Cookbook discussion thread (Game A Sillyman)

[Fippy]

After you finished your current turnset, you can talk about your and other games here.
Please use spoiler tags.

If you are still playing, you should stay out of here

 

[Pangaea]

Up to T60. I am leaving tomorrow morning and will be gone for a week, so this had to be done pretty quick and dirty, so things didn't go perfect.

Spoiler :

Settled on the PH and went AH>Mining>BW. Two nice surprises, although Calendar is a long way off. Sitting Bull shows up very close to our water, I mean our borders

The opening went okay I think, but then some barbs caused some issues. This was particularly annoying. The buggar moved in that very turn. Had a worker in place and everything

Spoiler :

Thankfully he killed that scout, then I moved the warrior onto the cow, and the barb suicided from poor health. The worker instead started chopping the forest NW of the city. Not ideal, but tried to make the best of it.

Started a settler at size 3, which was really fast (only 7-8 turns). First city 3E of capital for auto-connection (shame about the killed forest). BW came online just before the next settler came out, and we went slavery while he moved. Wondered about putting him up north somewhere, but we didn't have Hunting yet, so it would have been a little awkward.

Many barb fights, but we did well for the most part, which is always a pleasing experience. Also helped once the AIs started roaming more. Some scouts died, weakening archers, and with more units around there was less room for them to spawn in. I tried to spawnbust pretty well and had 7 warriors at one point, but it looks like a big piece of land, so it was rough. Especially when an archer showed up after having moved undetected between two of my guys. Argh! An archer up north was very dire as well, after I had settled the copper-fish city. If the archer had gone straight for the city instead of killing my guys, the city would have been lost. Nothing I could have done. Max hammers on an axe, but it would have been too late. Thankfully the barb archer first farmed a warrior that had just killed another barb, and then he died on another warrior in a forest. Phew! That is why that city has some hammers in an axe now.

Unfortunately I ended up killing the economy somewhat. Sorry about that. But development has been okay I think. Granaries are up, some cottages, we have 4 cities and a settler can found another one in 1-2 turns. You can spot him going north in this overview:

Spoiler :

The unhappiness situation isn't as bad as it looks on the screenshot, but not ideal either. I prioritised border protection over military police. Two barb cities have been created now, so it should be more safe. A warrior is moving back for MP duty.

The 5th settler is SW of the marble now. If this game is played further, people can decide where to settle. Originally I thought about 1N of Deer, but settling on Marble is tempting too. Given the somewhat dicey economy, it can also be postponed of course, but the deer is already being improved. Can also grab Wheat in inner ring ofc, there are some furs up there, which would be great for happiness. Gems look nice too elsewhere, but so much jungle around us.

Willem got super-early Alpha here, and I took the option of trading a little with him (he lacked BW). Small and cheap techs, but I figured it was better to have them than not, and it does take quite a while to tech them ourselves at this early stage. I traded Fishing, Hunting and Mysticism with him for BW and Pottery. Also gifted him the Wheel (it's +1 for tech sharing bonus).

Should be able to afford Writing just about now. Next steps would be to fix the economy I think, and probably hold back a little with new cities. Five this early is perhaps pushing it, but wanted to take advantage of the IMP trait, and we're kinda squeezed for room anyway with SBull so close, and jungle to the south. Maybe some Axes to grab the barb cities?

 

[elmurcis]

Up to T60:

Spoiler :

Kind off sloppy and messy ("picture below") as haven't touched civ4 for 2 months at all (and not familiar with Normal speed timings). But good to play again.
Settled...not exactly at place. Tech path was Hunting-Mini-BW-AH-Pot (idle on Fishing now). Barbs basically left me alone.
Otherwise (looking back) - should had Pot before AH, add one worker (for sure), not sure what (and if) I was thinking about southern (and northern...) city and if there is room (economy and placement) for 7th city (Edirne Settler) but yeah, it is what it is.
Empire view

Spoiler :

 

[Whisker]

Up to turn 60:

Spoiler :

Fourth city just settled, next settler ready in 2 turns and also just revolted to slavery.
So I wanted once again to try gunpowder beeline through education. At this point I'm still avoiding pottery which allows pulping gunpowder after education is in. So far I would not have had any time for granaries anyway, but I'm really starting to hurt for commerce. Would have been nice to have build some cottages instead of all those roads. May be soon forced to research pottery anyway, simply pulp education and slowtech gunpowder afterwards instead of the full pulp line.

