DocT3 Best Start Ever! (Emperor)

[Gyathaar]

4000BC:

city is already built, production already set to curragh

send worker sw

set research to writing, due in 40 turn on max, or 50 turns on 10%..

Set sci to 5%, making 5gpt

check that govenor is set to emphasize production

F10 shows that we are playing agaist:
maya(masonry,pottery)
french(masonry,alphabeth)
Koreans(alphabet,BW)
Celts(pottery,CB)
Japanese(CB,wheel)
summerian(BW,pottery)
ottomans(masonry,BW)


We start near southwest end of map.

3950BC:

worker mines incase volcano will erupt at bad time.. (will take 12 turns)

3900BC:
zzzz

38500BC:
zzzz

3800BC:
zzzz

3750BC:
zzzz

3700BC:
zzzz

3650BC:
zzzz

3600BC:
zzzz

3550BC:

we will have both growth and culture expansion in next turn, so raise lux tax to 10% to prevent govenor from creating a clown

hope the new citizen will be put on the volcano, but thinking about it I think it wont be put on a no food tile as long as there are tiles with 1 food available.. hope I remember wrong.

IBT:
Get culture expansion, and just after that see a blue border expand into the edge of visible area to the east.
I believe mayans and koreans both has a dark blue shade as primary color?

3500BC:


The citizen was put on a coast tile. Move it to volcano, curragh due in 2 turns.


IBT:
Volcano erupts..

3450BC:

seems like volcano eruptions happens after shields are calculated atleast, because we got the 2 shields for working on it before the citicen was moved to coast tile, so curragh still in 1 turn after working unmined mountain.

3400BC:
Eruption has ended, and only the volcano tile itself was polluted.
Set build to another curragh still, since the mine on mountain will finish in interrurn and can finish the next curragh in 5 turns with no shield loss (I believe getting more early scouting done will help more than a few extra turns of worker roading mountains).

Curragh was completed, so send it 3 tiles directly east to see if I can contact the civ there...
We do, its Korea..

Korea is up pottery and BW, and has 20gold... we are up masonry on them (and have 67gold, 4gpt)
Sounds like they met someone already and traded away BW or alphabet for pottery and 10gold.
In other word, maya, celts or summeria is on same island as korea.

Can get pottery +20gold for masonry, or BW for masonry +3gold

Neither tech will help us much atm I think, so decide to wait untill I meet another civ to lower tech costs or possible 2-fers, and save up a bit more cash in meantime.

3350BC:
start road on mined mountain, curragh follow korean coast north.. the area north of them dont seem much better than our land...

3300BC:
Meet a celt warrior northwest of koreans.

Tech-gold situation vs koreans is same as when we first met them.

Celts has 0gold, BW,pottery,CB , we are up masonry and alphabet on them.

Seems like koreans traded BW for pottery and 10gold from celts.

Masonry and alphabeth gives us CB and BW from celts

Masonry gives us pottery and 20gold from koreans

Still up CB on koreans and we have all the known gold in the world

3250BC:
Spot dark green celt borders up north of us

3200BC:
explore more

3150BC:
complete 2nd curragh, start worker, due in 4

3100BC:
Korean spearman moves ontop of celtic furs.. are they planning to pillage it?
Spotting what appears to be a small island NE of the celts.

3050BC:
Koreans move away from furs, guess they are not at war.
The small island north was bigger than it seemed at first.
worker finish the road, move south to road next mountain

3000BC:
Meet japan, they are up the wheel, still has 10gp, and is down masonry,alphabeth and pottery.. in other words.. they have gotten BW is some way, trade or research.

We can buy wheel + 10gold for masonry + pottery, but will leave that up to next player

I moved the citizen off the mountain this last turn, since the worker will complete next turn anyway, and this gives us an extra gpt

I didnt move the curraghs to explore the area we already know from the original screenshot, so missed out on exploring some tiles.

Haven't seen any promizing areas yet... infact, except from the grass tile 3 sw of our capital, I have only spotted ONE grassland tile that isn't next to another civs capital...

Didnt get as much of the nearby land explored yet as I had hoped, sorry.

Japanese warrior was near where the northern volcano has erupted.

