GOTM 07 First Spoiler - 500 AD

[caperkins]

Year: 500 AD
Score: 732 (HC=696)
Level: Contender
Pop: 15.64% (HC=16%)
Land: 17.23% (HC=15%)

Dear Mom,

After settling our capital in place, we used the great stone resource next to Medina to build the Pyramids in Mecca and Stonehenge in our 2nd city. Hinduism was founded in Mecca and we've not only managed to build the great shrine, but also spread our proud beliefs to our buddies to the East, Rome.

Victoria of England has been encroaching on our lands, so we had to declare a Jihad on her after her warriors took the barbarian city to our NW, Goth. After a brief period of peace, our axemen took the city of Canterbury (to our north) from her as well. It will make a nice addition to our expanding empire.

Our economy is waning at present (50% research) and I'm not sure what the world has in store for Arabia. I'm planning a Jihad on our neighbors to the West, Spain, hopefully with the help of mighty Ceasar. Please do your best to keep the country's moral high, as no one besides Rome seems think we're that cool.

Do you think we could tame our camels and use them for Jihad?

Derka, Derka.

Saladin

 

[Yushal]

Thrar

Thanks for the advice, but actually they all got pillaged recently by Japs and Barbs.

 

[Yushal]

ald, what are you building to have so many troubles so early on?

I almost always build a worker and set him right to work, as this gets bonuses working for you asap. Seems to be best.

Either archery or bronze working (provided copper is available) needs to be one of your early techs as you must do better than warriors when it comes to dealing with the barbarians. A single archer can stand up well to any barb axeman unless he is caught in the open ground, whereas a fortified warrior in a city can be defeated by a barb archer if you get unlucky, which puts you in a world of hurt.

I try to get axes as bronze working has bonuses to it (reveal copper, possible mined copper, leads to IW, axes can be offensive as well as defensive, allows chopping) whereas Archery just makes archers and goes nowhere even if it is cheaper to research. So I only go for early archery if I see I cant get any copper hooked up after researching BW.

And of course, once you have researched one of these techs, forget you ever heard of warriors...

 

[armstrong]

Well, this was a really fun game - I'm finished with it, but I'll only speak up to 500 AD of course

First off, I decided to settle in place. I really wanted to found an early religion so I could build a temple and hire a priest to get the prophet game rolling. Settling on the hill would have cost me both a turn and also 8 turns of working a 3F1C floodplain. I did not want to have to research Monotheism early in the game, so I settled in place to be sure to found Hinduism.

First research was Polytheism, of course, followed by Mining, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, and Bronze, and then I went up to Priesthood, Writing, and Alphabet. In order to speed up the early great prophets, I built Stonehenge and the Oracle (taking Code of Laws as my free tech.)

From those, Moses was born, and founded the Kashi Vishwanath in 625 BC. The next great prophet was used to discover (most of) Civil Service. Due to my early shrine, Hinduism became the world's standard religion. By 500 AD, only Alex and Isabella were not in my religious bloc.

The real surprise of the game was the gold & gems to the west! I rushed my first settler there, making a coastal gold-gold-gems-cows-fish (!) site. With all those metals, I never researched pottery, instead I just traded for it. Also, because there was copper in the capital, I didn't build a single archer the entire game.

Here's my world in 530 BC:

The start was isolated, allowing for some peaceful expansion, but by 10BC I was run out of room to expand:

I was upset that Tokugawa had taken the barbarian city of Chehalis, since I was organizing some axers to grab it myself. I decided war with Tokugawa was the next logical step for expansion (I didn't really want to mess with Rome while praetorians were around, and there wasn't much point expanding west across that desert.) So, we built up an army and declared. While my city near the stone focused on axemen and archers for my army, Mecca built the Great Library, completing it in 440 AD.

I used my third great prophet to found Christianity in 500 AD in the formerly Japanese city of Tokyo.

By 530 AD (the closest save I had to 500 AD) the Japanese empire is shattered. I have 10 cities stretching from northern coast to the southern. As can be expected, my Arabian economy is starting to nose dive, but it's

 

[Conquistador 63]

Well i am on game 2 now and i hope i do better. I decided this time to plant right where they suggest but you miss out on rice and wine in terms of use. and i dont want to plant another city so close. If i bomb in this also then I move 1e to the hill and try there.

Any suggestions?

First suggestion: please DON'T submit your new game, as restarts are not allowed
As playing just for fun, I think there is much that can be learned by reading this thread, I guess initial settling position accounts for less than 5% of your game success.