Settlet on PH. Early tech path hunting-AH-mining-BW-mysticism, now researching writing. Second city went on sugar to block-off Sitting Bull. This city will stay on size 2 or 3 and build workers at least until calendar. Had and trouble with barbarians and settling of third city was delayed by at least 5 turn. This delay caused second border pop by capital to align so that I desided to settle on marble first instead of copper or river to east.


Bunch of mistakes:
Mysticism was a mistake, should have gone directly to writing to enable foreign trade routes and to start chopping libraries.
Should have chopped instead of building useless roads.
Kept feeding my warriors to barbs. Carelesly moving warrior on marble instead of forest led to slaughter and second warrior send to deal with it was also killed when the barb archer had combat 2 instead of the combat 1 I was expecting, must have finished off one of the many AI scouts circling my terretory. Third warrior finally delt with the problem but many turns and lots of production were wasted.
Because of detour to mysticism, writing is not ready yet and now settling our fourth city made the economy to dive from -9 gold to -16 per turn at 100% research, this will delay us even further. I'm seriously considering of using my one oopsie here and now and delay settling the city ultil writing is in. We have road to Bull so writing will help our oconomy lot.

 

[Tonny]

Up to T60:

Spoiler :

First off... This is definitely out of my comfort zone. (I just hate playing with barbs)
Okay, now with a summary of what was happening.
Settled the PH and went westward with my warrior.
On turn 3 I already met Bully, soon after he gave me the opportunity to steal a worker. Could not resist the urge and stole it on turn 8. Bully will hate me for a loooong time!
On turn 10 WvO appeared near my borders and I set the EP towards him.
Worker ready on turn 13 and corn improved on turn 14 with the help of my "borrowed" worker.
First settler was naturally built at size 3 on turn 28, quickly followed by another settler, which was ready on turn 34.
2nd city founded on turn 29 1SE of rice and the 3rd on turn 36 far east near the gold.
Meanwhile I teched AH(14)-mining(21)-BW(34) and switched immediately to Slavery while the 2nd settler was heading east.
4th city was founded on turn 49 near the gems and copper, 5th city founded on turn 58 2N of rice.
After BW I figured pottery(46)-writing(54) was the way to go being philosophical. Building up gold to tech aesthetics, while bulbing math.
Barbs are annoying, 2 of them are threatening my cities on turn 60. Cap is safe with an Axe whipped, but I guess I'll (I should say you, who is willing to take a gamble) lose the gold city (but just whipped the granary there for the future when it can be taken back. Konya could also face trouble soon with a barb near.
Cap has granary and library built.

Spoiler overview empire :

Could you survive the barbs?

 

[Qactus]

Up to T60:

Spoiler T60 :

I settled in place and went Hunting-AH-Mining-BW-Pottery. Did not complete pottery before going broke overexpanding, so now I have to wait til the gold mine is finished and work from there.
I have 5 cities, 4 workers, 7 warriors.
Stole one worker from SB and managed to get a cease fire. Stalked his borders afterwards to get another one and got the opportunity. But I saw that I could get two if I just waited a turn. So I clicked the red button, his borders popped, and I couldn't reach neither of the workers. Apparently I was too greedy!
Willem has Alphabet and founded Hinduism.
Unfortunately a barb archer snuck in between my fogbusters so I have to defend Ankara in the city which is of course risky.
Copper is connected in its city, but some roads still missing for connection with the empire.
Not being able to finish pottery before having to turn the research slider to 0 really slowed this game down commercewise. Maybe should've skipped hunting (mostly did so for the discount on AH).

