Four Green Fields

[lsgag]

i thought i give the challenge a try

Spoiler :

The plan was to get a religion and build the AP asap and to generate a lot of priests. I forgot that with the madrasse you can run priests but when i found out they kept comming. Furhter i forgot i could have used the camelarchers. I vassalised everyone with rifles, until then i build religious wonders and switched between no specialist and then when the city was about to grow to priest specialists. Fun game!

i ended just before turn 500 :/ should have gone faster for madrasse and go for the camelarchers!

 

[JammerUno]

Early GPs for capital production, then a religious economy coupled with Rep ('mids) and mercantilism. With the UU guilds is the target anyway, and banking's close then. Use an ICS with 2 tiles between any two cities, to take all the land you can and get the most of the poor health and rep/merc. Henge, Oracle, Mids, HG, Notre Dame, UoS, AP, Spiral minnaret.

I don't see an advantage in US until you reach towns. AP+forge+engineer+OR gets enough production for the basics.

Just one forest in the centre of the map might have been nice. Inspire some more strategies, since you could claim it and hope it spreads.

 

[Nares]

Hanging gardens is the best wonder in this game. If you have hanging gardens and an aqueduct, you can momentarily get up to 6 pop to draft.

HG is vital. You should focus on early aqueducts anyway.

Spoiler :

The AI has terrible production. I nabbed Lib and Oracle ~1900AD. Stonehenge was still available (in fact, every wonder was).

just one forest in the centre of the map might have been nice. Inspire some more strategies, since you could claim it and hope it spreads.

Haha. I was thinking the same thing, but with a single lake for chain irrigation instead.

 

[vicawoo]

Oh wow I forgot about Apostolic hammer bonus. My fault for never building it.

Workshops seemed pretty pointless to me beyond building the first forge. With organized religion you can usually whip an aqueduct or madrassa at size 4

Once I built a forge in the capital, since I'm stuck at size 1 for awhile I just run an engineer. I didn't build aqueducts until my capital built the hanging gardens. Tried both rushing the hanging gardens versus settling it, but overall the loss of the great engineer hammers hurts too much.
Overall I think forge before stonehenge hurts too much, you need that first great person so bad.

And I think protective wasn't nearly as useful as spiritual. Imperialistic, charismatic, expansive, philosophical, industrious, a unique building that gives health, come on, give us something!

 

[JammerUno]

Tried this, although I had to make my own map, since I have trouble loading anything but WB-saves. I think it's pretty much thesame though

Spoiler :

I tried oracle -> MC -> forge -> 'mids first, but as it turns out, just teching to MC is faster than building the oracle. Once you have the GE, it turns out the 'mids aren't the way to go, you'll have teched to theo by then, so rush in the AP, and start getting out those temple/monestaries. With OR all your cities will end up with 6 hammers. Then I headed to banking and rushed the 'mids with my next GE, for Rep/Merc, and now US/merc. Can't say the production in great, but every city is exactly thesame, and they manage to get out a CA in 12-13 turns, and that's without factoring in rushbuying, so it should be easy from here.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

I don't see an advantage in US until you reach towns. AP+forge+engineer+OR gets enough production for the basics.

Well, I think you've got towns, or close to it, at the point where the pyramids comes in. In addition, you get to cash rush. If you are going to apply beatings, that's really all you need.

Just one forest in the centre of the map might have been nice. Inspire some more strategies, since you could claim it and hope it spreads.

I did consider sneaking a lake into each corner, for chain irrigation.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

A timeline, offered for comparison

Spoiler :

• 1600 BC Medina founded
• 500 BC Damascus founded
• 760 AD Pyramids (Engineered)
• 1300 AD Oracle (Guilds/Engineering both discovered this turn - research disabled)
• 1585 AD Ottomans eliminated
• 1720 AD Aztecs eliminated
• 1790 AD Ethiopia eliminated

 

[pi-r8]

This seems really easy. Just pack cities as close together as you can, so that they can all work 8 cottages. Stay at peace until you get universal suffrage, and then rushbuy rifles or infantry like crazy. The computer will be completely stonewalled by the lack of production.

 

[vicawoo]

You only have 2 health, so you can work at most 7 cottages and you have the health cap for 5. I think for military victory it's easier to draft rifles or even muskets. Getting infantry is easier said than done.

