HAM-01: The Hanseatic League

[sooooo]

OK guys, a few points:

We researched feudalism for serfdom, but have no workers. Now anyone can make a mistake and have some captured, that's fine. But we should have been building lots more. Instead of a fourth settler for a sixth city we cannot afford (when we found our fifth city we will be at 50% science or lower), we should have had 4-5 workers ready to take advantage of serfdom to build quick cottages/farms to get ahead in GNP and start on the merchants.

Rostock isn't the best placed city in the world, since it has no food resources. We didn't need the iron, so should have gone for any of the many food-rich spots we could have claimed.

We have 2 axes. 1 is city raider 2 and the other city raider 1. Have we been raiding any cities? Why promote them like this?

I thought Lubeck was our mechant farm? It has 2 cottages already. Perhaps this is the best though, as there are other spots we could settle with more food.

 

[hamtastic]

I agree with nearly all of Sooooo's points. I also have an odd suggestion: why not abandon rostock? Is there any benefit to keeping it around? It will grow slowly and never do a whole lot.

This is my got it, by the way

 

[pigswill]

While Rostock is going to be a slow growing city it'll act as a useful chokepoint and its got enough grassland to become a significant commercial city over the course of the game.
City raider promotions for axes is probably sub-optimal, we can always build maces later on if we go military.
The reason I thought of cities before workers is that if we are trying to avoid warfare then we need to get cities in place before the AIs pinch all the land. We can build workers later but we can't build cities later if the sites have already been claimed.

 

[GreyFox]

One worker per city is enough ... especially in serfdom ... nobody would have foreseen losing all our workers in one single bad RNG roll. Fact is that yes, you can build lots of cottages or other improvement fast with an army of workers, but your city growth won't be able to catch up to work on all the improved tiles.

I would have go for settler too before we lost our workers. Let's move on, and replenish our working force.

Ditto on city raiders ... and Rostock, must say, isn't all that good. I would've moved it west a bit to get the food instead of iron. But now that it is founded, no point in mooing over what's done. How do you propse we abandon it it? keep it undefended and let the barbs have their field day?

--

 

[sooooo]

We should not abandon Rostock - it's not that bad. It will easily pay for itself.

 

[hamtastic]

I start at 840: I first queue up an axeman in Danzig in front of the settler and, in fact, whip it to completion right now - I know it's a bit wasteful, but we were working tons of undeveloped tiles.

Hit enter

IBT: a barb sword attacks Rostock but loses

860: I start a theatre in Visby - we need border pops there to get access to more resources. I try to figure out what to do with the settler that we have hanging around and decide to send it to the East.

I Whip the longbowman in Lubeck

Some troop movement

900: a barb horse archer shows up and I move our newly-whipped spear to intercept it at 89% odds. We lose, though, so our longbow is forced to clean up.

IBT: I almost got my wish for Rostock as a horse archer attacked out of the fog. However, we kill it and keep Rostock. (and I start moving some reinforcements down there). (I decided I didn't really want to lose it...)

920: I whip some more stuff to completion.

Cathy asks us for something. I'm all for friendly relations and all that, but no thanks!

940: I remember to switch research to something I want - Civil Service. Bureacracy will help us quite a bit, while Machinery has no immediate benefit. Plus, I think Civil Service may have a bit more trade value.

960: Sistine Chapel built in far away land. I whip a library to completion in Danzig

980: I whip the theatre in Visby. Sense a theme in my turns?

1000: Settler with axe escort finally shows up at the spot I decide to found the one with tons of food. Bruges is founded.

1010: I whip market to copmletion in Lubeck, move longbowman around a bit more

1020: I promptly hire 2 merchants in Lubeck. It will still grow, although we need to get some chain farming going around after Bureacracy


End of turn report: All the AIs except Cathy had feudalism, so I sell it to her for Theology and 40 gold. She is now Pleased with us again, since she ripped us off, but at least we got something for our tech.

