HAM-01: The Hanseatic League

[sooooo]

I just have another question about the settings:

What is your reseasoning behind 6 civs and large world size? Is it because the islands you get in a standard size islands script are too small? If that is the case, we can play standard size custom continents (set continents to the number of civs, not 1 per civ because 1 per civ is broken, at least it is in warlords. EDIT: hmm, maybe it works on vanilla) because that script gives isolated islands which are larger than the island script. I also notice you have raging barbs set. Unfortunately, on an island or CC script, raging barbs is a nightmare because you have no AI buffers. I just hope you understand what raging barbs can do on an isolated island start. In fact, if we stay with the raging barbs I retract my wish for feudalism first because there will be no point putting improvements up because they will all get pillaged. Personally I vote to reduce them to normal - unless we want the first 1000 years to be spent fighting them.

 

[GreyFox]

Just some random spam: For those who are wondering "WTF is a Hanseatic League" like myself , this is an excellent read.

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[Cabledawg]

If you need another player, Id like to get in.

 

[pigswill]

Idle thoughts:

Forget religion, let someone else go to the trouble of founding religion, getting a prophet and building a shrine then capture holy city (cities?).

Could probably do with a GS for academy in capital to get research going. I don't know if Glib is available in medieval starts, may not be. Otherwise GM all the way.

Techwise machinery first for crossbows, CS for maces and bureaucracy then optics to visit the neighbours.

 

[hamtastic]

Hi there. Pigswill and baru, I'm adding you to the roster. That makes 6, so I'll put cabledawg as an alternate.

This is good discussion, but now I'm kind of worried about map settings. The reason I set the map settings the way I did was because I was trying to come up with something that would have a lot of water but not just have the standard continents going on. In some sense, I wanted it to approximate the notion of having to establish trade routes across the ocean and some across land, not all of which would get settled quickly. In my imagination, raging barbs meant that there would be islands owned by barbs, and all of the civs would get an island or so, none of which would be that large. However, I don't really want to spend the first 1000 years fighting barbs - that doesn't really sound like fun. I may try a parallel test game real quick to see how bad it looks...

On other business, I agree with trying for theology first. Civil service won't benefit us much until our capital grows some, so we can afford to hold off for a bit. The serfdom -> slavery idea sounds like a decent one.

Pending a couple hours for test game, I will either re-roll or let you know how the first game is going.

 

[sooooo]

Theology gets us nothing for the early game. If we are scared about the religion odds and want to make sure we get one, Philosophy also gets us useful things.

However, I don't think it's important to go after a religion-founding tech first. Shrines are overrated, and it will be very slow to generate one unless we build the Angkor Wat (also requires philosophy). Just building a temple and hiring a priest will be too slow.

Instead of religions and shrines, I think we should concentrate on science and merchants. That means we need quick cottages and farms - serfdom is the only way to do this.

Seriously, serfdom is the ultimate civic for late-era starts. We need feudalism as soon as possible.

Not sure why we need military techs first. Are we going to fight someone on galleys? I thought this was a peaceful game. If we are worried about barbs, then longbows will be fine. These are unlocked by ... feudalism. Feudalism is also on the way to guilds (grocer), banking (bank) and our first tech goal: economics (free great merchant, free market civic). Did I mention I am in favour of feudalism first?

 

[Cabledawg]

Im fine with an alternate, if someone bows out, ill be watching this thread.

 

[hamtastic]

I'm considering a re-roll using different settings. The barbs weren't so awful in the test game I played. They didn't show up for a while.

However, I decided to look at the map that was generated in the test game in WB, and it just didn't float my boat - too symmetrical, but also with the opportunity for an AI that had a random passage to another island WAY too much room to expand. More pleasing was something like an ice age or tilted axis start with islands. However, I don't want to delay the start too much. Thoughts?

 

[pigswill]

If we're going for peaceful expansion that military techs ain't such a priority. It depends on how big a civ we want and whether we can expand fast enough to get it peacefully. If we're looking at the possibility of aggressive expansion then its better to get the unpleasantness over first. If we aren't going for early warfare then by all means go peacful techs.
Its also extremely likely that AIs will go for stuff like feudalism, guilds, philosophy, currency etc so if we research off the beaten track we should be able to manage multiple tech trades which is a very good way to get ahead.

 

[Cosmichail]

Hamtastic

I have a graphics glitch with tilted axis and any map that goes right to the poles which makes it really hard to play. I would like to request that you don't use a map of this type if you decide to roll a new start. I love the start we have but understand the concerns of Sooooo. Feudalism sounds good too for the serfdom as Soooo pointed out and hopefully we will get a religion too.

 

[sooooo]

Ham: Do you want civs to start isolated, or together? If you want isolated, then I would go with custom continents, standard size, and set the number of continents to be equal or higher than the number of civs.

