GOTM 12 - First Spoiler

[JimBean345]

Settled in place taking the two gold start for early strong research. With the early presumption that this was going to be an isolated start or resource deficient it came as a huge surprise when I came across bronze, horses, marble and high food sites in the local vicinity. Surely something is wrong……

Worker-settler start with the settler being eaten by a panther on its first turn (coming out of darkness). After recovering from that early setback, the Malian empire settled down to a four-cities by 1000BC through use of whip and chop (city placements are similar to others but I pushed a city in the middle to take the cows/bronze/fish/wheat – this has caused quite a lot of overlap but quick growth of all three cities due to sharing the resources)

My early warrior had been on the lookout for a quick worker steal. A border pop by Louis stopped me within one turn of my original target that forced me to push up to Washington. When the opportunity arose with him camping his elephant, a new shiny worker came to Mali. With good fortune and using the French borders for barb protection, he also made it home.

CS-sling was achieved around 800BC and then started spamming axes and cats to take out Louis (I always like to take cultural civs down ASAP to minimize time warring). With a quick war, only one French city remained and two nice techs were taken (monarchy and calendar) by pointy stick research by 100AD.

Great Library & Colossus has since been built in capital whilst my northern city (bananas, fish and wheat) is starting pushing out Great Scientists at a rate of knots (running caste and soon philosophy). The capture of Paris gave me the Great Lighthouse (built two turns before it fell )

As relations were not great with Washington, my troops have moved to his borders at this cut-off point (500AD) with three maces in place. First city has fallen (Philadelphia) with plans to take the coastal city of New York (Rice & Stone) next and then to move on Washington itself. I think a few more will fall after as well

 

[Cactus Pete]

I, Too, Settled In Place And Have Been Surprised By The Richness Of The Resources And The Nearby Civilizations. The Challenge Of This Game Is Not To Win Or Do Well, But To Do Exceptionally Well. Going For Domination, But It Looks Like I'll Have To Construct A Lot Of Igloos.

After Gotm11, The Sparcity Of Barbarians Has Taken Some Getting Used To. Can Anyone Tell Me Why There Are No Barbarians, Much Less Barbarian Cities, On The Uninhabited Islands I Reach? Also, Civ Steve Mentioned A Listing Of Techs Available From Great People . . . Where Is That List Located?

 

[killercane]

Standard class

The goal is to score 150K points and achieve a reasonably quick domination. Domination will be affected primarily with Knights.

The starting position was very good, and allowed for fast expansion with the gold hills and piggies. I founded 4 cities prior to 1000 BC and a fifth soon after. CS slingshot was achieved in 1200 BC and an academy in Timbuk in 800 BC. After the academy, Djenne began working on a Great Merchant to allow me to upgrade Horse Archers to Knights. I attempted to build the Pyramids via chops in Gao (2 East of the Corn) but lost out in 500ish BC when Louis built them. I researched alphabet late and plan to keep the AIs backwards.

Techs
3800 BC Hunting
3360 BC Animal Husbandry
2880 BC Writing
2640 BC Bronze Working
2240 BC Mathematics
2120 BC Mysticism
2000 BC Meditation
1880 BC Priesthood
1400 BC Code of Laws
1360 BC Fishing
1280 BC Pottery
1200 BC Civil Service and Masonry
925 BC Currency
800 BC Monarchy
650 BC Metal Casting
550 BC Alpha
525 BC Agri, Archery, and Sailing from the AI
350 BC Machinery
175 BC Feudalism
100 BC HBR

 

[civ_steve]

@Cactus Pete: Here is the link that DaviddesJ posted in our SGOTM1 Team Peanut thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4135261&postcount=13

It's interesting to see how different approaches can grab a useful Tech here and there, with careful choice of predecessor Tech research.

