First Prince game - advice welcome

[Klapaucius]

Hi everybody! </Dr. Nick>

I've gotten bored with noble, so I decided to make the jump to prince. I thought I'd put my game up here to get some advice. All comments are more than welcome.

I went with a random civ, fractal map, standard size, temperate, medium sea levels, marathon (anything shorter doesn't feel right to me).

4000 BC dawns! I've drawn the Ottomans, it seems. That's cool: I've never played them before. Here's the starting scene:



I decide to move my settler one south to found on the coast, and Istanbul is founded in 4000 BC. I decided a build a warrior first off: I'm fairly paranoid about leaving my cities unprotected, even this early. Founding revealed a hut to my southeast; I'll reroute my warrior to pop that.



I started on mining to get to bronze working ASAP. The villagers gave me some gold. Animal Husbandry would've been nicer, but you take what you can get.



I think for city site two, I should found directly on the marble. Two turns later, my mighty Turkish warriors beat the hell out of those lions. I set them to heal for a turn and then they'll continue to explore.



In 3790, I say hello to Roosevelt and Huayna. I hope HC doesn't get frisky with those quechua.

3775: Istanbul finishes the warrior and its borders pop. With HC running around, I'm going to fortify the warrior rather than using him to explore. Better safe than sorry.

After a little more searching, I've drawn up dotmaps for Redville and Bluetown. Redville grabs three wines, a marble, a corn, and some floodplains to boot. Bluetown isn't as nice, but it grabs me stone and rice, and with any luck I'll block the Incas and the Amis in the eastern part of this landmass.





And an overview:



Again, comments welcome.

 

[Cam_H]

It seems like a pretty good start!

I'm pleased that you're heading towards Bronze Working, as with Mining you can start on that Gold tile, which should propel your science forward significantly when worked. You're right though - Animal Husbandry would be great to pick up from a goodie hut.

It would be nice to know what's to the west of the Stone before getting too fixated with the location of the blue city. You could have more success by having two cities - one covering the Stone while another to the east covering the Rice.

Is that water to your north a fresh water lake or ocean and coast?

 

[pigswill]

Seem to be doing ok. I'd have thought you'd have been better off starting with a worker and researching mining, AH first then bronzeworking. Animals don't cross borders and you've got loads of time (probably c 2500bc) before barbs show up.
Reason for AH before bronze is that unless you're lucky enough to get copper in BFC you'll need a settler first; getting the cows pastured would enable you to get a settler out faster. Gold obviously for commerce.

 

[dutchfire]

I'd say build a worker soon, and explore in the other directions, to see where the americans and incas settled.

 

[Klapaucius]

Thanks for checking in, folks

Thinking about it, I'll probably switch to AH after mining and grab bronze working after that.

My general line of thinking tech-wise is to beeline to gunpowder. With a UU like the janissary I could run a real risk of having it become obsolete without ever building one of them. I'm not sure how efficient a gunpowder beeline is long-term, but at least this way I'll get some in before chemistry comes in.

 

[Klapaucius]

A few more turns.

The Short Version:

I meet some more neighbors, hook up some shinies, and found Hinduism.

The Longer Version:



3685: I find the Inca homeland. Also, surprisingly, no religions founded yet. Guess that means no Izzy, Monty, etc. I'm somewhat debating grabbing Hinduism or Judaism for the sake of grabbing it.

3670: Mining comes in and I start heading on Meditation -> Polytheism. If I miss that, no real harm done, but I reckon it's worth trying.



3640: Buddhism FIDL. Also, moving my warrior a couple squares west of blue dot finds cows and incense. I'm debating between founding directly on the cows and founding one square south. One square south means I can work the cows but it also overlaps with Istanbul and I lose the coastline. I'm thinking that it's better to found on the cows but I'm happy to be persuaded otherwise



3550: Ghandi shows up. I'm not hugely fond of starting close to Ghandi: it seems like I always wind up needing to invade him, and it always feels like kicking a puppy.

3355: Meditation comes in, I start on Polytheism. Come on Vishnu, don't let me down.

3325: Worker comes in; I send him to mine me some gold and start a warrior to let Istanbul grow. Settler next.



3295 - 3265: I find Peter and Cyrus in quick succession. Starting to wonder if I'm on a pangaea.



3235: Bede tells me I'm bigger than Ghandi. Well, it's better than nothing.

3205: My mighty Turkish warriors bludgeon another lion to death. The Istanbul SPCA sends me a nasty letter.

3145: Huh, weird: here's Izzy (screenshot didn't come out). I'm shocked that it took her so long to get Buddhism. Definitely seems like I'm on a pangaea.



2905: Vishnu be praised.