Cookbook discussion thread (Game A Sillyman)

[Qactus]

...Can you always put a unit on tiles to prevent jungle spread? Confused by how you said later on

Later on = when you have units to spare for stuff like that

 

[Nick723]

I know we're still waiting till Tuesday for all games to come in, but with so many already I thought I'd take a look at the ones posted so far. I've only looked at those that have a write up in this thread so far.

Spoiler General thoughts on the map :

- It's clear from the start, with so many power tiles, so many forests, and the IMP trait, that expansion is not going to be an issue on this map. Indeed I think that the main risk here is over expanding and crashing the economy too hard. Treading that balance will be very important. Although we are blessed with rivers, there are not any high commerce tiles in the immediate surroundings of the capital.

- We have gold and furs within striking distance, but neither that close for a second or third city. I think it's key that a concerted effort is made to secure at least one of these (preferably gold) in city 4, otherwise we will be limited by a low happy cap. Expansion to the east along the river towards the gold helps keep the empire compact and allow us to expand and tech.

- We have one neighbour close (Sitting Bull) and a few other AI around. With that in mind, can we survive without archery?

Spoiler Specific comments on saves: :

Bear in mind these are just my thoughts - don't take them personally please! I may well be wrong... Also, sorry for not doing each save proper justice, comments are pretty brief!

Overall fascinating to see so many different approaches (hats of to the map setting too @Fippy). Goes to show why Civ IV is such a great game, it's hard to do everything perfectly at the same time!

Spoiler Pangaea :

Likes
- Very similar approach to what I took
- Nice compact empire & balance of tech & expansion
- 4 cities with settler 5 en-route
- granaries and cottages up

Dislikes
- Need to capture fur with city 5 I think, not sure if that is plan if improving deer?

Overall I like this save, may well take it forward.

Spoiler Elmurcis :

Likes
- 6 cities + 7th on the way - impressive expansion
- Pottery in place to allow for economic recovery

Dislikes
- Working many unimproved tiles - more workers needed?
- Economy in big trouble

Spoiler Whisker :

Likes
- Innovative approach - never seen / tried that gunpowder bulb before!
- Tech situation ok and 4 cities in a nice compact empire

Dislikes
- Without pottery, tech situation will deteriorate pretty rapidly I think. Not really the map for specialists either (not much food)

Overall nice idea, but just think this turned out to be the wrong map for it.

Spoiler Tonny :

Likes
- Worker steal - something I never do but looks like it has paid off here
- Great scouting
- Gone east for the gold, 5 cities
- Nice tech path - able to skip mysticism and hunting with city placement
- Compact, connected empire

Dislikes
- Barb issues - perhaps too much scouting, not enough fog busting? Or just bad luck?

Nice save - if you could play to T61 and tell me if I keep Ankara then I might just take this one forward

Spoiler Noontide :

Likes
- Early happy resource
- 4 cities up

Dislikes
- Behind on tech a bit - not sure why? Would have settled gold in first ring I think to help
- Monuments in Edirne / Ankara
- Could lose Bursa to barbs

Spoiler Powerfaker :

Likes
- Worker steal sitting bull
- Key early techs already in (best position I think out of any save?)
- Pottery early looks to have been a great choice
- Only one to already be at 5 cities without being in a bit of a tech hole
Dislikes
- Positioning of Konya - maybe go for furs first rather than copper?

Overall great save though - this one will be hard to beat I think

Spoiler Jnebbe :

Likes
- Having a go at immortal and crushing it!
- Lots of exploration
- Good infrastructure in place and cottages
- Key techs in
- Expansion along river in good direction
Dislikes
- Slower expansion - should be at 4 cities by now I think
- North actually not fogbusted (e.g. copper tile)

Great go at immortal though so far - looks promising for your first win!

Spoiler 5tephen :

Likes
- Reminders! How do you do that?!
- 5 cities, nice placement, gold already settled
Dislikes
- Crashed tech a bit harder than would like (but recoverable)
- Bad luck needing archery?

Another really good save I think though

Spoiler Major Tom :

Likes
- 4 cities, expansion to the east along the river
- fail gold in bank, good economic position
Dislikes
- Would like to see more cottages up
- Barb defence to the north?
- 5th settler only just started

Another really strong save

Spoiler Benginal :

Likes
- unique approach - bash up Sitting Bull!
- nice city placement
- cottages up
- good tech position
Dislikes
- Sitting bull is a tough target for an axe rush
- I think other saves which have focussed on expansion are superior with this nice land to expand into

Overall good execution I think, but perhaps sub optimal approach for this map? Will be interesting to see results in next 20 turns however!