 

[Qactus]

Just looked at the other spoilers...

Spoiler :

 

[Imploding]

Up to turn 60:

Spoiler T60 :

I SiP'ed! Used my warrior to scout as effectively as possible and saw jungle South and Snow North.
That decided it for me we needed archery.. even on immortal!
I went for Hunting/AH/Archery/mining/BW/TW/pot (33 % finished).

I currently have 3 archers and 3 warriors. and 5 workers.
I have killed, 4 warriors 3 archers, 2 panthers. I actually lost a archers trying to save my sheep from being pillaged.
The archers helped me explore and expand rather safely.

The land is really great in all directions so I decided to grab as much of it as fast as I could. and to block of Wilhelm and sitting bull.

Had to put Ankara down where it is because of a archer.. but in retrospect i kind of like the position better than the river settle. We have a ton of health resources and the city can share the banana and get a cow.

The cow I originally decided to settle grabbing the corn.. but as you barely can see from screen under.. we have fish and ivory down south! That is one monster city!
I also managed to grab the gold spot as my 4. then I the 2 x gems spot with copper. That is a _must_ have.

So in summary.. 5 good cities and a 6th (monster city) ready to be settled next turn.
Next is to get pottery I think you can get it in 3 turns and just cottage all tiles while whipping granaries. (main reason for the ivory tile is so we can whip granaries and really not care about anger issues)
Then preparing for library whips in some key cities.. Connect all cities and get OB trade routes will stabilize the economy while or cottages grow.. we will soon be a tech powerhouse.

Long term plans?...
I have only met 3 guys.. I guess ragnar will go for willem at some point and sitting bull will probably just sit. Diplo vice I don't see any scary threats or big possibilities.
I have not got fishing.. and a engineer bulb is possible (and tempting) to take out either Willem or sitting bull. If any of them get any cool wonders or gets to annoying with boarder tensions.
Or you can REX/cottage up and grow into a 10-12 city monster! We also have marble.. and some really good food spots. Maybe grab GLiB, MoM and TAJ? I guess a 47 turn golden age is possible (if wanted) here.
Either direction.. There is a high chance to do something really amazing with this game

Spoiler Comment on other games :

I was surprised that people survived without archery. For me and my game that was a critical part of survival and expanding.

Then I looked through the other entries!
I guess there is someone who don't even know the danger and have not seen it yet (and will possibly not experience it) other which got lucky and dodged a couple bullets and others who I would say struggle..

For me is the lesson.. be safe wear a helmet (and go archery!)

 

[Major Tom]

Turn 60:

Spoiler : :

AH-Mining-BW-Myst-Pottery. Myst for borderpops and failgold. Settled PH + inland along river for even more space, goldmine, bronze and traderoutes).
Have 36 failgold in bank.
Re barbs: Scouts from the other guys was all over the shop so no danger at any moment with some own fogbusting in addition.

 

[Major Tom]

@Whisker

Spoiler :

I also took the detour to myst. Does not feel too bad about it. Failgold possible and open paths to even more as marble around. Convenient border pops if needed. One extra tech before they think you are too advanced.

 

[Benginal]

Up to turn 60. It looks like I'm the only one who...

Spoiler :

Had much fun trolling Sitting Bull. He's so close. And that rice is right on our borders! So far I've declared war on him 4 times and taken 4 workers. We've got 7 axes almost to his borders (including a city raider 2 guy) ready for the next declaration. I want that stone. Maybe not too late for pyramids on immortal?