 

[BLubmuz]

Thanks to people who answered my question about Toku, confirming what i supposed.
Only a last thing about this leader: probably he builds libraries early, and has always 2 S on,
seeing the amount of GS and academies he produces.

My initial build queue was: warrior, Stonehenge (interrupted for a worker when i reached level 2), barracks, warrior, axe, settler).
I founded 7 cities and grab 1 (in a very good spot) from barbs, defended by 2 warriors with a chariot and a axe.
The chariot killed a lot of barb warriors giving me HE before i went to war.
when Camel archers arrived almost everyone has feudalism, so i began to be warmogering with cavalry.

To avoid barb cities defended by archers i used 2 warrior in the jungle hills near Dyes, with axes nearby

Outside GOTM I'm now playin' a game where i get GP-MT before anyone (me included) has Feudalism ...
curious to see how these strategy works.

 

[armstrong]

I seems to always be trailing in the game in the last position. I got totally wiped in my first game Japan, Rome, and Greek declared war on me around the same time. I moved about 2 tile W of the starting and that was a bad move. I didnt have enough of the resources to compete early on.

From there it was just on bad move after another. 2nd city was by wine and rice. but it was so late in the game that the barbarians kept attacking me because i had only one warrior to defend.

Well i am on game 2 now and i hope i do better. I decided this time to plant right where they suggest but you miss out on rice and wine in terms of use. and i dont want to plant another city so close. If i bomb in this also then I move 1e to the hill and try there.

Any suggestions?

It sounds like you might be neglecting your military. Not only will a strong military better protect you, it will also make folks less likely to declare on you. However, I can't really say anything else without actually seeing a game

 

[bladerunner]

This is my first time trying a GOTM and it's been pretty fun so far.

I just wanted to second what others have posted about not finding any goody huts. Did anyone find one? (I'm playing the contender class) Lots of barbs and barb cities popping up all around me though...

 

[Thrar]

No goody huts for me either.
Good call by the staff on taking them away, the reduced random element makes for more comparable games!

 

[VerbalKint]

Contender class.

This game had my favourite trait involved – philosophy – and at a comfortable prince level I figured I’d go for trying to milk a game for the first time. The strategy I used was pretty much the one presented by hendrikszoon – getting to biology ASAP. Didn’t make any notes during the game, but I got some dates for ya taken from the event log.

My Research:
Wanted alphabet to trade techs ASAP, it always feels like a waste to research a tech you could’ve traded for. Went there by agri/AH as there was both wheat and pigs, and the odd chance of finding horses.

3610 BC Agriculture
3100 BC Animal Husbandry
2530 BC Writing
1630 BC Alphabet


Once I researched Writing I started on my library, and as soon as it finished I joined 2 scientists to Mecca. My first GS came in 1570 BC and built an academy. The 2nd came in 910 BC and joined Mecca.


After alphabet I can’t tell from the event logs which tech I researched and which tech I traded for, but anyway I got Code of Laws in 940 BC, and through the Oracle got Civil Service in 895 BC(mmmm bureaucracy).


My Cities:
Had four cities in this game that did pretty much all the work.
2440 BC Medina
1330 BC Damascus
910 BC Baghdad

<--- Picture explaining city placement


I really liked the placement of these, got pretty much every resource in the starting location with only one jungle tile in the fat crosses.
A funny thing about this picture: You might notice that every civ has a different religion. Later in my game JC got Christianity and Alex got Taoism, so no one had any friends at all.
Another thing you might notice is how weak JC is. This is because he was my early source of workers - I declared war and stole a worker twice from him, first in 2200 BC and then again in 1420 BC.


After making the CS slingshot I felt pretty happy about my game, I only wanted the Pyramids for representation to be a real science monster. However, a couple of turns before I would have finished it, JC builds them in 385 BC. In a way this was a good thing, because now I had a clear goal &#8211; capture Rome ASAP!
In 125 AD I researched guilds and started ordering camel production. Once I felt confident in my strength I went directly after Rome and capture it in 560 AD. After that JCs land is divided in two, I feel it wouldn&#8217;t be nice to leave him like that so I decide to capture the rest as well

More coming in the 2nd spoiler.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

No goody huts for me either.
Good call by the staff on taking them away, the reduced random element makes for more comparable games!

Oooh this is frustrating. I'm now trying to figure out whether I found any goody huts, and I simply can't remember either way. I'm guessing if other people are right and the goody huts were removed, then I wouldn't have found any, but I don't have any memories of being puzzled coz I couldn't find any. It was too long ago already.