Spoiler Qactus :

Hard luck about the rice!
Likes
- worker steal sitting bull
- 5 cities already
- Gold nearly ready to go

Dislikes
- cities too spread out, has crashed economy

With this nice land it's tempting to capture lots of it, but I think here a more compact empire would have been better.

Spoiler Imploding :

Likes
- 5 cities already, 6th ready
- Gold connected
- Expansion to the east
- Safe from barbs

Dislikes
- economy in trouble and 6th city will crash it further (especially given placement)
- perhaps overall too spread out?

Similar to Qactus above, I think here a more compact empire would have been better. But interested to see how next turnset plays out!

Interested to hear other's thoughts!

 

[SillyGoat]

Had some fun with this. Ganked a t7 worker from the neighbour to turbocharge the early game snowball.

Stats:

Spoiler :

5 cities, 6 workers, 13 pop, 2 grans, 1 barracks, One 3 xp axe (unpromoted), 1 axe with 1 xp, 5 warriors ( 1 Woodsman 2 and 1 Combat1 with promotion in hand at 5xp) , Animal Husbandry, Mining, Bronze, Pottery, Writing due next turn.

Overview:

Spoiler :

Cities:

Spoiler :

Istanbul:

Spoiler :

Early worker gank meant fast startup and idle workers building roads while I waited for Bronze Working.

Library and 2 scientists for an early GP could be done here, but I'm not seeing a lot of value other than an early Math bulb......which might be a good plan given the neighbour situtation

Edirne:

Spoiler :

Early second city has produced a warrior, settler and worker so far. 2 workers are chopping into the library (switch next turn and whip after chops are in). Not a powerhouse but can work a bunch of cottages and whip out a unit every now and again. Axe build was a safety play. Still needs a granary but I think the Library has priority for the border pop.

Ankara:

Spoiler :

Lagging a bit with the worker input here. Claimed copper first ring. No food special but 2 farmed floodplains will provide adequate food. Border pop can wait, so gran-->barracks-->units

Bursa:

Spoiler :

Gold and wet rice with floodplains, what's not to love?

The neighbour, that's what. Library next for the border pop and commerce boost, walls and a strong garrison mandatory.

Konya:

Spoiler :

Ugly little turd of a city. Should have a granary but I had to whip out an axe to deal with barbs instead.
20 hammers at size 5. Still need to pick up Hunting for the Deer (and for Furs once a city up north is affordable) Gran-->barracks-->units

Going forward:

Spoiler :

Tons of land yet to grab, economy is getting ramped up, everything is looking good for a peaceful builder game.

Except for the Shaka problem. His border city is on flatland copper so can be axe-rushed but that would mean whipping/chopping out axes right now and crashing the economy to burn a few cities. Horses are in an annoying spot so Horse Archer rush isn't looking great. Build a defensive army while teching to Construction for Axeapult? With so many forests, Math is a very attractive target but a detour to Alphabet first to do some backfill trading might be better. We'll have a few turns of saving gold before the decision needs to be made.

 

[Qactus]

Haven't opened the saves, but read all the write-ups that have been posted so far.
Since my own questionable decision to pursue bronze working before pottery and underestimate much needed commerce rang so eerily familiar, I went and looked up the last time I asked for advice on these forums:

...
Actually with such a strong cap and IMP i would also go [...] pottery before BW, favoring fp cottages over chopping which seems not needed early.
...

Right, that just goes to show how many times advice must be hammered into me before I actually start to apply it while playing (probably a few more times).
Thus I'm all the more happy that apparently there are a number of saves already from which I can pick which correctly addressed commerce needs before expanding too much. Judging from the write-ups it seems that either @Powerfaker (I'll have to look at the barb situation) or @SillyGoat come closest to what I'll be looking for.
A save with fishing I'd probably like to avoid because PHI Trebuchets and Janissaries on a Pangaea just are so tempting that I think I'll want to keep the option open for now.
And archery? Well, I think the Cookbook format just doesn't reward low-risk approaches. While in regular single player it is very sensible to go safety first, in a cookbook with 10+ entries there will always be a save that - even if lucky - got away without it.
Oh, and while I was looking at SillyGoat's pictures, I was amazed (not really surprised anymore) that also the second wet rice I found jungled (and therefore put in the second ring) apparently wasn't covered from the beginning either. That makes gold city obviously so much better. So with a scoreline of Jungle 2 : Qactus 0 maybe I have a green thumb and should try to grow orchids or something.
Anyway, great stuff and amazing participation so far, let's keep it rolling!