I believe we are in a much better position than previously. We have 2 workers now, with a third worker almost done. We have merchants working in Lubeck and a roughly 50/50 chance of a Great Merchant from Danzig in 3 turns. (Since people were letting the computer assign an engineer to work there, we might get a Great Engineer) Well, cross your fingers.

One more settler will still come out of Danzig - It was there at the beginning of my turns and I've kept it in the queue for the entire time, as I don't really know what to do with it. Maybe we can build our long-discussed rice/clams city? That would be useful for some more resources to trade to our neighbors. I suppose the next few players may want to cut back on the whipping now that we finally have cottages to work at the capital and merchants running in LUbeck. The next goal (think sooooo will recognize this one? ) should be to finish improving our lands and then switch over to caste system for massive merchants. Techwise, after CS I think we should beeline for economics with a possible side trip for liberalism (which we could, in theory, use on nationalism).



One last thought: IF we do get a great merchant from Danzig, we should make sure we know which city to attach him to. Should it be the original idea of Lubeck, which is working at merchant production now, or the new high-food but low-development city of Bruges? The reason it matters is that he will give +1 food, so it's good to keep them all in the same place (plus the fact that we can just build our commerce improvements in one spot).

View attachment 141071

 

[hamtastic]

Roster:

1. Hamtastic (whipped our cities back to the stone age)
2. Cosmichail (might not be able to do much whippin', but ready to try now)
3. Sooooo (preparing the mighty serfs for land improvement)
4. Greyfox
5. Baru
6. Pigswill

 

[Cosmichail]

Ok I will play later today, (tonight) so this I got it.

 

[Cosmichail]

Turn 1

Visby finishes worker start Work Boat for fish when borders pop. Worker at Lubeck start a cottage.

Turn 2

Danzig finishes settler, start a longbowman. I see an nice spot west of Rostock with pigs/wheat and a lake. Once it builds a lighthouse all tiles will produce 3food3commerce at this site. Will have lots of commerce/food/ and production. We don’t have many soldiers so I move a lbm into Rostock and use the axe to accompany the settler.

Turn 3

We get a GM in Danzig and after careful consideration feel that he is best suited for Lubeck for commerce (already two merchants there) and since we are building cottages Lubeck could use the extra food. Bruges doesn’t have any commerce yet and needs to be worked before it will do anything.

Genghis also request we cancel our deals with the Americans which I decline since he is at the bottom and GW is near the top.

(you might notice the blackened area but it isn’t as bad as in Soooo’s SG Worst Nightmare.)

Turn 4

I noticed that we are in slavery of course since some of our cities are complaining about the whip. Since we need to build improvements faster we should consider serfdom soon however I hold off until Civil service is done so that the two can be done together to save on loss of turns.

We merge our first GM in Lubeck and the cash is rolling. (15gpt)

Turn 5

Lubeck finishes longbow start library.

Turn 6

Check with all the civs again and nothing to offer.

Turn 7
Danzig finishes longbow start a spear just in case. Although I was contemplating market for the merchants. We are very lightly defended and probably dead last in power. Although GK is the lowest he still can be a nuisance if he wants to be.

Turn 8-9

Not much happening.

Turn 10

We settle the town of Zwolle (being Dutch and all) start a worker. Rich with food/commerce and production. The AI suggested settling on the hill but I’d rather that it be mined instead. The lake will provide lots of food once we build a lighthouse there.
There is also a barb town south of it so might want to get a longbow in there just in case since raider axes don’t defend all that well.

I think we have expanded enough and should just get our workers building infastructure and build a couple more of them. We have three cities in need of culture.
Zwolle/Rostock/ and Bruges. A worker is building the plantation and civil service is due in 1 turn. There isn’t going to be much production in Bruges so we might need the whip for a theatre there. Once those borders pop Bruges will be a great GP farm/commerce since the grasslands can only accommodate cottages since there is no irrigation yet.

The Save

 

[Baru]

Thank god (gods) we got that GM! I think it was my fault that the engineer was assigned in Danzig. When I switched to the Colossus I think the gov, being ignorant of the power of commerce, changed over to the production of the given wonder and I didn't catch it. At the most we only lost a few turns and it worked out..... Plus I wanted the trade routes (limited on lakes (war) but could be important) and the income since we will be working a lot of water tiles.