Here is the save

 

[Gyathaar]

Since the citizen is not put on the mountain on growth, it will be 17 turns to build our first settler if we build the worker first.

if we build settler directly and join original worker to city instead, we can build the settler in 7 turns I think.

I think its better to build worker first, since I have no idea about where we would put the 2nd city. Directly south of the western curragh is the best spot so far.. whal after city expansion, and in addition bonus grass and a forest on grassland. I think I spotted something on that forest too, but not sure if a lux or a deer or if nothing there, will know for sure next turn.

The curraghs should have explored a lot more during the next few turns, hopefully we will see a place that can fit a few ok cities.. but I fear a lot of tundra down in the SW part of our island (still not sure if an island or if same contient as korea and celts)

Oh, yeah.. both korea and celts still just have 1 city each aswell.. japan has 2 cities. Celts atleast dont seem to have much better land available than we do... Entremont has not been above size 1 since I first saw it in 3150BC as far as i remember...

 

[Greebley]

Ok, I got it. I will contiue with our game plan of building a worker and merging to get a settler.

I will play 20 turns as you stated, Doc. I will start playing shortly

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Since I did shadow, I can tell you that the Western Curragh will find the next city spot in Greebley's first turn .Not great, but decent.

Well done.

 

[Greebley]

Trade for the wheel from Japan with pottery and masonry.

2750 BC: Pick up Warrior code from the Celts for the wheel.
2630 BC: Trade some level 1 techs and some gold for Iron working. No iron seen yet
2550 BC: Iron source spotted on our island.
2310 BC: Meet Sumeria. They don't have any new techs.
2190 BC: Built settler is on its way. Start a warrior.
2150 BC: Our settler is on its way to the promised land with silks and a nearly mythical bonus grassland.

Notes:
It occurred to me to not step on any volcanoes on our way to our new home. Losing a settler would be bad.

I will include a picture of a suggested spot to settle in a second post. We can't see all the lands yet so it may change when we do. Do not settle on one of our precious 2 food squares though. Go for Tundra or hill if you can.

Go for Map Making Early! We want Harbors!

 

[Greebley]

Here is a map of our world.

One other thing: I was reading Sirian's Sleeveless thread and I liked his suggestion for fishing villages. That is to build a granary and harbor while maximizing shields, and then maximize food (and use forest chops).

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

The city should be 2 S on a Hill, will have fresh water, and a city there is the only way to get irrgation to all those Grassland tiles (about 5 ) anyway.

And Fishing Towns...I love them; don't you remember the lession from TJ02?

On Techs...this is Emperor, we should be save with Philosophy + MM.

 

[Gyathaar]

Atleast there is lots of room for fishing villages along the southern side of island. Should have ok income once they all have harbour,markets and courthouses, so we can cashrush stuff where we lack production.

Edit: had a look at the save.. the islands north and northwest of summeria doesnt look that bad.. there is even a plain wheat on one of them!

this map really looks ugly... tons of mountains, the island where koreans live even has tundra about 10-11 tiles south of equator! Same on the summerian island too.

 

[Greebley]

I am unsure if we know that there is fresh water there yet...Hmm... ya it does look likely there is as you say, but you have to look very closely. I am guessing that you already know for sure

I do think we want to grab the whales.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

We want the Whales, but this will be another city.

Note I did'nt play ahead, I just build a Warrior before the second Curragh. And we know about the lake from my old screenshot.

 

[Greebley]

Ah that makes sense. I haven't been looking at the old map, but just the new to minimize spoilage for myself.

When we do place the town, I do like the spot I mentioned even though it will be close to the town doc mentions above. The reason is that it can work irrigated grasslands which will give it those hills and mountains to get plenty of shields. Once its got most improvments, we need, the citizens can switch to the coastal waters and allow another town to do the same thing.

 

[Gyathaar]

I wonder how bad corruption will be in the 2nd city..

 

[Greebley]

It will be low at first. As we put cities between it and the capitol it will get worse and worse. We could consider having it build a palace before we place lots of fishing villages between it and the capiol.

So we build several towns to fill the lands further away; build a palace; then backfill.

 

[romeothemonk]

Am I up? If so I will get to this on Wed, so someone could jump it if they want. Everything looks good so far.

 

[Gyathaar]

So we build several towns to fill the lands further away; build a palace; then backfill.

Unless we want to kill off the koreans and put palace around where their capital is.