 

[drewisfat]

Nice job @SillyGoat. The challenge on this map is the commerce, and settling gold spot makes this the strongest save from that perspective. Already having writing finished is impressive. While it's a good bet that Willem's going to get writing soon anyhow, Shaka is less likely, and you need two OB partners to maximize trade routes. Great job settling in such a way to get instant trade routes on the river. Many needed to detour to myst as at least one city needed a border pop, but you found a good configuration to avoid this. I think Konya is a good city, but premature, since you skipped hunting and don't have an immediate use for marble. Skipping archery is risky to me with the worker steal on dog boy, but then again SB might be 100% chance to peace out before conflict on IMM, idr.

I personally don't think a construction war is really called for here. With all this space and an IMP leader we don't need the additional burden of a large army. I'd just keep settling aggressively as you've gotten over the writing hump, while keeping a force of axes near Shaka in case he daggers. There's still room for a couple border cities and a few backfilled cities. There's also the issue of targets. Willem's a good tech trade buddy. Shaka's kinda far away, and war with him might give you trade route issues.. SB would work from a TR perspective, but of course he's PRO + dogs. Also, with marble + PHI, we really want to be on top of the GLIB race.

How to utilize PHI is a good question. Our capital isn't worthy of an early academy but the gold spot might be. Bulbing math has some benefit besides a construction rush. It's still good trade bait and gives stronger chops into marble wonders.

@Qactus I'd agree we don't need whips before cottages; however, most of the good cottage sites are covered in forests, so that advice doesn't fully translate to this game. Also the possibility of getting axes would negate any need for early archery.
As far as thoughts on tech path, I think you want hunting->AH->mining->BW->pottery->writing. Skipping hunting if you don't put deer in your BFC. Myst & archery may be necessary depending on your city sites and risk aversion, but they are costly detours. We have enough hammers to spam warriors expecting some of them to die.

Pro tip: Don't hesitate to use early spawn busting warriors to block jungle spread on your future rice paddies

 

[soundjata]

Sipped like a boss.

Initial warrior goes towards tundra.

Tech AH > Hunting > Archery. Ignore corn.

Warrior > Settler (size 2). City 2 goes north. Tundra special.
(city was delayed 3 turns because barb animals would not cooperate...)

Tech Mining > Pottery > Writing. Flood our neighbour Sitting Bull with resources.

Spoiler :

Settler for city 5 in preparation, if I can get the gold city before Shaka I should be hm... golden.

Overall 12 population.

Spoiler :

 

[Gressulf]

Finally managed to get around to playing this.

To be honest I am a bit disappointed with how it turned out.

Spoiler Empire :

This is how it turned out. I have a settler ready to settle the fish spot up North. That Settler should have been used to settle the Gold in the East.
In any case. My tech path was Pottery - Mysticism - Mining - Hunting - BW - Masonry. I was thinking with Marble so close, I could go for The Oracle (I usually NEVER do).
Also, Masonry opens up some failgold possibilities. But yes, you read it right, I do NOT have AH yet!! It was supposed to be my first tech, but I forgot to deselect Pottery on T4, so all beakers went into Pottery.... I mined the Sheep and farmed the Cow for now. Since I have two 3F tiles in Capital (which I have cottage'd), the Sheep is just as good mined I guess...

 

[dorhin]

I SiP (warrior sent to ph but it revealed only calender ressources which are not that useful in the early game).

Stole 2 workers from SB and got to 5 cities, really enjoyed this map. Tech path was: Hunting -> AH -> Pottery -> Mining -> BW -> Writing
I decided to go for pottery before bw as the limiting factor seemed to be commerce, not production.

The future plans would be to settle one more city to the east (perhaps even on the gold, might be good to have a hill city next to shaka), slightly consolidate the economy and take out SB (catapults) as he is rather pissed at me.

