Kemal
Tough Bureaucrat
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2001
- Messages
- 555
Predator
As I did not keep notes or take screenshots as many of you have done, I'm unable to give a very detailed description of my progress so far, so I'll just stick with some of the (IMO) key decisions in this game, and some general notes.
Starting off of course with the already much debated opening moves, I moved the worker first and spotting the mountains and lands beyond them I decided to move away from the starting location, for reason as have been mentioned already in this thread, but the most important to me being the ability to construct a decent core around the capital, and the weak (in terms of food) starting location.
In the end, Amsterdam was founded SW of the silks, the cow being just outside the city's border.
First priority after some initial exploration was to get a city near the cow, so I opted against going for a granary, since the food potential of a city near the cow would be better than a granary in Amsterdam anyway, and the upkeep of a granary would dent my research rate. The granary did come online later, after founding Rotterdam.
Both these decisions however did mean a very late coastal city, which was disappointing because of late exploration as well as loss of commerce from the seafaring trait.
Entered the medieval age somewhere around 1000 BC IIRC, being in Republic via the philo-slingshot, with a sligtly different city-build pattern than most of you I've seen so far, maybe it's not the right approach (in C3C, as i've not played much SP C3C yet), but after scouting the initial starting island and surroundings, and seeing only 1 lux and no coastal trade route possible, I figured a (very) dense build would definitely favour a Republican empire on this islands, due to the fact that dividing the available city tiles in many smaller sized cities instead of fewer, larger cities would be an advantage for two reasons: 1) much easier control of unhappiness, since more cities mean less unhappy people working the lands, and 2) fighting the upkeep cost of the Republic.
I also didn't foresee a very great loss of production in the city tiles, with the seafaring and agricultural trait both helping to increase city square output.
In the later game, this build pattern will of course haunt me due to increased corruption, so I was wondering, what do other players think of the best build pattern on such an isolated island?
Finally, a late reaction on an earlier post:
Though I agree with these strong arguments, I was wondering about what weight you gave in your process of deciding the next move to a factor against building further upstream on the river, which actually convinced me not following the river further, that being the fact that
- building SW settles at the end of the river, opening up more space for more river cities further W profiting from the agri-trait,
and even more important (to me)
- the possibility of the river actually ending just after it bends NE past the hill. In that case, building W of the silks would shut down the possibility of getting a 2nd river city at all.
Looking back though, especially the extra 8 (good) mystery tiles for the capital do seem to make moving west rather than SW a better move, I agree.
Now, for a few general remarks about the game itself, please correct me if i'm wrong, but has the Great Lighthouse been disabled for the AI? If so, shouldn't that be mentioned beforehand, so that people won't be fooled when deciding on a strategy early on, where they factor that getting the GL won't be a possibility because of prebuilds, and look for other ways of getting trading with the other continent enabled, or pursue another wonder that's actually 2nd on their list, only to notice the GL not being build by the AI at all much later in the game?
Not sure though on that, and I certainly don't want to criticise ainwood and the team for such a small thing, at least it was a good surprise for me when I noticed the GL still in my build queue later on.
And to conlude my lengthy babbling, great to see so many people writing stuff about their game, and adding in pics as well, thanks all, and keep the write-ups coming!
As I did not keep notes or take screenshots as many of you have done, I'm unable to give a very detailed description of my progress so far, so I'll just stick with some of the (IMO) key decisions in this game, and some general notes.
Starting off of course with the already much debated opening moves, I moved the worker first and spotting the mountains and lands beyond them I decided to move away from the starting location, for reason as have been mentioned already in this thread, but the most important to me being the ability to construct a decent core around the capital, and the weak (in terms of food) starting location.
In the end, Amsterdam was founded SW of the silks, the cow being just outside the city's border.

First priority after some initial exploration was to get a city near the cow, so I opted against going for a granary, since the food potential of a city near the cow would be better than a granary in Amsterdam anyway, and the upkeep of a granary would dent my research rate. The granary did come online later, after founding Rotterdam.
Both these decisions however did mean a very late coastal city, which was disappointing because of late exploration as well as loss of commerce from the seafaring trait.
Entered the medieval age somewhere around 1000 BC IIRC, being in Republic via the philo-slingshot, with a sligtly different city-build pattern than most of you I've seen so far, maybe it's not the right approach (in C3C, as i've not played much SP C3C yet), but after scouting the initial starting island and surroundings, and seeing only 1 lux and no coastal trade route possible, I figured a (very) dense build would definitely favour a Republican empire on this islands, due to the fact that dividing the available city tiles in many smaller sized cities instead of fewer, larger cities would be an advantage for two reasons: 1) much easier control of unhappiness, since more cities mean less unhappy people working the lands, and 2) fighting the upkeep cost of the Republic.
I also didn't foresee a very great loss of production in the city tiles, with the seafaring and agricultural trait both helping to increase city square output.
In the later game, this build pattern will of course haunt me due to increased corruption, so I was wondering, what do other players think of the best build pattern on such an isolated island?
Finally, a late reaction on an earlier post:
SirPleb said:At that point I now see four good reasons for going west as the next step instead of SW:
1) Moving SW and settling there will block the tile S of the current position from ever being settled. We don't know yet but that may be an important location to settle later on - the three tiles NW of it and the one tile SW are all mountains and can't be settled, this may be the best choice for a coastal town in this region. This was enough for me when I played it, I didn't even think of the following reasons at the time, I just eliminated the move SW based on this and therefore went west as the only remaining choice.
2) A city founded SW of the current position will definitely have some bad tiles in its borders. It will have 3 mountains and 3 coastal tiles, and it can't build a harbor to use those coastal tiles properly. There's little chance of it having any good tiles we haven't seen yet - it will get just 4 unseen tiles, one of which is coastal and two are forest.
3) A city founded W of the current position will have 8 so far unseen tiles - not a bad chance of some more good stuff.
4) The land may continue a fair bit westward, we don't know. We do know that there's almost nothing to the east. Moving further west improves the chance of a well centered palace.
After moving west (for any or all of the reasons above), next turn a new decision presents itself - is it better to settle there or move to the hills?
Though I agree with these strong arguments, I was wondering about what weight you gave in your process of deciding the next move to a factor against building further upstream on the river, which actually convinced me not following the river further, that being the fact that
- building SW settles at the end of the river, opening up more space for more river cities further W profiting from the agri-trait,
and even more important (to me)
- the possibility of the river actually ending just after it bends NE past the hill. In that case, building W of the silks would shut down the possibility of getting a 2nd river city at all.
Looking back though, especially the extra 8 (good) mystery tiles for the capital do seem to make moving west rather than SW a better move, I agree.
Now, for a few general remarks about the game itself, please correct me if i'm wrong, but has the Great Lighthouse been disabled for the AI? If so, shouldn't that be mentioned beforehand, so that people won't be fooled when deciding on a strategy early on, where they factor that getting the GL won't be a possibility because of prebuilds, and look for other ways of getting trading with the other continent enabled, or pursue another wonder that's actually 2nd on their list, only to notice the GL not being build by the AI at all much later in the game?
Not sure though on that, and I certainly don't want to criticise ainwood and the team for such a small thing, at least it was a good surprise for me when I noticed the GL still in my build queue later on.

And to conlude my lengthy babbling, great to see so many people writing stuff about their game, and adding in pics as well, thanks all, and keep the write-ups coming!
