GR6 - Persia II - AW Demigod.

[Northern Pike]

2510 (1): Research down to 20%, IW still due this IT.

Persepolis walls --> spearman.


2470 (2): At first it appears that there's no iron in sight. Then I spot some under the fog four squares NW of Persepolis.

I choose Pottery as our next tech goal. We can get it in just six turns, and Alphabet can wait that long.


2430 (3): Ugh--that Viking warrior gets off his ___ and pops the goodie hut, and a Magyar warrior ends up on one of Persepolis's cows.

Persepolis spearman --> granary pre-build.


2390 (4): A slightly risky attack against the Magyar warrior succeeds (1-0).


2350 (5): Two Viking archers and two warriors in sight now.


2310 (6): A Viking warrior dies attacking Persepolis (2-0).

We get a palace expansion.


2270 (7): Research down to 20%, Pottery still due this IT.

A Viking archer and a Viking warrior die attacking Persepolis, and one of our spearmen promotes to elite (4-0).


2230 (8): We begin research on Alphabet.


2190 (9): Persepolis granary --> settler.


2150 (10): Five Viking units are near Persepolis, but four are regular warriors and one is a veteran archer which has been hanging around without attacking.

 

[Northern Pike]

We can have iron hooked up in about five turns, provided the settler Persepolis is building is allowed to complete and then founds on the tundra forest next to the iron, while our worker roads the iron after finishing its present job. An argument could be made for switching to Warrior Code and building some archers to avoid a three-city despotic GA, but on the whole I think we should stick with Greebley's idea of seeing what we can achieve with a very early Immortal rush.

The infrastructure progress we were able to make this round--a granary in Persepolis, and Pasargadae's barracks almost complete--should help us a lot in the long term.

 

[Northern Pike]

Light pressure:

 

[LKendter]

Well we got lucky. The Viking rush was lame. We get double lucky with the granary. This is why I prefer one civ at a time. No way we could have gotten away that gamble with 2 civs already.


OTOH I really DON'T want a 3 city GA. I hope we can get at least one or two more before the GA happens. The only thing I hate more then despotic GAs is despotic low city count GAs.

 

[ThERat]

agree with LK, maybe we could build another few towns before unleashing our immortal rush

 

[Greebley]

The reason the attack was lame was because we got early contact. I wouldn't consider it a matter of luck. Any civ would have about that many units. There isn't much variation this early.

Agree on the advantage of only one civ. I would like to bring war to them, but the timing is tricky. I too would like more than 3 towns, but I also still want to attack while we know only one civ and before they have better units. Maybe we can get 4 towns start the GLib and then attack. We will thing get a fifth town very early in our GA.

I don't mind an early GA if we do something with it. Wiping out most of a civ is a good use of the GA IMO and I think it should be what we are trying to achieve.

 

[T_McC]

Alright, see what we can do with this one.

 

[T_McC]

GR6 - That Old Familiar Feeling

2150 BC (0)
Think about switching Persepolis to Forge, but we don't seem to have that tech.

I also notice we haven't research the techs that reveal the lux ... and that someone has stolen half of the tech tree!



Heh. Just wait how confused I get when units travel 3 spaces on roads.

Stay on settler, but I'm not optimistic that the AI won't step on some tiles to goof that up.

Good Lord the tech tree does look puny! I was going to ask why we don't have any Archers, but that's self-apparent now. Since we've started on Alphabet, we'll stay the course.

2110 BC (1)
Why would the AI attack with a regular Warrior, but not the Vet Archer? Dumbass.

IT - Win three battles, red-lining on two. Promote Warrior to Elite. [4-0]

2070 BC (2)
Then promptly lose the Elite Warrior attacking a reg Warrior. Same side of the river, even.

2030 BC (3)
Forget which side of the river we're on, and send the Settler and the Spear to different squares. Persep starts a Spear to replace the one that left.

Check that, Persep builds a proto-Immortal.