I want to see someone try to space. And chain irrigation would make it a very different game, I think.

 

[Mikehendi]

I want to see someone try to space.

Here's a worldbuilder save with time victory disabled. (and moved settler 1w, every civ starts 5 free spaces from the side

 

[Nares]

This seems really easy. Just pack cities as close together as you can, so that they can all work 8 cottages. Stay at peace until you get universal suffrage, and then rushbuy rifles or infantry like crazy. The computer will be completely stonewalled by the lack of production.

You'll either need workshops to complete the pyramids, or you're waiting so long for US that you may as well use workshops instead.

 

[vicawoo]

What do people think about worker first as opposed to settler first?
Pros: massive initial commerce, and you start a granary right after a worker finishes for slightly stronger production
Cons: Far less settler production.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Doesn't the AI need to be able to make 2 kinds of offensive units to even be able to declare?

Spam cottages, beeline democracy, then smash heads.

 

[JujuLautre]

I has to give it a try

Spoiler :

After a quick fail because I was not focused enough, did it again; why do you need aqueducts, wonders, religions and techs for ? That's waaaay too complicated, archer rush ftw \o/

Win by conquest in 1420 AC, 7501 points for a Ivan the terrible rating; was a refreshing game

 

[peapd]

Report:

Spoiler :

Fun hour or so. Couldn't say it's much of a challenge - maybe higher dificulty? I guess the challenge is date of victory.

I played fairly poorly, conquest in 1890, not much compared to previous posters.

Tried the religion angle, but my hunch is cottages to guilds, switch to workshops and spam CAs works the best. I felt like I wasted a bunch of time building (possibly) irrelevant stuff like temples/AP.

Interesting though, maybe the next one is all civs on a 1 tile island?

edit: 4 cities, probably could have done as well with 3

 

[MyOtherName]

Space race on the original map in 2042 AD.

Spoiler :

I'm sure this could be greatly improved -- I only founded 6 cities, and they were packed as tightly as possible. I also waited too long to pave my towns over with workshops.


For my capital, I went with the opening

stonehenge until size 2 --> settler --> stonehenge^* --> granary --> forge --> oracle --> AP​

I chose oracle not for the free technology, but for the great prophet points. I figured those were more important than getting a free modern technology.

*: Stonehenge, granary, and forge were built by whipping warriors

Tech path started something like

Polytheism --> Masonry --> Monotheism --> Bronze Working^* --> Fishing --> Pottery (granary / cottages) --> Metal Casting --> Priesthood --> Code of Laws^** --> Civil Service (oracle) --> Theology​

The plan is to use workshops to help get my other 5 cities to build aquaduct/granary/AP temple/AP monestary, and then switch to cottages.

*: Comes in just before settler finishes. Good for bigger first whip!


The middle-game plan is to get to camel archers for military superiority, then beeline to medicine to lift the healthiness caps with environmentalism. I took medicine as the free tech from liberalism.

One happy thing is that all of my opponents kindly invited me to fund my economy by pillaging their lands with a half-dozen to a dozen camel archers. That was very pleasant, although it greatly increased the wall-clock time.


Somewhere along the way, I built pyramids (wasn't a better wonder to build) and switched to universal suffrage for the extra hammers. Never rush bought anything! (was that a mistake?) I didn't think I had enough settled great people to make representation worthwhile.


Once I got medicine, I think went for laboratories then democracy for a badly needed switch to emancipation.

I built two of the happiness-resource wonders to help lift my happiness caps, but those may have been expensive mistakes: I eventually had to switch to state property, which lowered my healthiness caps, so they weren't that useful. I should have just switched to free religion instead.


I started with my normal plan for space, but soon realized I needed state property. After getting that, I quickly realized I needed genetics. Then I went back to the normal space race plan.

I didn't have enough settled great people to churn out a spaceship at blinding speed, so all 6 cities had to help a little bit, and I had to do some serious repaving (town --> workshop) to win before time ran out.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Space race on the original map in 2042 AD.

Wow - 484 turns? That sounds painful. And stubborn. Well done.

 

[UncleJJ]

This was a fascinating problem and just demonstrates the incredible complexity of the full BtS game. Even with such a simple premise as an entirely grassland map the number of difficult decisions and awkward questions that are hard to answer was manifold.

