Gr5 - Persian AW Demigod, Standard Continents

[LKendter]

I now see the orange dot. The orange blended into the hill too much for me.
I added it to my dot map as black dot.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

lurker's comment: You can NOT get barbs from a hut if you settle a city next to it.

edit: Here is the source to back it up. Link.

[Chances of] Barbarians:
--Player must not have Expansionist trait.
--There must not be a city within a 1-tile radius.
--The player must have at least 1 city.
--The player must have at least 1 military unit.
--The unit popping the hut must not have the "All Terrain As Roads" ability.

edit2: Crosspost with bed_head7, always nice to have a backup.

 

[bed_head7]

Actually, when the hut is within a city's 1 tile radius, the hut cannot give barbs, so the hut could actually help us out. Who knows, we might even get a tech. However, the spot is not great. I would prefer to be next to the volcano (which, I forgot to mention, erupted during my turns, but there is no visible pollution) and the coast, though that opens up the possibility of a city burned in lava.

The benefit of having a warrior/settler factory and having the rest focus on military is that we can ship out the spearmen in the core with settlers as we spread and leave warriors for MP behind the lines. It also should mean faster overall expansion than if we built settlers from anywhere but Persepolis.

 

[handy900]

You can NOT get barbs from a hut if you settle a city next to it.

Thanks Ginger.

And Bed - aren't you supposed to be studying.

 

[bed_head7]

Yeah, mom. Sorry.

 

[Northern Pike]

1500 BC, end of turn

 

[Northern Pike]

1725 (1): I agree with BH that getting Persepolis onto a four-turn warrior/settler cycle is worth a little trouble, so I send a worker to start irrigating its game tile.


1700 (2): Persepolis settler --> warrior, River Hills barracks --> spearman (later switched to Immortal).


1675 (3): Persepolis warrior --> settler.


1650 (4): We found Shiraz southwest of the gold hill.


1625 (5): Zzzz....


1600 (6): We discover Iron Working, and we have one iron. It's underneath River Hills, which is perhaps too much of a good thing, since now we can't build warriors to upgrade to Immortals. At least we should be able to manage Persepolis more flexibly with the game tile irrigated.

Persepolis settler --> spearman, Arbela barracks --> Immortal.


1575 (7): Although I'm not exploring, a worker move reveals apparent coastline four squares roughly northwest of River Hills. It's possible that we're on a fat peninsula, connected to the rest of our continent only in the northeast.


1550 (8): Persepolis spearman --> settler.


1525 (9): We found Gordium in the southwest. It has three BG, one shared with Arbela.

Persepolis's second cultural expansion disturbs three barbs from the nearby goodie hut. Our developed tiles in the area are protected.


1500 (10): No contacts yet. This is either an excellent start, or a wretched one because we're alone on an island.

 

[Northern Pike]

I've started researching Alphabet, for the usual AW reason (catapults). But since there are various valid tech choices at this point, and we haven't had any discussion, I've just been running research at 10% and letting a little gold accumulate. So we can switch to anything; but once we've made a decision, we should raise the science rate.

Our next city should claim the nearby spices. If I'm right about how the coastline runs, that direction should be quite safe.

Should we start pre-building the Great Library? And on a closely related point, do we consider it exploitative to keep the pre-build city right below 300 shields until we get Literature by putting it into disorder? Bed Head's view on this I know already.

Persepolis can produce a settler and an Immortal in six turns, a settler and a spearman in five turns, or just a settler in four turns, with more shared tiles made available to other cities in the latter case.

 

[bed_head7]

It's underneath River Hills, which is perhaps too much of a good thing, since now we can't build warriors to upgrade to Immortals. At least we should be able to manage Persepolis more flexibly with the game tile irrigated.

How lucky for us!

[I forgot to mention this during my turns. Can we please have workers road tiles separately, and then stack them for mining, except in absolute emergencies? Roading two tiles when stacked takes four turns for us, roading two tiles separately takes three turns.

I feel doing what you suggested concerning disorder, NP, would be a little less exploitative in this case, since we at least would probably lose barracks and walls in whichever city we choose. Of course, if the city doesn't have any buildings, I would again feel that it is the sort of exploit we definitely should not use.]

 

[Northern Pike]

Our peaceful realm:

 

[ThERat]

good progress but what about our orange spot?

and research up to max immediately, that's most crucial! those few shillings won't help us with anything IMHO.

expand as long as we can, I would go for 5 turn settler spear since we need spears for all those new towns anyway

edit: would chose Arbela for GLib prebuild, since it has shield potential and is further away from the barbaric north

 

[Northern Pike]

good progress but what about our orange spot?