 

[Thrallia]

civ_steve, a faster way to get a GP to research CS is to avoid researching masonry. That keeps all the later religious techs hidden so you can research Writing and CoL then use the GP for Civil Service

 

[BCLG100]

Moved the settler one tile south east start but then noticed the second gold hill and so moved back, 1 turn wasted

scouted out a bit and went for CS slingshot when i saw the marble hanging about, settled first city there to grab wheat, cows and marble with border exp. Forced some scientists and achieved CS slingshot in i think about 1000BC (been a few days since i played this) then headed off in search of machinery for maces. launched an attack against louis and now he's been decimated. Has a couple of cities left and im lining up America

 

[ElWanderer]

I founded in place after moving the warrior Westwards to check the cost. When the second gold tile appeared... I was very happy, though it did somewhat hint what path to take.

So I did my last Civil Service slingshot in about 900BC. Waved goodbye tearfully as I probably won't be doing that again for a while unless GOTM13 is on noble! I'm glad the Warlords patch has reduced the opportunity for going for it. EDIT: with this kind of start position, it probably wouldn't have been too difficult to get mathematics on the way.

By 500AD, I have seven cities, four of which are on the mainland (I made an effort to colonise some of the islands as I'm usually too slow at doing so). I've built Stonehenge, the Oracle, the Great Lighthouse, the Hanging Gardens and the Great Library. I've founded Confucianism, Christianity and Taoism. I grabbed the horses near Louis, so in return he founded a city on the Northern coast East of the banana. He's built the Pyramids so I feel I ought to build up a load of forces and rush him.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Playing challenger since this is 'only' prince difficulty. My intended strategy was early conquest to grab lots of land before moving to spacerace.

Scanning everyone's posts - am I the only person who didn't settle in place in the end?

Well I said in the pre-game discussion I was dubious about the starting position. After moving the warrior NW and of course seeing, as everyone else will have done, the lack of food resources, but the other coastlines to the west, I followed my plan of moving the settler NE to the hill to see what was there. Of course that revealed the 2nd gold and the fish, and I decided to settle just south of the fish. The spot probably wasn't by itself better than the start location but at least it still had the gold and was more centrally located in what I was now fairly confident was the peninsula of a continent, which would reduce my distance costs. I was also thinking that this would free up the very north-westernmost tile of the peninsula for a city that could take advantage of all the coastal tiles that might have been made unusable by settling in place (That argument is a bit weakened by the sight of the islands off the coast, but still, at this point I had no idea whether those islands did contain any usable land. For all I knew they could be bare tundra).

This all meant I didn't settle until turn 3. Of course, later when BW revealed copper right next to the capital, I became *very* happy about my decision, but that one was luck rather than skill.

Sent warriors off scouting and discovered Louis. Tried to worker-steal, but his cultural borders expanded to 3 just on the turn I was about to do it, auto-moving my warrior away from his worker. I decided to declare war anyway, and used two warriors sitting in his forests to ensure his worker couldn't now build or hook up anything. As soon as I could, the warriors were reinforced by an axeman.

2nd city founded by the floodplains south of the capital to pick up the flood plains, marble and cows. 3rd city by the river east of the capital, to use the forests there to create a temporary production city, and 4th was east of the floodplains city, to pick the horses there before Louis got to them. Learning from mistakes in previous GOTMs and WOTMs, I took care this time to start cottaging early, to make sure my science kept a fair pace. I built the great lighthouse and great library to help with science, but otherwise focused on settlers, workers, and military units like mad. I didn't really use poprushing - suspect I could've helped my civ a lot by using it more, but it's quite hard psychologically to use it when you can see that your cities still have happiness to let them grow a couple more points, and then when you hit size 6 or 7 it looks not worth it because it'll take the cities too long to grow back. I guess once we're back to emperor level and low happiness caps I'll be poprushing again.

Not much else to report. I basically amused my military by having them sit in Louis' territory, ensuring he couldn't develop, but waiting until I had catapults to actually take him out with. I reasoned that then I'd have my territory and his territory, which should make me big enough to guarantee a good spacerace win. My catapults arrived some time before 500AD, and 500AD saw me just about ready to finish Louis off. I had a large stack outside Paris, but was waiting for a couple more catapults to arrive because he now had rather a lot of archers in the city.

