Autosaves are gone by now, but I can see what I have later and post.
I'd consider doing a video LP. I was looking into it as long as 8 year ago, but never came around to it.
I didn't even have Chemistry when you attacked... so I can only imagine what your beaker rate must have looked like. But I don't understand how the difference can be so big. Earlier Astro can't be the only thing.
You should be doing LPs!
Edit... few minor questions
1) What made you ignore the fish-city for so long? The fish needs a border pop, but it could work FP cottages earlier, no?
2) I saw you teched Meditation-Priesthood before getting up a Library / having enough money to get to Monarchy in one go. Why not collect money before getting Meditation-Priesthood-Monarchy in one go?
3) Machinery before Iron Working, why? Compass would also be more useful than Machinery by itself, no?
1) Do you mean why I settled it as #6 or why I settled it so "late" as #6?
To the former I would say that it only added 1 tile other than the fish and had no forests or good way to grow at size 1-2. Pretty slow development compared to north of sheep. But I could see a 5-city dotmap possibly working out too -- in which you settle only 1 sheep city (north instead of south) and the fish city with more unique FPs as #4.
I'm pretty happy with its role though. It works an irrigated fp+fish and then whips for 3 pop (galleon or treb) whenever it reaches size 6. Very efficient. To answer one of Pedro's question ahead of time this was one of the ways I could produce so much.
To the latter I would say that maybe I could've added it a few turns sooner, but I was worried about the maintenance.
2) I did halt research for a while just after or during priesthood, but I also wanted monarchy ASAP for the increased happy cap and better wine tiles. Had to find a balance between stockpiling gold and getting monarchy early. I tried to time the discovery of monarchy with cities reaching size 6 and not having anything useful to whip. Teching meditation-priesthood first let me get a better view of the timing without making any spreadsheets or similar.
I did not want to wait until I had all the libraries and then finishing monarchy with 200g in the bank. I'd not be able to grow my cities.
3) What would compass bring me? My coastal cities were settled later and certainly not building any harbors yet. I didn't want to hook up iron/metal by accident either. I've had games where I settled on top of iron without knowing. Warriors are nice to have available.
My capital was low on food too, so windmills were a thing. If not to work, then at least pre-build to save worker turns later.
Well most of my questions are already covered by Lain, but I'll have to ask a few more.
- How did you manage to build up infrastructure + units with so many cottages and so little food?
- How did you manage the diplo situation? I see friendly Ragnar without the religious bonuses. How can Gilgamesh possibly be muslim as his neighbor is Hindu since 3500BC?
- What did you trade for, what did you self-tech? Did you win lib?
- Did you feel like settling on the wine eventually helped out a lot?
What kind of beaker rate did you have after Astro? I had 400+ bpt from 800AD on and still was later to Steel by 5 turns or so. The big continent is also in a much better shape in your game than in mine. The Khmer founding Judaism probably slowed down the tech pace.
I'd also be very interested in A LOT more saves (unless of course you decide to do YouTube LPs
)
My coastal cities were whipped severely. My cottage cities didn't whip much as their pop was pretty big. Most of the army came from clam+fish, fish+fp and sheep+iron (settled on astro discovery).
I got everyone pleased with me thanks to +4 fair trade. Very easy to obtain as it's based on how many turns you've known the AI (Pro tip: gift 10g upon contact. Pro tip 2: be careful as this can also backfire as -4 you traded with our worst enemy).
I gifted Ragnar Astronomy not long after contact to reduce chances of him plotting against me. He was so much more advanced than me that it could've been "now or never". He had every other tech in sight. Eventually he became friendly thanks to the HR civic.
Not sure when Gilgamesh adopted Islam, but he was in it on contact.
The Khmer were part of the buddhist lovefest until just before the screenshot above. They were friendly in my game too, but maybe it's been helping me post renaissance.
I think I had ~300 BPT at 800 AD, but tech trading and priorities are more important than raw output.
I don't think settling on the wine is that great long term in this game, but there's no way of knowing that on turn 0. With limited information/no prior playing I'd say it's strictly better though as it gets you off to a much faster start.
Trades and teching:
1) You do not need ******* Liberalism every ******* game!
I'm not sure if you actually went for this or not, but I saw education at 0% in your save. I'll make the point anyway as I've been saying this on the forums for quite some time.
Is Liberalism good? Yes. Is it required? No. Does it help in any way to get you to Steel/DoW faster? No, not here anyway. It's only "good" because it's on top of the GS list (GS are insanely OP at this point of the game). If for instance nationalism was on top of the priority list then liberalism would be much less popular. The lightbulbing is what makes liberalism so good, not the techs themselves (they are in fact rather useless most of the time). If you're not lightbulbing education then its value is greatly diminished.
It's just glorified trade bait. You get a tech for free, but it's also 5000+ beakers which you don't need (yet). If you can grab Steel it's amazing, but in a game like this that's not feasible.
You know what else is good trade bait? Being first to Steel. Being first to gunpowder. Being first to Chemistry. Being first to Scientific Method. Etc.
I did not even consider teching Education. My priority from the start and during trading was feudalism-guilds-gunpowder-chemistry-steel. Then I'd trade for everything else when possible.
I was a little disheartened in my game because I met Ragnar, Qin and Sury first and all of three of them already had optics (big surprise!).
Fortunately the other 3 were not as advanced.
I won't be too specific, but rather mention overall trading strategy. By memory I did something like this:
Step 1: Get mathematics.
Compass for mathematics with Gilgamesh. (At this point I have been teching masonry at 0% or close to it after optics while waiting to trade)
Step 2: Get calendar:
Immediately turn on 100% science and finish calendar upon mathematics discovery. For good measure I finish masonry for overflow beakers rather than putting 1T into calendar as it makes trading for the whole thing possible the next turn (did not happen).
Step 3: Get alphabet (GS priority).
Step 4:
Pro tip: If you finish calendar with enough overflow you can complete Astronomy while in anarchy! 2GS is not enough to complete it, but overflow beakers from last turn are added even during anarchy so the tech still completes in 1T regardless. Thus, if you can trade for feudalism right after calendar you're golden. In my case I got it through optics+calendar.
This approach really helps for trading as you can't trade for guilds immediately upon trading for feudalism anyway. You need to wait a turn. Perfect time for anarchy.
I then traded for guilds+whatever using astronomy (Khmer) and
was set to start on Gunpowder the turn after Astronomy (660 AD I think).
So far this is very normal and can be done for most isolated starts.
I did get lucky and was able to trade for gunpowder (Qin) shortly after, but as a result I had to research engineering for a few turns by myself before trading (required for Chemistry). I got no help for chemistry/steel.
). Question: How do you reinforce against Joao? You have Galleons with superior movement, but if he sends a few Frigates your way, aren't you kind of stuck on your home island? You kind of have to sail "blindly" into the ocean and hope no Frigates snipe you?
. If you beat this aswell I will rename the thread after you 
.
. So till next NC game i will just play along your series here. Pretty sure i can learn a lot.