1990 BC (4)
And Persep continues ...

Pasargadae is also building a Warrior.

1950 BC (5)
And again.

1910 BC (6)
Both cities complete Warriors, then we found Arbela and the Iron is connected. So sending the settler and Spear to different locations netted us two additional cheap Immortals. Just Like I Planned!

Let's see ... we can't build any cultural building. We don't know how to build Catapults. Arbela makes too many spt for a worker. It's also not a particularly good location for a Great Library pre-build. Starts a Granary as a pre-build for a ... Curragh?

Actually, I don't see a Great Library location besides Persepolis. I count 1 BG in our territory.

1870 BC (7)
Nothin' except for some irrigation. Apparently this turn counted double.

1790 BC (9)
Persep builds another settler, Pasagardae builds a worker. The settler heads off with a Spear to found a city near the whales in our backyard. The more cities the merrier.

I'm not even considering tripping our GA until we get some more cities down, particularly at least one in the direction of the Vikings.

1750 BC (10)
And just like that, it's over.

Final Notes:
The Vikings aren't exactly bringing it. We have 4 vet and 1 regular Warrior to upgrade, but we don't have the money yet. I thought it would be best to finish our Alphabet research before trying to accumulate cash, the next city should help that a bit.

This is an amazingly soft start to an AW. We really should take advantage of this to build workers. A Despotic GA is much more appealing when you have a lot of roads and mined regular grass.

I had kind of forgotten how little there is to build in the early years of unmodded C3C.

 

[T_McC]

Blue Circle is the Viking contribution. An Archer (1) and a Warrior (1). The Archer just arrived, but that Warrior is the one that killed our Elite, 5-0.

Red dot is where I thought the settler should head. We could try to fit two cities in that space, putting this settler on the forest NW of its current location, but the 2nd city (at red dot) would be a fishing village only. Arbela will have to work south to be of any real use, which makes two cities really cramped.

Purplish dot on the river could be the next city location. Until the Vikings make us try harder, I figure we can just settle and settle and settle ... it's not like Immortals age badly.

The Pink dot (NE ice) is a fill-in fishing village that we shouldn't settle unless we get really bored.

 

[Ginger_Ale]

lurker's comment: Couldn't you shift the pink and purple dots (they're all shades of red - I mean the two ones in the east) both 1NW, so the one by Persepolis gets a defensive bonus from the river, and the other dot will get more water tiles to work for more commerce?

 

[T_McC]

lurker's comment: Couldn't you shift the pink and purple dots (they're all shades of red - I mean the two ones in the east) both 1NW, so the one by Persepolis gets a defensive bonus from the river, and the other dot will get more water tiles to work for more commerce?

The problem is the way the rivers run, and the terrain to the east. Persepolis and the forward dot are both on the same side of the river. So we have to choose whether we want 1-turn transit in both directions or the defensive bonus. By the time we get to Engineering the front will be long past that point.

Farther east the forward dot links to a river hill (albeit on the wrong side of the river, again). That location would be difficult to found on the "correct" side of the river and be able to play "offensive" defense as the AI would attack from the hill across the river.

But either spot would work. I don't expect it to be on the front lines for very long. The tundra fishing villages can be crammed in really tight. We don't need any sort of ideal placement for them. The Vikings won't get to Berzerks so we don't even have to keep them 1-step from any other cities.

 

[ThERat]

what about Arbela for the Glib. with BG and that iron hill? but it would need an aqueduct to grow, that's a problem of course

 

[Northern Pike]

I agree that the iron hill makes Arbela the best of our bad choices. Although I haven't done the math, I think it's unlikely that an aqueduct build before the Great Library, which would cost 25% as much as the GL, would get us to the GL more quickly.

 

[LKendter]

Starts a Granary as a pre-build for a ... Curragh?

I was looking at the game trying to figure out the granary. I finally went back and skim the notes to figure out why. I *DON'T* want a Curragh! I think our best bet it to get a few more cities, a GA, and break the Vikings before we get more contacts. I really don't want to go looking for trouble.

