before.

Normally, I'd think Creative would mean I could skip the monuments, but we've got a monument UU, the Stele. It creates the same +1 culture per turn, but it also multiplies culture by 25% in the city. I assume that means that with a stele in a city, plus the 2 culture from being creative, each city will be generating 4 culture per turn?

The UU is the Oromo Warrior. A musket with immunity to first strikes, a free first strike, and then also born with Drill I and Drill II. Sweet. I think we'll need to think about gunpowder.

Lastly, here is the starting position:


Lots of stuff, I'm just not sure how to use them yet.

 

[Sian]

actually only 3,75 culture per turn (not rounded either up or down) Stele is really nice for massive border pushing early and mid game, if you get your hands on Stonehenge (wouldn't build it myself though) its reasonable to stall Astromony, maybe lessening the penelty by running Merchantism (so you don't lose tons of money due to not being able ot trade overseas) ... but ofcause, that really depends what kind of map it is

Oromo Warriors is nasty to attack with ... just make sure that you have something to disaude Mounted troops to have a field day with thier First strike immunity, and they'll rule against anything at their level and below, and since they keep their drill I and II, it'll make sence to build some just to upgrade to Riflemen.

about the starting posistion ... i'd proberly settle 1NE for River, only thing you'll lose is 1 of the two phants you have ... it also opens up for a city which is allready looking decent east of the cows

 

[r_rolo1]

Scout 2 NE.... then post screenie. But settling 1 NE may be a good idea...

 

[OJimiJam]

If its just plains NE of the settlers position (or mainly plains) id think about settling on the Ivory 1E. It's a 2 base tile and a pretty mediocre tile to work in the mid to long term.

 

[dankok8]

i started one with Joao II on Noble, but why not have 2 games. Can't hurt right? I love Zara btw. Should be great fun. Are you gonna pursue cultural? That would be intersting to showcase... but do whatever you want. It's your game. A GA farm is still a GP farm.

 

[UWHabs]

Stele would be good to try cultural with. Creative helps with cultural, organized not as much (from what I've read).

 

[dankok8]

If you are not gonna settle in place (sometimes 2 good cities better than 1 great one), I'd move 1SW. You do lose a turn, but get a short-term production boost from settling on a hill, extra defense (never know when that can come useful ) and get a few more river glassland tiles and Cows. The tiles 2E and 2E1N look like forest so I'm against settling 1E or 1NE.

 

[JTMacc99]

Moved the Scout 2NE per r rolo1. I am torn.



If I settle where the scout is now, I am giving up 4 grasslands and a plains elephant for what looks like a grassland hill and wooded either grassland or plains, but more likely plains.

On the other hand, it puts the city on the river.

If I were going this alone, I would probably just settle right here, right now, and look forward to the forms of government that will make all of those cottages become powerful towns.

 

[KingMorgan]

I'd be tempted to settle on the ivory 1W, always good to be on a river. Plus you keep the plains hills, also good.

Leeve in the capital is not to be underestimated.

 

[r_rolo1]

1 E, definitely ....

Thanks oyzar

 

[oyzar]

I like 1E, that is on the ivory... Pretty sure the above people just don't know the difference between W and E...

 

[JTMacc99]

On the ivory, eh? I'm okay with that.

Let's hope that's a nice long river as opposed to one that just dumps into the ocean just out of sight in the woods.

I've always found the downside of Ivory is that I don't want to trade it to anybody. Now that I think about it, I suppose I should just avoid trading it to civs in that period of time when I really don't want to help them be building any war elephants.

 

[Killroyan]

+1 for settling 1E on the elephants. 1 more hammer to start with. Elephants are mediocre resources (1F/3H/2C) anyway imho. However the instant 1 combined with a river start off sets the loss of 1 Ivory tile completely.

 

[JTMacc99]

Alrighty then.

Let's see, I start with hunting and mining. That's nice. I guess I'll go agriculture->animal husbandry->bronze working. Heck, I would even consider pushing back BW for mysticism if Horses show up. I'd like to make good use of the Stele, and I can see an opportunity for slipping one into the build order here while I wait for my capital to get up to spamming speed for quick Settler/Worker building.