 

[paulhager]

Opening caveat: Sometime around 200 B.C.E. I blundered, leaving several units on move orders. As a result I lost a city I had just captured from the Romans. In normal solitaire games, I’d just give up in disgust and start a new game. This time – and for the first time – I went back a turn, cancelled the order and held the city. It was only later that I found out that replaying a turn was verboten – I started GOTM without looking at the restrictions. So, although I submitted this game, it should be disallowed. In any case, I enjoyed this GOTM and expect to play again. I trust that posting about my game will be welcomed by readers/players.

Herewith, the game to 500 C.E.

Opponents

Julius Caesar – Rome
Queen Victory – England
Queen Isabella – Spain
Alexander TG – Greece
Huayna Capac – Inca
Tokugawa – Japan​

Options
I took the scout and extra tech. I had only played at Prince level twice before, winning a Space Race around 2018 and losing a Space Race by a couple of turns in 1973 (very frustrating).

Initial moves

• Decided to move one East to establish Mecca. Was probably a mistake – my general rule is to found on turn one. The benefit of the move has to be pretty great and in retrospect, I don’t think I realized much from it.
• Was surprised there were no goody huts. Makes sense given that game is competitive and a few lucky finds for one player could confer a non-skill advantage.
• I delayed going for BW, instead went for Polytheism. Buddhism was discovered by someone else – turned out to be the Incas – in 3640 B.C.E. Meanwhile, I got to Poly the same turn. As the game progressed, it turned out that I would end up discovering all of the other religions. Was able to establish Medina to west in 2500 B.C.E. and accessed fish. Got Bronze Working 2290 B.C.E. and immediately adopted slavery. There was a source of stone nearby, which would give me a shot at the Pyramids. I prepared to establish city #3 there.

Establishing the base

• I built Stonehenge.
• Founded Damascus the same turn (1060 B.C.E) I built the Hindu Holy Temple. Was first to Mono in 840 B.C.E – Judaism founded in Damascus.
• I completed the Oracle in 790 and took Iron Working. Thus far, I had pursued a rather bizarre strategy of churning out Prophets and going for religion-based techs. It seemed to be paying off by my slowly cornering the Religion market. However, I was concerned about the Romans, my next door neighbor to the east, and their Praetorians. I had been building Axmen and decided that I would try to found city #4 right next to an Iron deposit that materialized NE of Mecca and to the north of the Romans. I didn’t have time to build barracks as I was constructing my army, however there were plenty of barbarians handy and warriors don’t fare particularly well against Axmen. Eventually I had a pretty good cadre of well-trained soldiers. I also had made a major push for HB riding given the horses within my cultural boundaries.
• Tokugawa and then Victoria adopt Judaism (580 B.C.E and 565 B.C.E., respectively). I knew this was eventually going to be a problem. I ultimately handled this problem rather elegantly – I’ll discuss in Part 2.

Conflicts and consolidation

• The Romans founded Neopolis 505 B.C.E, beating me to the Iron site by a turn! I diverted the settler west and ordered more forces to the vicinity. I decided to let Neopolis grow to 2 and capture it. I also started building barracks since I was going to be going to war. Second piece of bad news was that Victoria beat me to Pyramids in 490 B.C.E. I was only one or two turns away from using slavery to complete construction.
• New city I built was Baghdad – Christianity founded there in 250 B.C.E.
• In 220 B.C.E I declared war on Rome and immediately captured a lightly defended Neopolis (see above caveat). The Roman counterattack against my force of Axmen was piecemeal and ineffective. Meanwhile, just as several horse archers were heading to the site of battle, Japan established a city just north the Mecca’s (fortunately large) cultural boundary. This effectively cut the road I’d built so my reinforcements had to go the long way around. Tempted as I was to declare on Japan, I refrained and continued to fend off the Romans while trying to develop the Iron resource. Surprisingly, I was able to secure peace with Rome in 100 B.C.E.
• I renamed Neopolis as Al Walid – Confucianism was discovered there.
• In 85 B.C.E., Rome converted to Hinduism. This would serve to make Rome much more tractable.
• Given that I went to war over Iron, it was somewhat ironic (so to speak) that the resource should suddenly be gobbled up by Rome’s expanding cultural boundaries. Fortunately, I got to Music first and used the Great Artist to expand Al Walid’s boundaries and recapturing the Iron. This also put the squeeze on the Japanese city. Over the course of the game, the Japanese city became engulfed and slowly digested, rather like an amoeba’s prey in a contractile vacuole.
• I grabbed a barbarian city to the north, which gave me more Iron and access to elephants. I renamed the city Ibn Khaldun, after the great 14th century Egyptian historian. I ended up building an army with an equal mix of horsemen and elephants. It proved to be very successful – I’ll discuss this is Part 2.
• Since the map was Pangea, I eschewed the sailing arts. Because I missed out on the Pyramids, I was stuck in Monarchy for an extended period but, surprisingly, this proved to be less of an impediment to advancement than I expected. Up through 500 C.E., I focused on consolidation. I had a good base of 6 cities. I obtained Bureaucracy and Mecca became a cultural, economic, and scientific … Mecca. I was able to build most of the important wonders during this period. However, I tended to build the wonders defensively – in other words, instead of setting up for a potential cultural win (which I like to do), I had to be concerned with the Japanese dagger threatening to sever my empire as well as the burgeoning English Empire. Thus, wonders were pretty much spread among the outlying cities. Judicious use of Great Engineers was essential to this strategy. As a result, it was my empire putting pressure on my neighbors and not the other way around.