 

[Gyathaar]

who is up btw? Romeothemonk?

Edit: didnt see that he asked the question himself further up

 

[Sirian]

And in general, I think 'Growth' is slightly overrated; I played a number of 20k Deity games recently, and hardly had more than 5 cities when entering the Middle Ages.

Thus my second point. C3C is significantly easier to play. The AIs are poor at exploring, especially across water in the early game. A curragh may indeed be worth what you describe, but that has nothing to do with relative playing skills. The middle man trading game can carry you along. You don't have to earn it the hard way, with all the AIs in early contact and trading like mad.

Is making the best use of exploration and middle man trading anything new? Hardly. There's more potential for it now, though, because the rules have been changed. The tactics differ slightly across versions but the strategy hasn't changed or improved one bit.

About playing skills: In the only AT4 thread I could find...

Hunting down examples of poor play proves nothing. If we're talking about two and a half years ago, look to the top of the line play. Find RBD SG7 Cuban Isolationists, RBD SG9 5CC, LOTR1 SG, or GOTM7.

Now if you want to say the average level of play has improved... sure. Why has it improved? Because the top players of old published some of their games, revealed their moves, and others followed. But the top level of play? Nah. A few more loopholes were found and use of them has been refined, is all. That plus Conquests has dramatically shifted the game balance over the last year.


Looks like my instincts were right. There's grassland what? About a dozen tiles away from the start point? And when the settler gets there, the city's earning 2spt and 2fpt for working the bg tile, plus that improves quickly with the worker mining the tile. How many turns to produce the first curragh? Not a full twelve, that's for sure. More like seven extra turns, so we've already made up five turns on the curragh just by having a stronger city. How many to produce the second curragh?? We're already catching up on the start tile by then. How long before moving would pass the site you chose?

The map could have gone your way. There might not have been any grass over there. Moving would have been a gamble, even without spoilers. (All those mountains on a 3billion map? Yeah, I'd have expected a massive mountain range. I'd -still- have moved, though.) And where are the luxuries? Might not be any, but the odds still say there are probably some on your continent. Wines in the hills would be more food. The only lux that would not help you is forest lux on tundra or incense in the hills. Waiting to see your whole land mass, as now I'm curious.

My instincts were correct: there was arable land within reasonable range. Those are the same instincts I had for Poly Four, so... Perhaps some players back then were stronger than you seem to believe.


- Sirian

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Now if you want to say the average level of play has improved... sure. Why has it improved? Because the top players of old published some of their games, revealed their moves, and others followed. But the top level of play?

But that is what want to say . Agree 100%.

Yes,sure, there is one decent city spot on the island. But since we have no neighbor on our landmass, I think I do prefer the early Curragh.
Is c3c really that easier? The main point here is the delayed contact and maptrading, which surely helps the human. But then, it was always that way in DyP - and I played a lot more DyP games than Civ3 or ptw. Guess c3c fits my playing style simply better. Brokering became easier, but early warfare got hampered by the resource distribution.

 

[romeothemonk]

IHT: Not much to do, pray for no barbs.
IBT:
Turn 1: found another iron source on our continent. Drop lux to 0%.
Turn 2: Volcano goes active by Japan. Find a beet in our southern hills.
turn 3: Spot horses and iron on Korean/Celt landmass. Find more dyes on Sumer territory.
Turn 4: Sumer picked up mysticism, volcano goes active by Carthage.
Turn 5: Volcano goes off by Japan.
Turn 6: Volcano goes off repoluting itself. Found Utica, up to next player for build, I suggest worker.
Turn 7: As the Sumerians are the only ones without alphabet, I trade alphabet for mysticism.
Turn 8:
Turn 9: Carthage builds warrior, starts worker due in 4. (No growth) Vetoable.
Turn 10: We get writing, philo due in 20. First to writing.
Pretty uneventful, but it looks as if everyone is equally hosed. I think swords and Numids will be very powerful as others will have trouble hooking up their iron. That might be an exploit that Sirian should note.

 

[Greebley]

Our chance of meeting barbarians is 0 with no praying necessary

You could have played 20 turns if you wanted to. First rotation is 20 turns. These first turns will be uneventful. 10 is probably ok too though.

Two cities. That is pretty exciting!