Aah... Why didn't I thought about that? Anyway I wanted city close to dye so I can tap on it later. And guess what else I frakked up? I have worker clearing out the jungle from the dye, even though I can't do frak with the dye ATM. And other worker across the river is building cottage. If war happens, guess what tiles Mayas will raze first?
Good thinking about the exposed cottages -- this is even more important when playing against humans. In this case, the Mayans would actually be protected by the river at Wonsan if they were to draw up their forces en masse on that tile; that's another problem with rivers as defensive locations.
Dyes are quite useful, but since you can use Hereditary Rule to mitigate (or even nullify) your problems with happiness, while Calendar isn't yet on the horizon, the need for dyes was probably not immediate. It wasn't a bad idea to remove the jungle, though -- as a Financial leader, you can place a farm the riverside dyes for an excellent tile yielding 3
and 3
, which will also help your research rate.
I'll fire up the game, change construction from cottage to farm and worker at the jungle will set up mine on the desert hill.
Desert hill mines are awful tiles, with their
per turn matching unimproved forested plains hills. I think you should remove the jungle from the grassland hill SW of the city and mine that instead; Wonsan will appreciate the extra food.
I need make this city culture powerhouse so it won't get swallowed up by that of the Mayas, and for that I need some production going on. Could as well change from granary to monument.
That's probably the Mayan capital's third-ring borders approaching Wonsan. In that case, the borders won't pop again until that city reaches 1000 culture. Unless Pacal bombs you with a Great Artist -- whom he cannot reasonably produce before he adopts Caste System, and even then it's very unlikely that he gets one unless he's the first civ to Music -- Wonsan should be safe for a while, given that it can produce its own culture with religion in the meantime. If Pacal amasses some wonders in his capital, you may want to consider cultural countermeasures -- but no earlier. The important floodplains tile that you may have thought under threat is located within your first ring, so you should notice when Mayan culture begins to attack Wonsan's fat cross with ample forewarning before the city really loses its tiles.
Unless you're Charismatic, monuments are monumentally terrible buildings and you never want to construct one if you can help it. Sometimes, exceptions must be made when you need to access an important resource in a freshly-founded city, should you have no other means to pop borders (Creative trait, religion, library, Incan Terrace, artist specialists from Caste System) -- because all those other means either come "for free" (Creative; in fact, your investment here is selecting Creative as your trait instead of others when the game starts), only waste a few turns (artists), or give you other benefits (all the others). Even Charismatic leaders do not usually need to build monuments everywhere, because Hereditary Rule (or Representation) makes a mockery of happiness constraints.
By the way, I haven't adopted slavery, so no whipping for me.
When you're not using the whip, you're effectively playing two difficulty levels above the one you've selected, since the AI gets an enormous "production modifier" compared to you, that is to say, the whip. I think it fits in well with the spirit of the challenge, though.
Mayas beat me to it and have set up culture border across the river in the north. I suspect they have city just by the river. I consider building city on the forest hill near wheat where swordsman is standing on. Would I risk it flipping onto Mayas?
In this case, culture is a bigger threat because that Mayan city will pop third-ring borders sooner than yours could. The unforested plains hill may be a safe location because culture spreads more slowly on the diagonals; you must expect to lose a few tiles to Mayan culture, but the wheat and some floodplains could be worked.
Should I just give up on the north plains, deserts, and wheat? Beyond that to the north comes tundra, snow, and north pole anyway, but I'll send swordsman to explore some more and recall axman (with swordsman) back to Wonsan.
It may prove worthwhile to explore east of your capital -- I see a plains cow at least, which becomes a much stronger tile when you're not using the whip, since you won't need as much excess food to convert into production, and +6 bonuses or the like will often amount to overkill.
I'm falling behind in tech race. I must build libraries soon after I have made enough swordsmen to complete the quest.
No, you must build cities -- that's the true reason you're falling behind in tech. You should build at least two cities in short order and get them up to speed, with Financial-boosted cottages if possible, to increase your empire's commerce. Alternatively, you can conquer Pacal's cities, but this will be more difficult to pull off and if you can't finish him quickly, you're in deep trouble with a small, exhausted empire, as every dead military unit amounts to a loss of
, of which you have preciously few (no whips).