End of Part 1

 

[The-Hawk]

Ouch... for the third time in the last four GOTM's, I ran into some hard luck early. GOTM4, I was one of those "lucky" enough to have Alex settle the copper immediately. GOTM6, I was hit with a massive early barb wave that slowed me down (finished with a late domination victory).

GOTM7, decided to go for conquest. Three bad things happened early. 1) Lost my first warrior fairly early while scounting. 2) Sent my second warrior out to scout, he was quickly killed as well. Needless to say, I never saw a goodie hut. 3) This one hurt.... after getting three cities up, I decided I liked a location to the NE. Sent a settler and a worker that way, escorted by an archer. Up pops two barb archers. No problem, luckily I had an axeman close enough to reach my settler via a road. I move the archer, settler, worker to a hill, and the axeman joins them. Of course, the two barb archers win. The combat log shows the archer vs. axeman had 2.9% chance and the archer vs. archer had 23.9% chance. The odds of both barbs winning... 0.7%! Of course, this is not zero, and I understand that 7 times out of 1000, I will lose this battle. Just wish it had come when I didn't have a precious early settler and worker at risk.

So, the result of all this was poor early expansion. With the loss of my scouts, I didn't realize how far away all of the AI's were. I expected them to be encroaching earlier, so I beelined to horse archers to go warmongering. Between that decision and the loss of the settler, I only founded a total of three cities in my core... should have had 5-6.

Anyhow, I bounced back from that slow start OK... at 500 AD the game is well under control. Togu is down to one city (left him alive to get a tech for peace) and Isabella is almost down to one. However, at 500AD I believe I still only had five cities total... I didn't think any of Togu's were worth keeping, and I only kept two from Isa.

So, this will be a victory, but once again, a slow one . However, I'm still having a blast.

 

[Grampaw]

