Round 3: 2050 to 775 BC [52Turns] - Six Cities
This round's goal was to expand to six cities and try to research Aesthetics. I accomplished one of them, the six cities part.
Note: The images are in spoiler tags to reduce bandwidth.
When the round started, I made it an aim to put all my espionage points on Peter, so that I could see his research. I eventually had enough points to see that he was researching Alphabet, but then he put 4 points on me per turn, and I had to put the points elsewhere.
That's an awfully early Great Lighthouse build date!
The game went on, though. I founded my third city here, by the floodplains. I chose this site because:
- The corn resource is an easily improved food resource in its first ring.
- The city is riverside, which means that I can build a dike later.
- The floodplains will be useful for cottaging.
- The city is close to the capital, reducing maintenance costs.
- When the borders expand, I can road to the edge and be right next to the barbarian city (for a possible attack).
- The other options were not appealing.
- The fish and cow city to the west has too many plains and only two food tiles, with the plains cow being a "questionable" food resource at that.
- The ivory, cow, rice, spice, and incense city to the east was farther away, wouldn't be connected via trade route, and is not easily defensible.
- The gold city east of Home is too weak to be settled early.
- As mentioned before, this city is immediately connected to my capital.
Ahhh, so
Bismarck (Expansive/Industrious) is boxed in by that barbarian city. He would later found a city whose borders would touch the barbarian city. As you can see, I have parked my archer there in order to see if the city can be captured.
I finally finished
Bronze Working, and elected to research
Pottery next for cottages. Was there copper? Yes!
I had planned on switching to the Slavery civic after the next settler was done in the capital, since it's usually best to wait until finishing settlers and workers before converting to anarchy-laden civics. However, the archer that just came forced me to change civics - if he defeated my warrior, I would need to whip Gold City for an archer. Fortunately, my Combat I warrior in the forest defeated the barbarian archer, who did not even bother to pillage the corn.
I dispatched a worker to improve and connect the copper. Notice how I am building workers in both Home and Floodplain City. I believe I would have 5 workers very early, which are important for cottaging as cottaging takes longer than farming, mining, and pasturing.
Meanwhile, at Gold City, my archer was 1 turn away from completion. Therefore, I switched to a Barracks so that the archer would be promoted when it came out. However, if an emergency arised, where the archer would be needed immediately, then I could simply switch back to an archer and have him finished in 1 turn.
The turn before Pottery was researched, I founded Desert City. It is close to Tokugawa, but it will be a while before we get "close borders" demerits. This was my fourth city; Tokugawa would found TEN cities by turn 100 (1500 BC).
Well, since Peter is my close neighbor and I want to keep him happy, let's sign a resource deal! Once one of us gets Currency, I'll probably adjust the deal so that he gives me gold-per-turn. I have little need for health resources now.
Peter has a settler in Novgorod! This prompted me to start a settler in my capital. Also, notice how slow Peter has been in getting border pops. Good thing we are creative and he is not!
Well ... time for the turn 100 report.
I founded fish city here. I waited until the mine was finished so that the workboat would be completed quickly. I also held off on settling since I anticipated Peter settling there, and I wanted to settle the city right when Peter's settler was approaching that area, so as to waste some of his turns. However, that never happened, so I just settled since the worker was ready to imrove the city. I plan on building two workboats. One for the fish, and the other to explore. The nice thing about the fish is that it is immune to barbarian galleys.
If you are interested in paying attention to worker micromanagement, look here. I have two workers working on Desert City. One is on a desert tile that is 3/4 roaded, while the other is on the rice tile that is finished with roading. Most players would just have the worker on the desert road that tile and then move the rice worker on that road elsewhere. However, it gives you
more flexibility if you
cancel the desert worker's actions (to be safe, cancel the action the previous turn after the desert worker finished roading). Then, move the rice worker on top of the desert tile and road that tile. Finally, the desert worker is now on top of a road and can move further away than the rice worker could. Think of it this way: the desert worker starts on a road with 2 movement points left. If the desert worker finished the desert road, and the rice worker moved to that road, the rice worker has 1.5 movement points. 2 movement points is better than 1.5 movement points.
HA HA! Saladin's work boat is stuck! I will be watching this city every turn for one of Peter's galleys, since I want to see what the northern landmass is in case I can settle it.
I want to make an interesting point on Floodplain city. When I was a Monarch/Emperor level kind of player, my habit was to just whip libraries ASAP (like granaries). However, I have since learned a better way to manage whipping libaries. If culture is not an issue, you should generally not whip a library in a city
if it will cause your research output the following turn to decrease. Taking the example below, I see that I will generate 12 beakers a turn next turn. If I whip a library now, then next turn the city produces 9*1.25 = 11.25 beakers per turn (due to the loss of a cottage) which is lower than the preceding turn. Therefore, I opted to let the city continue growing and working its cottages.
I founded my sixth city in 800 BC. I'm not sure if that's fast or slow for me, but I'm happy nonetheless. I am going to farm the floodplains rather than cottage as this city needs a lot of food. Most likely, I will farm the riverside grassland.
The updated map is below. Even if I can't get either barbarian city, there is still some grassland to the south I can settle, as well as the gold city in my land. I'd better settle that quickly before Bismarck gets any ideas.
Here is the capital, working on getting its Great Scientist. My aim for all leaders is to have my first Great Scientist by 500 BC. We may be tarry in achieving that goal, but I did have to settle a lot of land early. More good news next turn: another citizen comes back to work on the mined marble to speed up the worker (which will be my sixth worker for my six cities).
Here is the technology screen. It's not looking good - but no one has Aesthetics yet. That will, hopefully, be my key to catching up in this game.
Upcoming agenda:
- Use Aesthetics as trading bait
- Acquire masonry to quarry the marble
- Have Floodplain City create my seventh settler after its library is done
- Create 2 more axemen out of Desert City and try to take a barbarian city
- Don't anger Peter
- Work cottages
- Explore south with my warrior