Emperor Cookbook IV: Suryavarman II

[Soirana]

i like the one with gold

Spoiler :

re: barracks - open log and try found out how late i teched archery. I tried theory about woodsman warriors from the capital. lost four [to be honest most without promos]

re: barbs - horses are seen in my save. Horses+archers +racks to give one promo for archers should solve issues about barbs. Overall i am inclined to settle on wheat+horse land ASAP.

re: granaries. Thank you very much. I need pottery for that. I am still teching wheel if you missed it. I also believe without means to raise happy cap granaries are not so hot.

re:Mids - 41 if i switch of growth. 10 more can be chopped away.
If you prove me you can reach monarchy from any save which did not popped gold in shorter time reliably i will eat my mouse with ketchup.

 

[Gumbolt]

i like the one with gold

Spoiler :

re: barracks - open log and try found out how late i teched archery. I tried theory about woodsman warriors from the capital. lost four [to be honest most without promos]

re: barbs - horses are seen in my save. Horses+archers +racks to give one promo for archers should solve issues about barbs. Overall i am inclined to settle on wheat+horse land ASAP.

re: granaries. Thank you very much. I need pottery for that. I am still teching wheel if you missed it. I also believe without means to raise happy cap granaries are not so hot.

re:Mids - 41 if i switch of growth. 10 more can be chopped away.
If you prove me you can reach monarchy from any save which did not popped gold in shorter time reliably i will eat my mouse with ketchup.

Spoiler :

Fair enough on all accounts.

Part of me would of rather had the GLH compared to a granary. I played with the thought of getting granaries/ Libraries out early than later. The bonus on granaries is you can whip more on food cities.

I suppose 41 turns is not too bad on mids. If an ai has stone you may lose out on this. As for the 41 turns for monarchy. By the time Great People come into play this 41 turns will be much lower.

The mids as a wonder is very powerful whenever you build it. The GLH given were on a sialnd is very logical too.

I do wonder if i should of cottaged all the flood plains instead of irrigated them. Still i put my own label on my game.

 

[pnaxighn]

few notes on game and situation:

Spoiler :

I do not think skipping AH or Pottery before writing is worth on this map.

We will have hapiness issues so Oracle sound good since it is on path to Monarchy.

We will probably have active search for contacts. It is hard to believe being isolated on Big and small unless we are really unlucky.

pnaxighn - unescorted settler?

Spoiler :

I agree on point 1. My tech path was...bad. Point 2 is interesting. I've become such a WESSE whore that I forgot monarchy is for anything but stupid wine. As to point 4: yes. This is something I learned from playing a lot of WESSE. If I have a spare unit, fine. If not, with the correct movement patterns and fog busting you can be pretty safe. And remember that I have the GW -- once I settle, the barbs are out, period.

My play to 1500Ad. Edit: to 1500BC of course

Spoiler :

Must admit i played quite slopy. It is half of miracle i have not lost my third city to barbs as i delayed archery. Well, i found horses just i am nowhere close to settle them.

I managed to scout quite a bit before loosing scout. Lost first scouting warrior too. Interesting land i would say. no close AI, no hapiness sources, not enough riverside grassland from my test, floodplains scaterred a lot..
And that lake west from capital which is not a lake at all. See, it is diagonally connected to ocean and so is huge source of ... coast.

I think you can guess my strategy.
Yeap, old good GLH for trade routes. Could not build in capital so beelined it and chopped whipped it in second city [2turn or one whip within completion].

MAybe i got used to Normal speed again but i seemed to tech very slowly. I actually whipped warior [being on21hammers] in capital to get some cash from overflow - turning food into gold.

I could not really explained why i started Mids in capitol. Probably should just REX on coast while teching towards Monarchy. Leaving Mids for cash is probably good idea.

I also moved settler for me question was 1W or 1E. I think 1E could have worked best but i went for pigs as food source.

Since last discussion about proper players and GLH being damn good on proper map [and i do believe this one is good - i see at least four/five cities on coast] I would like my save not being voted for. Let's call it a shadow or something.

Spoiler :

The GLH thing is the kind of high level insight that good players have and I don't. Wish I'd thought of that. Still, I think the GW is at least as good -- every single player except me has been complaining about barbs, and I've completely ignored them (except for my scouts, of course). Saved me a bunch of hammers and time.

 

[pnaxighn]

Spoiler :

Interesting save with GW built. I dont think your save is that bad at all. Once you have a granary in capital you can switch to 2 scientists and get a GS. I think at some point you will need to consider your economy. That far city to cover farm and food resource wont be cheap.

Also the city north of the capital is weak. I placed mine near the flood plains and pig resource. Although it will grab the sheep eventually.

I think if you just did worker worker settler build you would of ran out of forest on this map.

I tried to get more granaries set up early on in mine. Whipping has helped me a lot.

Spoiler :

I'm not too worried about the northern city. Its big issue will be food, and that can be farmed off the nearby river. We're creative, so its borders will grab the sheep quickly. It's on a plains hill, so flat out +1 hammer. Finally, our UB will provide an additional food, also helping with the food problem.

That said, I know it won't be the strongest city. I was assuming we were alone, and trying to fit in as many good cities as possible as quickly as possible. Given that I didn't consider the GLH, I don't think this placement is the worst ever.

 

[KingMorgan]

Heres my effort.

