Here is my T110 save, continued from my T70 save.
Comments and a lot of questions tomorrow morning.
I think whip penalty is -100% for world wonders and -50% for national wonders. You should avoid whipping directly into a wonder (and use whip overflow) if possible.My save was a lot slower to start Pyramids than others, with only 94 hammers invested. 6 chops and 8 turns later, I was one turn away from Pyramids, AND I could 2-whip them.
=> Question 1: Should I have whipped them? I didn't, because there's a penalty whipping wonders and because I was planning to whip a Madrassa immediately after.
Does the math work like this: 60 hammers base from 2-whip +100% stone - 50% whip penalty = 90 hammers?
Yep I also got it late, but at that point it being not very useful for 20 turns is not as bad as it would be earlier, as you have other cities contributing.I founded Najran for fish on T81, that was kind of a slog since I had to build a monument with a GH mine then wait 10 turns for the pop.
I would've just taken IW for alpha (don't like to take very cheap techs for free when unnecessary) and gifted Shaka alpha for relations. Getting Shaka to pleased should be a big priority, even if it doesn't grant immunity.On T85 I got Alpha. Shaka wouldn't trade. Mao would trade Alpha for IW and hunting (I had no beakers invested in either).
=> Question 2: Was this a good trade? It seemed greedy/risky to invest beakers trying to get IW+Sailing.
That is not correct.IW exposed an oddity I'd never noticed. I had planned to pasture the pigs as soon as the stone city popped borders -- yes, you can pasture jungle pigs. But I didn't get around too it cause my workers were chopping the world's largest geometric solid. When I got IW, I was no longer able to pasture pigs without clearing jungle.
Confu will auto-spread to you eventually, if you have road connection to both of them. Via sailing trade network the probability is lower.On T91 Shaka converted to Conf (which Mao had founded). Unfortunately Conf never spread to me.
T93 I founded the gems/sugar city (living dangerously, I beat shaka by a couple turns -- should have had a settler out earlier).
T97 I got a GE.
T98 I founded a city next to iron/silk, it hurt my econ but I didn't want Shaka settling there and getting easy access to my soft underbelly.
Gift enough techs or gift a city, then beg at pleased (for hunting for example, rest of archery, begging aT100 Shaka went into war mode. He had a 5-unit stack. I frantically whipped archers and walls. Also I had been considering a hill city for him to suicide into and when he declared on T103 I was able to sneak the settler in and found it.
=> Question 3: What can I do about this? I gifted Shaka wheat as soon as I could. But he was pleased with Mao due to shared religion, and the religion never spread to me.
If a city doesn't have a lot of food, 1-pop whips are ok, otherwise I'd just find a way to 2-pop whip like OF into archer/axe, put 1-9Anyway, I'm not in any serious danger now, I chopped a lot of axes, archers, spears, swords. My stone city is so productive ...
=> Question 4: What do you do when you can't 2-whip? Should I just 1-whip occasionally?
T110 I got Currency. Am planning to build more swords and take Shaka's nearest city.
Yep, things turned out really well. I think the biggest difference to many saves was getting a lot of value from failgold, getting the Mids and then growing core cities to happy cap. Those few turns spent growing on non-riverside cottages (or plains riverside cottages) are paying off and having bigger cities transforms to many units when the war phase begins.
It's VERY educational to compare this save of yours with mine where I just continued expansion at full tilt.
I'm at 3 more cities and get 14 more commerce from working tiles, but I'm just ages behind in tech.
The extra cottage maturation that I might get is more than offset by any single one of these factors: GPP generation, failgold from colossus, Rep-beakers or sooner astro traderoutes.
I'm not a huge fan of academies anymore, unless it's deity when the game will last longer. I think just saving for astro double bulb would have been my choice. I'm guessing it would be around 300AD in that case.Being that ahead in tech and already grasping for optics is more than enough compensation for some jungle gems.