Obviously each city is limited to 2 food and 1 hammer from its city tile. Health was the initial limit on growth and only the aquaduct and Hanging Gardens can suppliment it in the early game and with low production they are difficult and expensive to gain.

Cottages: are the obvious solution to commerce needs. But getting more than a few per city is tough. At 2 health a cottage city can only grow to size 4 and produce about 16 commerce and 1 hammer. A basic strategy is beeline Liberalism, Printing Press and Democracy to turn towns into powerhouses.

Granary: Did people build a granary in all their cities? If you whip at the health cap the 2 food is effectively worth about 1 food = 1.2 hammers without a granary for a total of about 3.5 with the city tile hammer. With a granary this becomes 6 hammers per turn and is quite good for churning out archers or longbowmen whipping 1 time every 10 turns or so.

Settlers: What is the best way to build settlers? A size 1 city can build one in 34 turns and work a cottage. But grow the city to size 2 (takes 11 turns) and then build a settler and you can whip once 72 hammers have been put into it. That takes 24 turns and together allows 2 cottages to be worked while the settler is being built. Are there better ways to build settlers in the early game?

Workshops: Initially very weak and not worthwhile, with Guilds and Caste System they can become quite powerful giving a size 2 city working 2 workshops gives 7 hammers which seems very powerful compared with what has gone before. That can churn out Protective archers in 4 turns and longbows in 7 turns; trebuchets take 11 or 12 turns and camel archers take 13 turns.

Religions: These provide culture and replace monuments. OR is a very powerful boost to building and wonder production if combined with Slavery or workshops. A temple allows a priest to be run at size 2 and it takes 34 turns to produce the first Great Prophet. What do you use that for? Settle for 2 hammers and 5 gold or make a shrine whch gives a small amount of gold and 1 GPP? Usually I would go with the shrine but here with so many cottage cities gold is much less useful than hammers.
Pacifism can be very useful for boosting GPP production for a short time.

Courthouses: Did people build these? They certainly were not a priority for me since the 120 hammers could be used other ways. My cities were tightly packed so distance was never a real problem and cottages paid all the bills. The AIs were backward and there seemed no use for the free EPs.

Pyramids: Very hard to build but potentially gamebreaking. Three civics are of use.
a) Representation is not needed for happiness and the extra 3 beakers is weak since there are few specialists.
b) Universal Sufferage allows towns an extra hammer and rush buying at 3 gold per hammer. There are a host of sub strategies using early US from Pyramids too numerable to mention.
c) Police State can provide an invaluable 25% boost to hammers from workshops or Slavery used to build units for a final push

Apolostolic Palace: A very powerful wonder when combined with temples and monasteries of the state religion. Gamebreaking if it can be built early enough.

Hanging Gardens: Provides an extra health and allows all cities to grow 1 bigger. This caused the welcome problem of unhappiness in my cities which was solved by whipping a temple.

Other wonders: Did people build any other wonders? Stonhenge was useful for me giving extra culture and a continuous source of 2 GPPs and was cheap enough to kickstart in the capital with Bureaucracy and OR. A settled GP was a powerful source of extra hammers.

Forges: The extra unhealth means these reduce maximum city size by 1 pop. This could be worth it in a few production cities to help with whipping or workshops once an aquaduct is built. Running an engineer at size 1 could be a way to get a GE to build any wonders with Pacifism this should not take long if other GPs have not already been built.

Thanks VoU. This was a useful learning exercise for me. The simple combination of low food and hammers with high commerce showed the limitation of granaries and courthouses in these special circumstances. I am a strong advocate of both these buildings in normal games. It was refreshing to see their weaknesses.

 

[MyOtherName]

That sounds painful. And stubborn.

Yes. On both counts.

 

[dalamb]

Conquest win in 2005 -- I just followed strategy tips made by other people (conquer with trebs and camels), so nothing to add. Mehmed was incredibly stubborn -- didn't capitulate until he was down to 3 wimpy cities (I wiped out about 5-6 bigger cities). Zara had rifles but not too many, and capitulated after losing 2 of his 5 cities.

Thanks for an interesting game!

Edit:

• It sure hurts a lot to have your water poisoned in this game! Basically "kill city down to size 1".
• I'm sufficiently oblivious that I never noticed all the leaders were green until my son happened to notice over my shoulder.