View attachment KingMorgan BC-1500.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Soirana]

I am interested how many positions for capitol we will see

Spoiler :

Honestly after moving scout 1SW1S i was inclined to drop initial setller on hill 1SE of pigs. Spending two turns somehow scared me.

 

[ChromiumL]

A little side note that I should have mentioned earlier... This isn't a total spoiler, but you might want to wait until you finish the first round to read.

Spoiler :

I had a friend (not on forums) help me with this save after I told him the issues we had been having with early victories. He assured me that we weren't 'totally' isolated. He also said he didn't make any changes to the map--just kept re-loading until he found one the he thought would work..

 

[Soirana]

Spoiler :

Personally i assume all cookbooks are nonisolated.

Skiiping part about fun... Honestly it would be very hard to evaluate who is doing best at 1500Ad. The one beelining CS? Aiming for TGL? Planing to bulb optics?

On other hand big and small has not so many oppurtunities to get you isolated.
Well, it might be my misperception but i do believe big and small has higher [than fractal i am more familiar with] chance of leaving without early strategic resurses [copper/horse].
On fractal emperor i'd probably risk to gamble on both with some fogbusting. At least if started without hunting and no deers/fur in inital cross.

 

[Calouste]

Spoiler :

Managed to settle 4 cities, captital in place and one each near the pigs, rice and sheep. There is a bit of a barbarian problem though. All those high food cities should get a library up and run scientists.

Teched Agri, BW, AH, Wheel, Writing and now pottery. The last one isn't a smart choice though. I should have beelined for Drama and get some cheap theatres and crank up the culture slider because of the lack of happiness resources.

View attachment EC2 Round 1 Calouste BC-1500.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Here's my save:

Spoiler :

No neighbors to fogbust for us, so I've built the GW. Settled 3 cities. There still are some coastal tiles to scout, as I've had some TERRIBLE luck with animals. Lost THREE warriors and the scout at their very first fight vs . .. .. .. .ing animals.

Commerce is low, but the capital can switch tiles to work 2 fp, still to cottage.

 

[RJM]

Spoiler :

A thought. Since we are so isolated, I wonder whether in this case, the game score might be rather better for comparison than it would usually be.

RJM

 

[pnaxighn]

Spoiler :

A thought. Since we are so isolated, I wonder whether in this case, the game score might be rather better for comparison than it would usually be.

RJM

Spoiler :

No.

Honestly, though, I think beakers/turn, beakers researched, wonders built, cities founded...much better measures. "Land occupied"? Still useless, I think.

 

[feralminded]

1500BC

Spoiler :

I settled on the plains hill. I went AG->AH->BW->Wheel->Pottery->Fishing->Writing.

I have a decent fogbust setup but I need to get it locked down before any Axes show up or else I'm probably sunk. I could probably throw four warriors at an axe and take him in desperation. Cottaging like mad currently to keep things alive. My 4th city was purely to help establish trading partners. I'm not sure how aggressive I am going to be to get on the mainland but we'll see. Not a single happiness resource is hurting but with any luck I'll catch some religion sooner or later. Working on a couple of work boats to get out and explore with. Modest start overall but not much here to work with. I am not planning on going for any wonders I simply want to get some scientist up ASAP to help my economy. I'm planning sailing next to help Trade routes ... but really banking on locking down the fogbust on my island.

4 cities, 6 / turn, 1 / turn, 6 warriors, 1 scout, 4 workers, 2 AI's met.

Next turn: Fishing boat, 7th warrior another turn out.
19 turns from writing.

 

[Gumbolt]

Its funny really. Chrom was worried that this series didnt have that much interest. How wrong he was.

 

[feralminded]

I too think on this map its a little early to choose since it's such a weird opening. I'm also a little hesitant to pick an opening with gold since that would probably trivialize the game (and feels like the equivalent of hitting the lottery).

I'd recommend if possible we play through to the next checkpoint and pick from there because there isn't that much variance yet and the couple of people who have majorly deviated ('mids/GLH) haven't had a chance to make their investments pay off.

 

[Soirana]

Gold is probbaly something we wanted to exclude by choosing no huts/no random events. Unluckily resource pop up can not be turned off easily.

 

[feralminded]

Gold is probbaly something we wanted to exclude by choosing no huts/no random events. Unluckily resource pop up can not be turned off easily.

Yeah its not the player's fault and inevitably by the end of the game *some* kind of resource is likely to pop but getting gold or gems in the BC ... and specially THAT early ... it's a crazy advantage.

 

[ChromiumL]

I just played my round--have to write it up later. I think my friend sorta stretched it a little when I asked that he make sure we weren't 'isolated'....

Spoiler :

And I have to say I am a little upset... We are on our own island, but it looks like we have fairly easy connection to other civs. Still, this makes a large number of boats necessary for attack (or establishing a beach-head on the other land mass). Of course, this does pose an extra challenge, and will probably make the game last longer than previous games have...

If people think this is against the nature of the cookbook (normally LHC deals with isolation), then I can just re-roll up a map and we can go with that instead...

 

[RJM]

If people think this is against the nature of the cookbook (normally LHC deals with isolation), then I can just re-roll up a map and we can go with that instead...

We've started, so let's finish.

RJM

 

[feralminded]

Spoiler :

Yeah this isn't truly isolated. Yeah it will be a bit more difficult but in some ways it will be much easier. I mean really if you can keep the barbs away there's simply no need for another unit for a while. The fact that we can still trade more or less removes most of the badness of being isolated.