Here's why libraries aren't going to help all that much: Suppose that Wonsan were working a single riverside Financial cottage and no other commerce-yielding tiles. Then the city would yield 4 beakers per turn at 100% science. A library costs 90
, which will take more than twelve turns without using whips or chops, and then it yields one extra beaker per turn at 100% science; due to rounding, if you turn down the research slider, it may not produce even that. If Wonsan were working more cottages, you would be working fewer mines instead, and the library would take even longer to finish. -- During this time, you could have built a settler for 100
/
and laid down two riverside Financial cottages at the new city, whose commerce yield equates to 6 beakers per turn at 100% science. To get as much output from a library, a city would have to produce
24 [= 6 * 4] commerce per turn -- Seoul alone can manage that at this point, I think, thanks to the palace and mature Financial cottages.
(The calculations are slightly imprecise here because every new city costs maintenance per pop point; but these costs are rather negligible on Noble difficulty.)
Libraries do have a very good use: you want to run Scientist specialists in at least one food-rich city to produce Great Scientists. When food is abundant, an empire can also base its research on lots of Scientist specialists in every city rather than cottages, but you don't have that luxury on this map and, what's more, the Financial trait has no effect on specialists, whereas Financial cottages really take off the ground.
Quick summary: Libraries tend to take longer to build than settlers plus cottages for a much lower yield of beakers per turn. Libraries accomplish little in low-food cities lacking cottages. Only the capital and the Great Scientist farm (which may be identical, although it's not optimal) should build libraries early. Get the rest of your research from cities working Financial cottages. You must leverage your excellent trait here. It's the only one you have, since Protective doesn't count.
I will also make workshops on plains tiles right after metal casting gets
researched.
When they are first unlocked, workshops transform plains (1
, 1
) into pseudo-engineers (2
). The output of pseudo-engineers is outmatched by desert hill mines (-1
in comparison) and unimproved plains forests (-1
), as well as actual engineers (-3 Great People Points).
Workshops improve as certain techs (Guilds, Chemistry) and civics (Caste System, State Property) get unlocked. At the outset, they perform
very poorly. I think you should consider them when you reach Guilds (a tech that you can often trade for, since the AI tends to favor the path that starts at Metal Casting) and have adopted Caste System, but no earlier.
Metal Casting can help you with production if you install forges in your cities, although forges are very expensive at 120
. You may want to run an Engineer specialist in one of your food-rich cities for a Great Engineer down the line, whom you can put to sleep until it's time to rush a critical wonder (Taj Mahal, perhaps). As detailed above, engineers flat-out beat plains workshops at this stage of the game, so you can even save worker labor.
I'm not sure if you should even research Metal Casting right now -- Mathematics may be much better if you need immediate production, since it unlocks the chopping bonus and leads you towards further valuable techs (Calendar, Construction, Currency, Code of Laws). Apart from that, Alphabet could help you trade for some techs that you're lacking. Which techs have you researched at this point?
What comes to Pyongyang and forest hill, barbarians come occasionally from there. I would need permanent garrison in there until I get bridges (unless I have wrong understanding of the movement mechanics)
Barbarians cannot spawn on tiles that are currently visible to you; if you move military units onto hills outside of your borders, they can act as sentries to reduce the influx of barbarians and warn you in advance when they do encroach on your position.
Edit: I'm not quite sure if you meant that with your remark on movement mechanics, but enemy units cannot use your roads, except if they have the Commando promotion. They can use (or pillage) roads in neutral (non-cultured) territory.
![[party]](/images/smilies/partytime.gif "Party [party]")
-- I agree that the ivory/bananas region looks promising for a future city, but since Calendar won't come online in a while, you would find that city's growth stunted. There's no immediate need for horses since you have secured iron now, and the barbs won't bring anything scarier than axemen for a while; besides, you'll be wanting to build swordsmen rather than horse archers until Construction, due to your quest. While ivory is always helpful for the happiness it provides, you have a religion to bolster your happiness and you're researching Monarchy right now for Hereditary Rule. 
+ 1 from palace + 1 from state religion), you should whip the surplus population away and start producing more settlers and workers, best accomplished by using overflow from whipping military units.
