GOTM 17 First Spoiler

[thordk]

this epic speed setting somehow disturbed me, normally i play on standard speed.

well, i went an archipelago approach i used in earlier games: great lighthouse + this statue thingy. plunged my first city right where the settler has been, built a worker and connected that corn and rice. focused research on sailing and masonry for the great lighthouse. while putting the farms on the two resources i allowed my city to grow to size 2 then built a settler which i plunged to the south, two tiles west to the sheep to get immediate access to the fish, the city built a working boat first.

next on the list has been building two triremes for exploartion. i discovered the island with gems and gold long before i met any other civ, my third city went directly there. not overlapping with the second city and both gems and gold in the fat cross. meanwhile my capital started working on the great lighthouse, i chopped the two trees on the hills to speed it up a bit. i didn't chopped more since i need this production bonus from trees on an archipelago map.

with bronze working researched i plunged another city to the east to get this copper. i then research IW for two reasons: a) i wanted to get the gems connected, b) just one copper resource isn't reliable

my first city managed to built the great lighthouse and i pushed out some more settlers. plunged cities on all nearby islands to get access to wheat, horses and pigs. income has been very nice thanks to my two world wonders, so i even settled on this tundra island to the SE with silver. my capital then continued to built a forge and the statue (very nice income after this ) and i managed to trade currency from hatti or cyrus, don't remember which one. production in my capitol has been so nice, i decided to reasearch the north path and build the great library, what has been a success. my capitol now has three wonders and is pumping out GPs. got 3 great merchants so far and used them as super specialists in my capital, very nice economy

by 500 AD i had 9 cities, research at 60% with positive income with access to bronze/iron and cats. (traded construction with another civ). JC eventually declared war and took one of my remote cities i placed in a very poor spot to the east to get wheat, just to find out there's some wheat much nearer. i didn't shed a tear about losing delphi

i'm now at a state where i have the tech and landmass lead, with at least 3 very productive cities and should start to take out my neighbours. seems like domination/conquest should be the easiest way to finish this game as the AI is generally extremely poor on starting counter attacks on archipelago maps.

i didn't bother founding a religion or this "first sailed around the world" bonus. on archipelago maps religion will spread like wildfire, so i'll get any religion sooner or later and the bonus gold for the religious building isn't worth the lost rounds at the start imo. the GL and statue serve a better purpose. i'll switch to the first religion that i'm demanded to switch to

 

[dalamb]

Then I use the built-in drawing tool. If I need a cottage somewhere, I put a sign there. If I plan an invasion, I draw the arrows.

By "built in drawing tool" do you mean the alt-s for signs (which I just found via a search inspired by your post). I think you must mean more than this because of the "draw the arrows" phrase.

 

[Erkon]

When you zoom out to world view, you get a drawing tool (left most button over the mini-map). You can add signs, delete them and draw lines. The lines will be visible when you play. One use is to draw the fat cross of cities. One other use is to draw invasion plans. Another thing you can do, and something I use quite often, is to draw the cultural borders of enemy cities. This will help you when the culture collapses when you capture an enemy city, since it's very nice if the units involved end up outside the new cultural border (this will enable them to move several tiles right away).

 

[dalamb]

Thanks! I notice now that several of the buttons along the top of the mini-map change, toggling things like display of cultural boundaries. I suppose the drawing tool is what gives those marked-up maps people posted.

 

[Mad Professor]

RL is being particularly unreasonable in its time demands this month. It's the 28th of the month and I finaly start the GOTM.

No time to think and not much time to play doesn't leave youwith an advantage on this kind of map, I've discovered, and if I were to play again, I'd do some things differently - different tech order, some building priorities changed. Anyhow, here's what I DID do...

I've played to 605AD as I write, by the way. One thing I did do well was early exploration, finding those metals we didn't have easily to hand, for example. I circumnavigated the globe in 430BC with a galley going one way and a fishing boat the other. At 605AD several of my rivals are still yet to meet a couple of others in the game. Only one other has like me, met them all.

I settled in place, and once I spotted the copper to the SE, put a city on the hill at the SE corner of our island so the copper was in the fat cross. Then I noticed the severe hammer and food problem that city would have until its culture expanded... One of those not thinking very well things that has characterised this game for me. I put a third city near the SW end of the island for three cities on the starting island. I've since put one near the iron on the island to the east of the starting position, and a couple on the island to the NW, claiming the horses and seafood with one, and putting other further west.

Techwise I'm behind Hatty, but ahead of all others and I was first to Philosophy and so founded Taoism. I plan to be first to Liberalism as well.

Power-wise I've been way down and had to pay tribute a couple of times, though as a result diplomatically I'm doing quite well. I suppose a diplomatic victory is possible with a bee-line to Mass Media from here. It certainly won't be a quick anything victory this game, thanks to my poor play early on. I could also concentrate on military techs from here and build a decent navy and army and go for a late domination. I'm fairly confident I could win a space race from here too, but would I have the time?

Not sure which way I'll go yet. Hopefully I get the game done by Monday! Unfortunately there's a cricket world cup final on this weekend with the Aussies steamrolling all opposition so far. Just got to do it in one more match... Can't possibly watch that, and play Civ at the same time.