Stats
3 cities, 11 pop
5 workers
5 warriors, 7 axes, 1 spear
Edirne and Istanbul both have Granary and Barracks

Tech Path
Mining -> BW -> Hunting -> AH -> Pottery -> Writing (half way)

Up Next

• Whip Axe in Erdine
• Take Cahokia (raze PP?) from SB
• Whip settler in capital and head for the flood plains to the east. Maybe a happy resource over there? Need to try and get connected to some trade routes for happy resources. Use gold from taking Cahokia to finish writing. Hold off on settling until Writing is in -- need libraries and scientists for alpha?
• No idea how to actually fit in masonry. But might be possible with gold from Cahokia capture and then chop out mids in Cahokia. Can build a GE in there for mining inc or Taj? Although we also have marble. So many options. Much fun.
• Ankara is waiting for religion or maybe library in a long time? Or maybe myst in trade? Basically just a mining center for now, but will be respectable mid-game

Empire:

Spoiler :

 

[noontide]

I know the rule said no reload but I was not happy with my first play through so I adjusted my research sequence.

Spoiler :

My adjustment is mainly to manage gold, went cottage first then mysticism.

 

[Powerfaker]

Up to turn 60.

Spoiler :

Like a few others I stole a worker from SB early.

Went AH first. Decided to go Pottery next. With the hammer heavy food and Imp trait this cap doesn't need chopping/slaving. I actually feared a hammer overkill sinkhole with either Pottery or Writing out of reach later due to rapid rexing (and I think we will see this in the next turnset with several saves). Was happy to have some early cottages.
Of course next bee line to Bronze for the benefit of city 2 and 3. Then hunting and Writing.

I put my EP on Ragnar because Willem put his on me, didn't want to compete with that.

A barb archer forced me to settle 1 further south from the gold (it moved north, I didn't want to follow it)
I walked a thin line of relying on only warriors. I kept the south fogbusted. The north and east were more open for barbs, but the cities were never in danger. And now at T60 axes can be whipped/chopped where necessary.

Some pointers if anyone is interested to play this save:
- Note that the city threatend by the southern archer is not connected to copper.
- All warriors can still be moved this turn, all workers are done.
- I just hooked up copper this turn. The (almost) gold city has a warrior queued. Don't remove it from the list (investment will be lost). Next turn it will be a partly built axe, and free to shuffle with.
- I marked the north a bit with future cities, the fur city should be better when settled 1 further east.

 

[jnebbe]

Never beat immortal squad

Spoiler :

Went AH->Mining->BW->Pottery->1 turn away from writing
3 cities, whipped a settler on T60 but not sure where to put it.
Played very greedy to get that FP city and got a couple pretty lucky barb wins there that could've ended this game if I lost them
North land is completely fogbusted, wasn't a big problem since shaka/ragnar's scout spent so much time up there.

Really curious about that jungle rice, seems like most people didn't have it and also didn't have IW so maybe I downloaded the wrong file or something??

Plan is to open borders with sitting bull next turn and scout him, and then make a decision to either keep expanding or rush him. It'd be a shame to not use all those forests for axes/swords, but the coppers are in kind of awkward positions. In particular I really don't like the north copper unless I'm 100% rushing since it doesn't offer much else.

 

[Qactus]

@jnebbe

Spoiler :

...
Really curious about that jungle rice, seems like most people didn't have it and also didn't have IW so maybe I downloaded the wrong file or something??
...

It has spread there. Chance for it to happen in this case is 0.2% per turn.
In my case it must've happened during the first 5 turns or so, while I probably was too focused on the tiles my warrior was exploring and didn't look closely enough. When I assessed the map for possible second city locations, it was already jungled, otherwise it would've been my clear favorite (I went for the dry wheat instead, sharing the deer).

Note that later on you can protect valuable tiles (often gems or pigs) from jungle spread by putting a unit on them.

 

[5tephen]

This felt like it was going well and then less so! SIP, hunting -> AH -> archery. Improved corn, deer and sheep and started settler at size 3, cow improved just after settler out. Had teched mining and planned an ambitious second city south of the gold thinking the gold mine would sustain my research. Went mining next on this basis and started BW - otherwise probably would have gone writing or pottery before mining.