We'll be able to settle it in three turns. I preferred to found two safer, better cities (luxuries aside) first.

I agree that Arbela would be a good pre-build city.

 

[LKendter]

Signed up:
Greebley (on deck)
Handy900
ThERat
Bead_head7
Northern Pike
LKendter (currently playing)

 

[Greebley]

Was just going to print the turn order, but it already done. Thanks.

It sounds like we needed to build the Purple dot to avoid barbs instead of not building it. Kind of Ironic.

I am hoping we are not alone. The biggest bummer would the waste of our UU if we can't get to the AI quick enough.

I do think we need to start the GLib now. River Hills looks best to me since it can grow past size 6 and is not the capitol. In the future, it could switch to the Forbidden Palace if the GLib doesn't work out (assuming we had enough towns of course). This is a good reason to get the 10 towns we need quickly (I think it is 10 for a standard map?).

I like 4 turn settlers. The primary reason is that we have no contact. I think we can still build military fast enough. We don't need quite the military we would with contact. Obviously, we do need enough to handle contact if we get it - if we keep border cities stocked we should be ok there. If we have immortals, I think we can handle any invasion.

Even if we lost a city we still will be ahead with 4 turn settlers in terms of city count. I think we should be able to react fast enough for that to not happen if the other towns (not GLib or Capitol) stay on units.

 

[handy900]

Was just going to print the turn order, but it already done. Thanks.
I do think we need to start the GLib now. River Hills looks best to me since it can grow past size 6 and is not the capitol. In the future, it could switch to the Forbidden Palace if the GLib doesn't work out (assuming we had enough towns of course). This is a good reason to get the 10 towns we need quickly (I think it is 10 for a standard map?).

If we select River Hills we should chop a quick temple (do we have CB?) to expand the borders. Otherwise AI attackers will reduce the workable tiles. We will also want to get to the mountains a see what's out there. A buffer city to keep AI away from River Hills would be nice if we can pull it off. Baiting the AI away from River Hills with a lightly defended city may be a good idea.

As the turns go by with no contact, our citizens are starting to speak with a noticable Australian accent. I think we are on an island.

 

[LKendter]

I took a look at the game. Before I even start playing I have a few things I don't understand.

1) Why aren't we doing full research? Gold is all but worthless in AW. The odds getting the GL IMO are 0% without maximum research to literature.

2) Arbela claims 3 bonus grassland tiles, followed by 2 hills. If the forest chop reveals another bonus grassland it will be even stronger. River Hills has one lousy bonus grassland tile to start. Once we build the spice city Arbela will be all but immune to AI attack. The odds of a tile being stepped on are very low. I think River Hills needs to be larger then we can support at maximum luxury tax to equal this.

3) Why did be build Gordium on a bonus grassland? It is also 4 tiles from Shiraz defeating the AW city connection rule. I think the best placement in the west is in the next post. This would plan on building yellow dot 2 from Gordium with the plan to abandon Gordium long term. I would swap Gordium to worker.

 

[LKendter]

 

[microbe]

I took a look at the game. Before I even start playing I have a few things I don't understand.

1) Why aren't we doing full research? Gold is all but worthless in AW. The odds getting the GL IMO are 0% without maximum research to literature.

NP explained it here:

I've started researching Alphabet, for the usual AW reason (catapults). But since there are various valid tech choices at this point, and we haven't had any discussion, I've just been running research at 10% and letting a little gold accumulate. So we can switch to anything; but once we've made a decision, we should raise the science rate.

 

[Northern Pike]

3) Why did be build Gordium on a bonus grassland? It is also 4 tiles from Shiraz defeating the AW city connection rule. I think the best placement in the west is in the next post. This would plan on building yellow dot 2 from Gordium with the plan to abandon Gordium long term. I would swap Gordium to worker.

Gordium is on BG because the city site was forest when I founded it, and I had no way of knowing. And while it's four tiles from Shiraz it's only three from Arbela, with the road already built. Finally, unless the apparent geography is deceptive we aren't going to be threatened in that area anyway. I don't see a problem here.

Microbe, thanks for quoting my explanation of the tech rate before I had to. I'll just add that while gold may be useless for most purposes in AW, it does allow research at a deficit.

 

[LKendter]

Gordium is on BG because the city site was forest when I founded it, and I had no way of knowing. I don't see a problem here.

That explains the bonus grassland situation. I agree there was nothing you could do.

This still doesn't talk about how we want to place cities over there. I really hate to do two-tile apart spacing for cities that will be in the core.