Goal- Domination, using Cavalry and Cannon
I was going to try for an early religion, build the Pyramids, then the Oracle with a CS slingshot. I moved east to the plains/hill, and was pleased to discover the wheat now in the fat cross. The 2 hammers from founding on the plains/hill gave a great early production bonus for Mecca. Since I was going to research Polytheism first, I decided there wouldn’t be much for a worker to do for awhile, so I built 2 warriors while waiting for Mecca to grow to 2 population, then built my first worker. I sent my 3 warriors all out scouting for goody huts and the other civs and to steal a couple of workers. I had found in practice games at this map setting that the civs were usually pretty far away. It didn’t take long to realize that the goody huts had all been deleted. After all, Ainwood said a couple of months ago that he didn’t like them, so I wasn’t surprised to have a GOTM where there weren’t any. Eliminating them certainly lowers the luck factor. I planned to keep the warriors moving mostly in the jungles and forests, and try to earn a Woodsman II promotion for a couple of them. That would help with exploring and also the ability to better escort the stolen workers back to safety. With my warriors, I found all the rival Civs by 2620BC. I didn’t build any scouts because they were too weak, not very effective in the numerous jungle/forests, and couldn’t steal workers. The distance to get back home for an unescorted stolen worker was just too far. I was able to steal 2 workers, one from the Incans in 1570BC, and one from Caesar in 925BC. They both got back safely.
My research path was Polytheism (I founded Hinduism in 3460), Ag, AH, Writing, then direct to Alphabet (In 1150BC). I then traded for 5 techs in 1150BC, and 2 more, including Bronze Working in 1000BC, then researched Math. So I had no chopping and no knowledge of the copper south of Mecca until 1000BC. I built my first settler and founded Medina close to the stone in 2050BC, after building 2 warriors to protect the city and the stone. I have learned by sad experience how easy it is for animals and barbs to gobble up unescorted workers and settlers. I built a settler and founded Damascus in 925BC (probably not the best spot, but I used the Plains/Hills west of the western river. I started pre-chopping the forests around Mecca, waiting for Math and the stone to come in. I built cottages in the 2 flood plains west of the river. After I researched Math, I finished the chopping, and finished the Pyramids in 475BC, and switched to Representation . I discovered Code of Laws in 460BC and founded Confucianism, and finished the Oracle in Medina in 400BC, and took Civil Service as my free tech. My practice games on these settings showed me that I could usually or always get the Pyramids and Oracle this late, and usually it was after building Stonehenge also. I didn’t build Stonehenge in this game, however. Maybe the AI starting locations had lots of jungle instead of forests, I don’t know, but the AI were sure technologically backward in this game, and also in my practice games at these settings. I researched Philosophy in 70BC and founded Taoism. My fourth city, Baghdad, was founded in 95AD to the northwest by the cows and copper.
Since I still had a few forests left around Mecca yet to be chopped, I was able to quickly build 3 more wonders, Great Library in 70BC, Hanging Gardens in 125AD, and Colossus in 455AD. Hanging Gardens was rather a waste at that time of the game, since I only had 4 cities. That should have been done later.
By 500AD Mecca had created 4 GPs, in 1060BC, 580BC, 85BC, and 425AD. Two Great Prophets and 2 Great Scientists. The first 3 all appeared before any that the AI got for the other Civs.
Just as I had begun to build my war machine, Caesar declared war on me in 155AD. I didn’t have many units, but he sent very little across the border, only an Axeman and a Chariot. I wondered, where was that Stack of Doom that Monty always seems able to put together. I suppose that Caesar was just mad that I had stolen his worker, and he wanted some quick revenge. I defended quite easily with a rushed Horse Archer and an upgraded Maceman, my first. Later Caesar sent a single Axeman, but that was all. After adding a couple of units, I was able to take 2 of his cities, but he took one of them back with a Praetorian. At that point I figured I needed more time to build up my forces, since he still had more cities than me, and Praetorians are a whole lot cheaper to build than Macemen. So at 500AD, it was time to make peace. More to follow…

 

[culdeus]

Well this is gonna be a domination or diplomatic win. Not sure which yet.

Background: I think I played maybe one half of a Prince game and a SG in Prince before so I'm not used to this difficulty. I sort of settled on Monarch and haven't really moved beyond that very far.

Early stuff: Goal was to get three cities settled as fast as possible taking in stone, bronze, iron and then whip the hell out of the cities to get buildings up and running and a decent scouting military. I don't have a log as the autologger doesn't work anymore but IIRC I had 3 cities right around 1900 BC.

Then: I got the CS slingshot no problemo with two diversions for AH and Masonry. I was able to chop the pyramids shortly after that in the capital. I founded confused and it spread like wildfire across the world to JC, Liz, HC. They all converted. I built two more cities to take in the iron and the dyes to the east.

WAR: Izzy was my first target with an axe/mace rush that got me two cities fast and at 500AD she's hurting. Alex is next as he is some other religion. I'm beelining for guilds and should be rolling out camels soon.

Wonders:
Oracle
Pyramids
Buiding Great Library
Building Colossus (cheap and fast)

Goal will be to wipe out alex and izzy and take stock of things to see how well a domination would go or should I sit back and take the votes of my Confused bretheren.

GLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

 

[culdeus]

Contender class.

This game had my favourite trait involved – philosophy – and at a comfortable prince level I figured I’d go for trying to milk a game for the first time. The strategy I used was pretty much the one presented by hendrikszoon – getting to biology ASAP. Didn’t make any notes during the game, but I got some dates for ya taken from the event log.

My Research:
Wanted alphabet to trade techs ASAP, it always feels like a waste to research a tech you could’ve traded for. Went there by agri/AH as there was both wheat and pigs, and the odd chance of finding horses.

3610 BC Agriculture
3100 BC Animal Husbandry
2530 BC Writing
1630 BC Alphabet


Once I researched Writing I started on my library, and as soon as it finished I joined 2 scientists to Mecca. My first GS came in 1570 BC and built an academy. The 2nd came in 910 BC and joined Mecca.