After building settler, changed my mind about which city to settle first as seemed better to get city east of rice as could use worker to improve rice, whilst another settler was built and worker would finish rice and be free to join the journey with the new settler so they both end up by gold all at the same time. Despite a non-compact empire this would also have enabled me to have 1 worker for 3 cities without suffering early. Settler had moved just past my second city when my warrior fogbusting the gold got lynched by two barb archers. Only had one other free warrior and no archers so had to retreat settler to the banana which is OK but could have settled there at least 3 turns earlier and given commerce was more of an issue than production I might have changed my tech path to avoid my current situation where I'm almost bankrupt trying to get writing.

Got out a couple of archers eventually and that steadied the ship but would have avoided most of my problems if I'd got them out before trying to settle third city - got a bit complacent with how slow barb animals were to go and archers to appear after spending my most recent civ time losing on deity!

Made another fairly major error where I whipped with ~30 hammer overflow in the capital and lost concentration allowing it to land in a barracks

Priority now would be to get a bunch of cottages down, probably a few more workers and crawl research to writing. Connect copper and scout the northlands a bit, maybe take that barb city north of the gold. The land is amazing and I guess most victory paths are possible from here. Getting to writing late is a bit of a blow as there would otherwise be plenty of opportunity to abuse philosophical trait.

Spoiler :

 

[5tephen]

@jnebbe

Spoiler :

It has spread there. Chance for it to happen in this case is 0.2% per turn.
In my case it must've happened during the first 5 turns or so, while I probably was too focused on the tiles my warrior was exploring and didn't look closely enough. When I assessed the map for possible second city locations, it was already jungled, otherwise it would've been my clear favorite (I went for the dry wheat instead, sharing the deer).

Note that later on you can protect valuable tiles (often gems or pigs) from jungle spread by putting a unit on them.

I never new about protecting the tile - that's really useful, thanks.

 

[Tonny]

We're already at 16 participants!!!
It would take me about a week to look at all of them and decide which one I like best.
Have to make a somewhat database to compare them all.

 

[Nick723]

Spoiler My game write up to T60 :

Spoiler Empire at T60 :

Settled 1W - slightly worse long term capital perhaps than SIP, but allowed for one turn earlier corn improved corn. Perhaps also helped persuade Sitting Bull to go elsewhere (though of course I wasn't to know that at the time) - although he's just settled Chaco Canyon he's less in our face perhaps than in other games.

Tech path went Hunting -> AH -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> Pottery -> Mysticism -> Writing (incomplete). Overall with many AI around and good defensive positions, felt could fogbust / defend ok with warriors and that turned out to be the case.

Settled Edine and Ankara compact to help use power tiles and keep maintenance costs low, Bursa went north to capture furs as otherwise we are short of happy. Only just spotted the gold in the last couple of turns and settler 5 on its way there now to take that spot.

Overall fairly happy with the play, of course there were a few things that didn't quite line up, and I'm not sure I like Bursa positioning (didn't want to kill the fish and wanted to share deer), but probably should have settled further north to get the furs on line earlier.

Overall plan going forward would be to expand to 8-10 cities, and use the marble to go to the classic route to cuirassiers.

Thought I'd post my write up before analysing others games - but off to do that now!

 

[jnebbe]

@jnebbe

Spoiler :

It has spread there. Chance for it to happen in this case is 0.2% per turn.
In my case it must've happened during the first 5 turns or so, while I probably was too focused on the tiles my warrior was exploring and didn't look closely enough. When I assessed the map for possible second city locations, it was already jungled, otherwise it would've been my clear favorite (I went for the dry wheat instead, sharing the deer).

Note that later on you can protect valuable tiles (often gems or pigs) from jungle spread by putting a unit on them.

Yeah I realized that jungles can spread like an hour later, no idea how I forgot that. I think I scouted it by T10 or something and it already had jungle so I just assumed that it was always there

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