I'm guessing that you would have gone with an academy if you got a GSci?
My gameSpoiler :Mids micro was pretty perfect by some miracle (T80).
View attachment 512732
Fogbusting micro in the north was not perfect as a barb archer appeared and had to cold whip a warrior next turn to not risk losing my shiny Mids.Went alpha with the help of failgold as the screenshot shows, but it turned out horribly as Qin went that route, too. Shaka won't trade at cautious, so biggest value was building
. Should have gifted Shaka a city obv, but panicked and went meditation to gift it. +3 for fair trade, +1 for peace, -2 for being a prick so still cautious... T92 or so +1 for OB and +1 for resource trades kicked in (gifted stone+horse for 10T, too) and finally got IW for alpha and felt a lot safer.
Somehow was too slow to the gems site, I guess I was busy watching my cottages grow or something. Pretty happy with the way I handled southern 5-city cluster, lots of tile swapping to grow in bursts and work as many cottages as possible, assigning specialists mostly at
-cap. Didn't dare to run any priests.
Got this cute idea of using Mids GE-points, ran scientists there asap and the-lottery gave me an engineer. OK, bulbed machinery on the way to optics/astro, although crossbow-war was kinda tempting as Shaka got GLH. I'm secretly hoping to get another engineer, as that tempts engineering bulb and treb war.
If GS, astro double bulb will be in
550AD620AD, though 1-bulb and half manual research is faster I guess.
No idea why Shaka hasn't attacked Qin at cautious, sharing very long border. He's pleased with me and I'm not land target.Missing the gems site had a silver lining.
Quick overview of my save:
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full empire overview:
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closer look at core:
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tech:
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Managed to get Mids the earliest of the saves, though have to thank Mscellaneous for that as his t45 provides the option for a super accelerated Mids. Couldn't squeeze in any TGW failgold but Stonehenge went almost comically late so I got something like 110g from that. Shaka placed a city at my northern border to claim the double gem/sugar while killing almost all the spots which could have claimed the seafood. There is still one tile where a new seafood city can be settled, but I won't be doing that any time soon. I dropped my own city to contest the gems and have secured one inside my own borders. I also claimed the wheat/double sugar spot in the NW. At the time, the plan had been to settle even as far as the northern marble and make a play for MoM, but Shaka got that spot before I could get a settler up there. Still, I think Calendar has merits: those sugars will support Rep specialists in a few turns' time.
Going forward, I'm pursuing a fairly standard Lib -> Cuirs path. Can't see it being too difficult on IMM unless Shaka gives me a headache (I haven't got the +1 from resource trades yet but it must be coming soon). Hopefully Qin - who has just founded Confucianism - might spread it to all of us. If not, I might be able to find a culture hole to wedge a settler in Shaka's backyard.
Settle-wise, one settler is on the way to the silk/iron city and will claim that next turn. It has a ton of forests and enough lakeside grasslands to grow decently. I'm probably going to let Damascus grow to size 6 again and then whip out another Settler to finally claim the fish city 1N3W of the capital, which will get online very quickly with an artist once I take my first dip into Caste System (yay, SPI!). I'll probably irrigate all the grasslands north of that city, too, and have it work on specialists (maybe merchants?) since Najran (3N of capital) is doing so well at maturing the capital's cottages. Once I get to CS and the capital takes back those cottages (not that far away) Najran will also transition to farms on its dry grasslands and will be able to work its hills. So I can see myself needing 1 or 2 more workers in the next 10 turns as well. Ultimately, by the time I get to Lib -> MT I should have a nice Bur-cap with lots of high food cities all around it and room for whipping in the north as well. My tech pace is pretty nice and if I get a religion, Pacifism+Caste will allow me a good amount of GS-points for the Edu-bulb (I used my first one for an Academy in the capital, which explains my good beaker rate but might be a bad move? Not sure. I agree with sampsa that Academies are no longer a compulsory move.)