 

[Greebley]

Agree. Any exploration now is a bad idea. We have a chance of a single opponent and I would like to try to take advantage of it. It may not work (someone may find us), but I don't want it to be less likely to work.

I think starting the GLib in Arabela right away makes sense too. Parsagadae has the barracks already.

 

[bed_head7]

Hmm, I don't seem to have posted a got it yet, so here it is.

 

[bed_head7]

1750 BC (0) - Up science to 60%, drop lux to 20%.

1675 BC (3) - Two vet archers outside of Persepolis.

1650 BC (4) - Finish Alphabet and start Mathematics. Also finish settler in Persepolis.

1625 BC (5) - Going to pop a couple workers from Persepolis, because it is growing faster than it is producing settlers.

1575 BC (7) - Gordium founded.

1525 BC (9) - Pop a leader! Four or five defensive elite wins and Darius rises from battle. We don't even have an immortal yet.

1500 BC (10) - Persepolis is in an interesting position. Right now it is stealing a tile from Parsagadae so that it can build a worker. I was planning to then give the tile back to Pasargadae next turn, while Persepolis is size five and starting a settler. When Persepolis grows to six the next turn, it would steal the tile back from Pasargadae, and Pasaragadae would work the tile currently being irrigated, and then Persepolis would complete the settler four turns from now, maintaining 2 turn growth throughout without any wasted shields or food. If the next player has a better way to go, feel free to switch it up. My plan is most the most efficient one though, I think, and having another worker means we can get Persepolis set up so it doesn't need to steal tiles from Parsagadae.

By the way, we never lost any units, and killed six or seven, maybe even eight. I wasn't paying terribly close attention to unit stuff.

 

[T_McC]

Couple of things:

Very good on the workers. We can always use more.

I assume we are up to 5 cities now. How many more do we want before we lead with an Immortal Army? Its hard to see a good site forward of Persepolis. Maybe the Forest 2S of Gordium? Requires a few roads but I always like to get the capital shielded. Or the river hill SE-SE-E of Gordium? Tough spot to reach before Engineering. Better choice might be 3SE of Gordium. Immortals vs. defense 1 units makes offense by defense possible regardless of attackers being across river on a hill. Besides, the front should move beyond that quickly.

If bed_head founded on the red dot there is also a tight location in our backyard, on the coastal forest. Not a good location by any stretch, but if we end up with a settler just sitting around during our GA ...

One other thing before the Palace build gets too far: Are we going to be able to keep a size 6 city happy in Despotism with no native lux and no Happy buildings? I think we want a Temple there first. Can't look at the save right now to guess how much corruption we'll have in the city. A Temple now that saves 10% lux during our GA might be worth the 60 "lost" shields. I think Arbela will get another land tile with the 100-culture expansion from Persepolis, so we don't need the Temple simply to grab another tile.

 

[bed_head7]

I did indeed found on the red dot, as the dot map seemed to be agreed upon by all members and it also is the spot I'd have chosen had there been no dotmap. I was considering next city location myself, but didn't really have any great ideas. The hill SE - SE - E was my personal preference, as it is good defensively and will probably be able to absorb anything the Vikings currently have. While difficult to reach, we can probably put the bulk of our defenses there for the time being, as we can kill units if they try to pass, and boat landings are not an issue yet.

Note that there are furs in the nearest Viking city, so we could (should, really) have one native lux by the time it would become a problem for Arbela. The temple might still be a good idea, though.

 

[T_McC]

Took a look at the save ... hard to tell exactly, but we'll have ~20% waste in Arbela. Corruption is ~10% since the first 3 arrows are uncorrupted. We can probably get by during the GA without the Temple, so we can apply the 30 shields we already have banked towards the Great Library. If we have to run 40-50% lux for the last 10 turns of the build, so be it.

Maybe we'll find a second lux besides Furs by that point as well.