The build will be worker/warrior/?. I'd be tempted to build a second scout. It is very unlike me to do so, but with the knowledge that I could block off huge tracts of land with my culture very early in the game, I can see some value in knowing exactly what the continent looks like.

The worker will head first for the rice, then for the pigs, and then the two elephants. I'm not sure what to do with the capital next. We'll take a look at progress again before I get to that point.

 

[Fetch]

If you setttle 1 SW you can claim every resource on the screen in your capital's BFC. 3 food resources would make a good gp farm. Jumbos for production.

 

[UWHabs]

I'd still rather stay around fresh water. Build 1E. You still have a few hills around, so just take those 2 food resources and make either a GP farm or production centre. Getting the extra hammer off the bat will be useful.

 

[dankok8]

If you setttle 1 SW you can claim every resource on the screen in your capital's BFC.

1SW ftw. If he does settle 1E, he should make Bronze Working somewhat of a priority to have chopping benefits early from all those extra forests he'll have in the BFC. Maybe even in front of AH. If 1SW, then BW can really wait and he can research Agri, AH to improve all the resources.

 

[Roxlimn]

1 SW, then consider early Wonder-based economy.

 

[JTMacc99]

Settling 1E was my choice, as I feel that being on the river will probably pay off the best in the long run.



I set research to go Agr/AH/BW. It's slow going in the research department, as I have not a lot of commerce to work with at the moment. We'll need to see if we can find a good place to generate some research pretty quickly.

Builds were worker/scout/4 warriors/and a settler as I finished researching BW.

First item of interest, one of this guy's scouts wandered into our area.


A little while later, one of my scouts saw some yellow, and was taken aback to find out it was not Shaka, but a different yellow civ:


As I had mentioned in an earlier post, building a scout so early in the game is not a normal move for me, but it sure paid off beautifully. I was a hut-popping fool. All of them for gold (take a look at the final tally in the last couple of pictures here,) with the exception of a very late one for a technology:

Actually, I forgot. The very last hut I popped was for another scout which moved to a desert hill two spaces away and was promptly eaten by a lion.

In 2825 BC, my underfunded researchers discovered Bronze Working, and we immediately went for slavery. Mostly because I tend to forget to do it when I wait to revolt at the time when I really need it. Also, I find that it's a bit of a safety net just in case a barbarian catches me by surprise, and I need to quickly whip out a city defender. I take a snapshot of the known area. (I actually know a bit more about each of the other civs' lands, but I couldn't zoom out any more than this.)


A look to the immediate west, and at Egypt. DAMN! I really need to make that captial mine at my earliest convenience. Pigs, 2 gold, and horses. That's not good. So much for an axe rush.


A look to the east, towards the Zulu homeland. I covet that gold. I also see a very likely scenario for the source of tension with Mr. Shaka.


A look at our captial. Good call on moving 1E. I'm going to be a little food shy here if I cottage the flat spots. On the other hand, if I farm the riverside tiles, I could probably work a gigantic number of hammers. For now, I'll just worry about cranking out a bunch of workers and settlers (and a couple spears and axes mixed in), which it should do very nicely once I get that copper mine up.


And lastly a quick look at the city screen itself.



So, my gut feeling is that I have VERY good land to work with, but I also have some serious competition for doing what I want to do with it. One has a glorious captial but the very unfortunate (for me) UU that would keep me from going for a traditional axe rush. The other one is going to be very upset with me if I attempt to seal him off over there in the desert.

Hmm. I guess the first question is, where do I drop down the next 1-3 cities, and is it in my best interests to just go for 2 cities and then focusing in on adding my third and fourth cities through conquest.

 

[UWHabs]

I'd go settle on the little isthmus, cutting off Shaka. If you can cut him off, and get good production, you can maybe even rush him. Fish + Clam + horse + stone is a pretty good city. Lets you fill in the city closer to it with rice, cow, horse, and gold. Horse/clam/ivory/cow is one you'll want to keep from Rameses.

One idea would be settle the stone and the one to the left, then you can axe rush Shaka. Build up, let Rameses build you a couple wonders, then rush him with elephants. Once you mine the copper, you capital will be up to about 15 hammers a turn, which is great production early in the game.