 

[hamtastic]

Ok! I've got something I really really like now, but I want to try to check one last time, so I'm not just "Mr. Evil centralized decision-maker." I'd like to use a large lake maps with 6 civs. Regular barbs. Will this mean we will be forced to fight barbs constantly? If so, I'll just roll up the custom continents one.

The land-based map has a more realistic and interesting way to establish trading routes between civs. With water-based maps, trade routes are too automatic and boring. Plus, the extra land means we will have to work at it...

 

[Baru]

Thanks for letting me in!

I play Lakes maps quite a bit and the Barbs can be some real trouble...especially with only 6 civs. There is just so much room for them to spawn it can seem like they are on raging sometimes. With the need to get the farms and cottages out early (and actually keeping them) it might not work.

 

[hamtastic]

I rolled up a start and played my 10 turns. I figured we'd all just do 10 all the time b/c the beginning involves a lot of important decisions. Just giving you this mini-teaser, though: you'll have to wait for the report until later tonight or tomorrow.

 

[hamtastic]

FYI: We are plyaing on a large lakes map with 7 AIs. That's two too few. I turned the barbarians down to normal, and I even pondered turning them off, but decided against it. I hope it won't be too bad. Again, the reason for doing this is that I want us to have to work for some trade routes for a while, building roads to far-flung civilizations. Obviously my teaser was a bit tricky, but it's not untrue!

575: We start out on a rather un-fun starting location. I'm definitely going to go with Soooo's suggestion to do a bit more scouting before settling down.



An iron and a cows! What gives?


550: Clams ahoy! Quite a large lake we're here. Turns out that it's salt water! goodness! On a lakes map! Amazing! Hence the earlier post of the ocean tile.



Looking for spots for capital etc. THis plains hill looks ok for capital at first, until I realize it can get +12 food with farms on all the green spots + cows + corn (irrigated) (that's 6 merchants!). Judging by the resource placement on this map, I don't think I 'll be able to find anything better for food.

525: Doh! I revolt to slavery, Hereditary Rule, and Organized Religion at this point.



I should have done it earlier, but I forgot. At least we still won't lose any turns of production since I haven't found a good spot for the capital yet. Well, ok I just did, but I can't found it until next turn. It's not the best ever. Hopefully you all won't hate it. It has some decent production (iron on grasslands) and room for a fair number of cottages

500: I found Danzig and start a granary. I then found Lubeck and start a granary. Look at our mighty trading empire!

 

[hamtastic]

475: Research starts on Feudalism. Due in 55 turns, I believe. Barbs shouldn't show up for about that long, so I think we

should get some longbows before then (plus our research pace should pick up)

450: How about this a site for our capital?



425: I hit enter to get here and... we found Judaism! In lubeck! Great! Good since we'll be pumping out money there - it's nice to have the shrine . Plus it will help the borders pop. I went ahead and revolted to Judaism so we could get +25% for Organized Religion.



Lots of religions founded.



400: This year disappeared into a hole in the fabric of space-time.

375: Maybe I should have kept exploring for capitol sites? Of course, I might have missed out on a religion.

350: Alright... we're hopeless in technology!



Both borders pop - good.

325: After the border pop, I start the worker farming the wheat. The reason I had him building roads before was that he was already over on that side, and I really wanted to get the capitol's wheat farmed ASAP (and didn't want to waste turns just making the worker walk everywhere). Sorry if that was

 

[hamtastic]

Notes: our half-price buildings are great right now. I say whip the granaries after growth - it should be one turn for both since they have both been working flood plains. After that - the forges are half price, but I don't know if they're really advisable yet. Maybe some military and then whip out some workers and settlers? Obviously up for discussion. At some point, also, we'll want to just grow our cities. We should make the switch to serfdom right after we whip our cities down pretty hard.

Roster:

1. Hamtastic (done)
2. Cosmichail (up now)
3. Sooooo (warming up in the wings.)
4. Greyfox
5. Baru
6. Pigswill

View attachment 140725

 

[Cosmichail]

Excellent Ham..... This is I got it and will play tomorrow sometime.

 

[pigswill]

If we get city 3 on clams/rice peninsula then we have all 3 grains available and cheap granaries so that's +6 health for starters, HR for happy means city growth should not be a problem.

 

[hamtastic]

Plus, Bismarck is +3 health, so we're set there.

Thoughts: I think we should drop judaism as state religion so that we can get OB with every AI we meet (unless Tokugawa is around). We'll need to adopt it again later for the pacifism GP multiplier, but by then the AIs will like us b/c we've had open borders.

Thought 2: We shouldn't bother trying to build a shrine. It wastes our first (cheap) GP, and the income will never be that high - we won't have time to build tons of missionaries and throw them around. (Random: does it make sense to be able to build missionaries from a religion when it's not your state religion?)

Thought 3: we should build a market ASAP in Lubeck and hire some merchants. Eventually we switch to caste system to hire billions of merchants?