After alphabet I can’t tell from the event logs which tech I researched and which tech I traded for, but anyway I got Code of Laws in 940 BC, and through the Oracle got Civil Service in 895 BC(mmmm bureaucracy).


My Cities:
Had four cities in this game that did pretty much all the work.
2440 BC Medina
1330 BC Damascus
910 BC Baghdad

<--- Picture explaining city placement


I really liked the placement of these, got pretty much every resource in the starting location with only one jungle tile in the fat crosses.
A funny thing about this picture: You might notice that every civ has a different religion. Later in my game JC got Christianity and Alex got Taoism, so no one had any friends at all.
Another thing you might notice is how weak JC is. This is because he was my early source of workers - I declared war and stole a worker twice from him, first in 2200 BC and then again in 1420 BC.


After making the CS slingshot I felt pretty happy about my game, I only wanted the Pyramids for representation to be a real science monster. However, a couple of turns before I would have finished it, JC builds them in 385 BC. In a way this was a good thing, because now I had a clear goal – capture Rome ASAP!
In 125 AD I researched guilds and started ordering camel production. Once I felt confident in my strength I went directly after Rome and capture it in 560 AD. After that JCs land is divided in two, I feel it wouldn’t be nice to leave him like that so I decide to capture the rest as well

More coming in the 2nd spoiler.

That's interesting. From looking at your picture you don't have the gold mined even at 500 BC. From the moment I saw that gold I knew it was probably going to be the 3rd or 4th thing the worker would do. Those 7gpt are so helpful. It does seem like you found a way to make it pay off with guilds in 125. I'm pretty far behind that, I do like your city layout to the extent that you maximize the resources at hand. I'd be worried about having enough food to mine the gold in Bagdad. Do you have a 500AD screen?

 

[DynamicSpirit]

GOTM7, decided to go for conquest. Three bad things happened early. 1) Lost my first warrior fairly early while scounting. 2) Sent my second warrior out to scout, he was quickly killed as well. Needless to say, I never saw a goodie hut. 3) This one hurt.... after getting three cities up, I decided I liked a location to the NE. Sent a settler and a worker that way, escorted by an archer. Up pops two barb archers. No problem, luckily I had an axeman close enough to reach my settler via a road. I move the archer, settler, worker to a hill, and the axeman joins them. Of course, the two barb archers win. The combat log shows the archer vs. axeman had 2.9% chance and the archer vs. archer had 23.9% chance. The odds of both barbs winning... 0.7%! Of course, this is not zero, and I understand that 7 times out of 1000, I will lose this battle. Just wish it had come when I didn't have a precious early settler and worker at risk.

Very often in that situation if barbs turn up, even if my odds of losing are tiny, I tend to move my settler/worker 1 square away if I can safely do so, so the barb goes for the military unit but doesn't take the settler/worker if he wins.

 

[urbis]

and in 310, I discovered how to produce maceman!

Well done! An excellent development and execution of a novel strategy.

 

[urbis]

It takes 1000 years for them to get doubled cultural value

Thanks for pointing this out - I hadn't known about this, and had sometimes been confused when I noticed that buildings were producing more culture than expected. I'd assumed it was an affect of some tech I'd discovered.

Also commenting on the goody hut situation - like many people I found none, and wondered if the map had been edited. But I notice that P.eter says &#8220;played contender and popped only one hut&#8221; - so now I'm wondering whether its just that when you start with a warrior the AI scouts are quicker getting to them.

And a thought about the discussions about Toku being so resistant to open borders or trades - my limited kmowledge of Japanese history is that it includes long periods were the rulers resisted import of goods or ideas, so maybe there's a trait coded in the game to reflect this.

 

[VerbalKint]

That's interesting. From looking at your picture you don't have the gold mined even at 500 BC. From the moment I saw that gold I knew it was probably going to be the 3rd or 4th thing the worker would do. Those 7gpt are so helpful. It does seem like you found a way to make it pay off with guilds in 125. I'm pretty far behind that, I do like your city layout to the extent that you maximize the resources at hand. I'd be worried about having enough food to mine the gold in Bagdad. Do you have a 500AD screen?

Baghdad wasn't built that long ago, and I felt the pyramids deadline was coming soon so I sent all my workers to start chopping that. Couldn't have worked both the gold tiles until I got those fishes improved anyway.
But the food wasn't a problem there - the fish gave 5 food each and the cow gave 3 - enough to have all the hills worked

No 500AD screen I'm afraid, I got quite caught up in my warmongering and forgot to save again until 1300 AD