 

[JerichoHill]

I did move 2S and settled on a happy resource, but it was a good move. Spotting copper, I founded my 2nd city with that and 2 food resources, and built a mess of axemen.

I can only remember that Paris fell to me before Christ was born. These city raider 3 axemen would become a staple of my domination plans.

 

[Meatbuster]

I have a question for everyone: In your games, did Wash found Buddhism and Louis, Hinduism? I had a couple of local friends (not on this forum) at it seems to turn out like that pretty often.

 

[Thrallia]

Washington founded Buddhism, I founded Confuscianism, and Hinduism and Judaism were founded by other AI, but I don't know if I'm allowed to mention them here.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Washington founded buddhism in my game too. Neither Louis nor me founded anything (I don't think I really gave Louis a chance to get his science up enough to found anything). There was a real dearth of religions on the starting continent - up to 500AD buddhism was the only one.

 

[Conquistador 63]

GW founded Buddhism. Hinduism and Judaism were founded off our starting continent. I founded the other 4 religions.

 

[PepiUK]

Playing adventurer - I got all 7 !!

 

[da_Vinci]

Scanning everyone's posts - am I the only person who didn't settle in place in the end?

@ DynamicSpirit: Goodenuf and I also settled 1 S of the fish with the initial settler (posts 14,15), so you were not alone.

dV

 

[Goodenuf]

@ DynamicSpirit: Goodenuf and I also settled 1 S of the fish with the initial settler (posts 14,15), so you were not alone.

dV

Yes, and (IMHO) this starting spot rivaled and in some ways was better than initial starting spot due to the combined commerce and growth potential, plus it gave the opportunity for another city to be place in a better place on the peninsula to capture more of the shore squares; something the initial start had against it. Plus (as mentioned) it moved the capital more to the center of the early empire, and since the production rates were good, the battle units got to my Washington battle-front quicker. Once CS and Bureaucracy kicked in, the capital was... well... a gold mine .

 

[DynamicSpirit]

@ DynamicSpirit: Goodenuf and I also settled 1 S of the fish with the initial settler (posts 14,15), so you were not alone.

Ah yes, I missed those, thanks! I feel less lonely now!

 

[Murky]

@ DynamicSpirit: Goodenuf and I also settled 1 S of the fish with the initial settler (posts 14,15), so you were not alone.

dV

Call me clueless but I don't get why this is much better than the initial starting location.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Call me clueless but I don't get why this is much better than the initial starting location.

I'm not sure it's much better. But there are reasons for thinking it's a bit better in some respects. The reasons include:
1. It has grassland rather than plains around it, which gives some greater potential to work the gold hills while still growing reasonably fast.
2. It allows you to place another city to the west to work those high-commerce coastal tiles, which are quite hard to work otherwise (other than later on from the islands that are just visible from the mainland, assuming the islands are habitable - which you don't know at the start of the game).
3. Because it's more centrally located, you can place more cities near that spot (there's room for 3 nearby cities, East, South and West), whereas if you settle in-place you can only get one, possibly two, cities nearby. That combined with its slightly more central location on the continent should mean you get slightly lower maintenance costs for your civ overall.

I do think it is a debatable point though, and there is the obvious disadvantage that it takes 3 turns for your settler to get there. In the end, I'm sure you can conduct a very good game from either spot.

 

[Goodenuf]

I do think it is a debatable point though, and there is the obvious disadvantage that it takes 3 turns for your settler to get there. In the end, I'm sure you can conduct a very good game from either spot.

I suppose it depends on the style of play you have. I'm a builder for the most part, so the grasslands and fish were nice to have for the growth, and as DynamicSpirit mentioned, the commerce kick was good, too. The 3 turn delay was a hassle, for sure, but once I researched Fishing and started working the fish, the commerce input and growth pushed the tech path through the roof at the start of the game, essentially catching up the lost 3 turns from a tech perspective.

Certainly it's not far and away better than the original position; they are both very good starting spots. The latter is different than what most people did, and it will be interesting to see how each path turns out in the end.

Thats part of what makes CivIV such a compelling game. I'll likely replay the game from the original start just to see how I would have done things differently.