 

[SillyGoat]

Nice job @SillyGoat. The challenge on this map is the commerce, and settling gold spot makes this the strongest save from that perspective. Already having writing finished is impressive. While it's a good bet that Willem's going to get writing soon anyhow, Shaka is less likely, and you need two OB partners to maximize trade routes. Great job settling in such a way to get instant trade routes on the river. Many needed to detour to myst as at least one city needed a border pop, but you found a good configuration to avoid this. I think Konya is a good city, but premature, since you skipped hunting and don't have an immediate use for marble. Skipping archery is risky to me with the worker steal on dog boy, but then again SB might be 100% chance to peace out before conflict on IMM, idr.

I personally don't think a construction war is really called for here. With all this space and an IMP leader we don't need the additional burden of a large army. I'd just keep settling aggressively as you've gotten over the writing hump, while keeping a force of axes near Shaka in case he daggers. There's still room for a couple border cities and a few backfilled cities. There's also the issue of targets. Willem's a good tech trade buddy. Shaka's kinda far away, and war with him might give you trade route issues.. SB would work from a TR perspective, but of course he's PRO + dogs. Also, with marble + PHI, we really want to be on top of the GLIB race.

How to utilize PHI is a good question. Our capital isn't worthy of an early academy but the gold spot might be. Bulbing math has some benefit besides a construction rush. It's still good trade bait and gives stronger chops into marble wonders.

Thanks.

This is a very powerful initial start position production-wise so the first challenge was finding sources of commerce to pay for all the cities that can be rushed. Pottery before Bronze was tempting but not having found any horses at that point, I wanted to know the copper situation.

The free worker from Sitting Bull meant I had a surplus of early worker turns and with BW I could double chop a settler in Edirne for the gold spot (timed with Istanbul's 2nd settler so both were moving during the revolt turn).

Settling Konya had my economy crashed at -2 gpt on t51. But it's a decent production city even at small sizes and with the early focus on commerce I was in need of production. The unimproved Deer is a grasshill mine that require s no worker turns. +3 food and 7 hammers per turn at size 2 with just the Sheep and unimproved Deer. I wanted the city earlier but didn't want to spend the beakers on Mysticism to pop borders so I waited until Istanbul's 2nd border pop was about to happen before settling.

We will need an army sooner rather than later as we are SB's worst enemy and we have Shaka on the other border. None of the AIs have Writing yet so Alphabet run has potential for trades with Willem.
Shaka and Ragnar are dubious tech trading partners so we may have to tech or bulb Math on our own. Bulbing Eng and GP sounds attractive for some early Jans but I think we will need an edge sooner than that. 2 early GSes could bulb us to Metal Casting and Machinery once Alphabet and Math are acquired. If Shaka comes with a stack of swords/impis/axes, having Crossbows would be nice.

We have lots of land to peacefully expand into but it's either low quality (the north) or covered in jungle and needing a large investment of worker labour and tech to become good (south).
2 of the northern city sites require Fishing for food so I'm thinking expand to claim Horses plus one city to the south of Istanbul to work the Cows and share Bananas and Sugar with Istanbul.
Then expand by force.

In the meantime, Libraries everywhere to get the borders popped and some scientists hired (Konya could earn it's keep with 2 scientists at size 3 if we can afford the loss of hammers) and start beefing up on axes (and spears once Hunting is either teched or traded)

Conquest of SB with Construction and bulbed Xbows would be my preferred choice so long as Shaka can be distracted. Then see about expanding through either Willem or Shaka with Jans/trebs.
I don't know how much land there is to the West yet but it looks like we will have room for a lot of cities.

 

[Pangaea]

A bit frustrated I didn't dare to scout further across the desert and the floodplains to the east, because that looks like a damn good area. In my game I didn't even know about the gold (but had spotted the copper). But with so much room for barbs to spawn in, particularly south in the jungle, I wanted to bust it as well as I could. And moving warriors onto 'naked' tiles, probably to their deaths, didn't seem like a good idea when they had good defensive positions in forests, and in some cases behind rivers as well. In hindsight that was probably a bad call, as I'd much rather send that 5th settler to the gold in the east than north to the wheat/fur/deer area in tundra and ice.

Spent some time thinking about stealing workers from Sitting Bull, but decided it wasn't worth the risk in a game like this, and explored with the starting warrior instead. Those dog soldiers are not nice for our warriors! (if things were to go awry).

Overall I'm actually a little concerned. Will this turn into a game where the people that take the highest risks and get lucky with it are 'rewarded'? If so it's sort of just an alternative to Hall of Fame games where people tend to take giant risks and then toss away games that go to hell, so to speak.

Felt like I had a pretty decent balance in my approach, but when I look over some other screenshots there are clearly some misgivings. Mainly about not even discovering the gold (because I didn't fancy losing spawn busters), and to a lesser extent not doing Pottery earlier, probably before BW. BW was important for chopping ofc, but not really required for settler whips. We have enough production, plus are IMPs.

In any case, I look forward to continuing this (tomorrow?). Need to look over saves first. Some of them look in dire straits with barbs about to attack. But since I bungled the gold factor (and barb cities spawned there in my game), maybe playing one with a gold settled city would be nice. We'll see.

Awesome to see so much participation.

 

[Fippy]

Overall I'm actually a little concerned. Will this turn into a game where the people that take the highest risks and get lucky with it are 'rewarded'?

Not really, there's no voting and everybody picks a save other than their own.
By taking risks you might either put your game into bad shape or make it attractive for others..sounds fair, there are many rounds

 

[soundjata]

In my game I took virtually no risk.

On turn 45

Spoiler :

(capital corn is getting irrigated this turn and sadly the tile were I prebuilt a cottage for one turn will be covered in forest ibt )

 

[Tonny]

@Nick723 and everyone else ofc

Spoiler :

Dislikes
- Barb issues - perhaps too much scouting, not enough fog busting? Or just bad luck?

Nice save - if you could play to T61 and tell me if I keep Ankara then I might just take this one forward

It was bad luck unfortunately

Spoiler barb luck :

I had 2 warriors in Ankara thinking that would be enough to take on the archer. Unfortunately my 1st warrior died without even scratching the barb.

The archer near my cap is no problem. Axe is ready in time.
The archer near Konya can be taken care of by the Axe built in the cap or Edirne.

I challenge you to find out if this can be salvaged

 

[drewisfat]

Sacrifice ze worker and use the extra turn to whip in another defender.

 

[soundjata]

So how about an Engineering rush ?

Requires Aestetics (en route to Litterature)
Requires Metal Casting (probably self teched)
Construction and Alphabet could be traded (maybe. not used to immortal)
With philosophical trait, we could easily get 3 great scientists (1 for Math, 2 for Machinery and 3 for Engineering ?)

Avoid Meditation and Fishing ofc.

Worth it on this map ?

 

[Pangaea]

Am not sure how much this actually helps, but hopefully a little bit. Naturally there are many factors that are not caught by the spreadsheet, such as barb situation, city locations and diplomacy (possibly a factor for the worker stealers).

Spoiler :

(Tried to upload the .ods file (LibreOffice), but the forum refused)

 

[Tonny]

Sorry to say @Pangaea , but my list in your file is wrong. I did not tech archery, but writing for example.

 

[soundjata]

Nice work @Pangaea.

Dorhin and Sillygoat saves appear to have the most potential. Worker steal FTW.

There might be some missed opportunities (can't open trade routes with SB) but probably worth it still.

 

[Nick723]

Great work @Pangaea!

Yep some very nicely played games. Mine is somewhat middle of the pack, which I’m very happy about given the field! As a benefit I’ve also been inspired to try worker stealing, and also learned lots of other little small things along the way.

@Tonny i shall take up your challenge to take your save forward. From @Pangaea spreadsheet you have also done an insane amount of production - hats off!

 

[Pangaea]

Sorry to say @Pangaea , but my list in your file is wrong. I did not tech archery, but writing for example.

Sorry about that. It was very late and I was getting cross-eyed, but wanted to get through all the games. Hopefully it is correct now. Have also added @shakabrade

Have updated the post above. Attached is also a file with all the games so far in T60. Close to the forum limit so may not work next time, but nice to have them all in one place.

Looks like the games by Dorhin (welcome!), Shakabrade and SillyGoat are very strong. Tonny is the only one with a completed library (unless I missed something), which is why the 100% rate is higher than the commerce (from finance screen).

I need to look over things again before deciding which game to take forward. 45 turns is quite a bit, so I would expect an even bigger variance between the games now.

From the game I played, I kinda liked that the copper-fish city is getting close to ready. The monument is practically done and Fishing is researched (well, traded for because Willem got Alpha already). But more generally, I suppose the games with gold hooked up is in a better shape for the future.