 

[pigswill]

I'm having a major problem with this game in that I know what our objectives are but I haven't got the slightest idea what our strategy is meant to be.

How big an empire do we want? How many cities?
Do we build cities first them improve later or do we build and improve a few then aim to build some more later?
Are we aiming to expand aggressively? What size and type of army do we need?
Are we aiming to run one major gp farm or having merchant specialists in several cities?
What are our tech/research priorities?
How much do we want to tech-trade?
What are our preferred civics at different stages of the game?

Hopefully someone will be able to enlighten me.

 

[hamtastic]

Those questions are fair enough. I have ideas, although I certainly welcome other ones. I'm not sure that I have enough time right now to really go into them, but I think several things make this different from an average game: first, the early end time, and second, the large, underpopulated map. I'm actually quite doubtful that we can accomplish any of the goals but getting the eight merchants at this point, since there just won't be that much money floating around prior to 1800. But perhaps if we expand a lot we will be able to get lots of gold - I just don't know...

Also, little point progressing past econ in tech if we're just trying to build up gold reserves...

 

[hamtastic]

So if we end at 1800 as originally posted, we really don't have much time to continue to expand, or much need to either. So I think the number of cities is probably fine. I think we want to improve our cities to the max and, if there is time, get a few more.

Army: primarily defensive, but I don't think we have to worry about AI aggression for quite some time because there's so much space for them.

I assumed one gp farm is more efficient, but please correct me if I'm wrong - I'd be ok with two GP farms.

Tech priorities are only for increasing science and money.

Tech trading is encouraged, particularly for anything that will help us.

Civics: once we get the opportunity for pacifism, we should probably go for it to increase GM rate. I bureacracy as efficient, switching around b/t serfdom for some improvements then sticking with caste system for running merchants. Don't think we'll get govt. choices much.

One more note: we should get rid of the cottages at Lubeck when we start running caste system so we can run more merchants. And there is little point in building library there, since ultimate focus of that city is producing money... And we should really try to cottage the crap out of Danzig and let it grow ASAP. No need for market there right now - soon enough we'll be running 100% science constantly

Any other opinions floating around about this?

 

[sooooo]

Yes, sounds good. Got It by the way, will play tonight.

 

[Cosmichail]

Sound goods to me too Hamtastic. I put the library there as I really didn't know what else to build. We certainly could use a few more soldiers just in case since Genghis is nearby.

Most definitely Bruges/Visby could be our main GP farms since they will yield the most food. Visby has several floodplains to work as well and putting farms there will make it a nice GP farm.

We do need to get culture to Rostock (city is ok and when it pops its borders a lot better) Bruges and Zwolle. The first thing we should build after worker in Zwolle is a lighthouse to get the 3food3commerce from the lake tiles.

We are getting out teched by the AI as I noticed Saladin has civil service already. (I expect this in Warlords but not in Vanilla)

As to techs we should get to Guilds soon for banking and grocers. As to wonders I would focus on getting banks in every city for Wall street. (of course we will need corporation for that)

The only wonder that I can think of we would benefit from this point is the Statue of Liberty for the extra specialist that's if we beat the AI to it. It wouldn't hurt for one city to produce a GE for this purpose but of course that is a team decision.

Edit: I took another look at the save and notice one thing. We really don't have a city that can produce a lot. Bruges will have two grass hills to mine eventually and Zwolle one plains hill and two grass hills. Other than that we have very little production which might be important at some point should we find the need to build soldiers or a wonder at some point. Since we aren't that far from guilds (just need machinery which we might be able to trade for since CS is already discovered so we should get what we can for it after we finish) we might consider putting up some workshops. Once we get to chemistry they will produce 3h1f.

 

[sooooo]

OK, since we aren't in caste system yet there's no need to farm over lubeck's cottages. In fact, by the time we turn to caste system we should have improved Bruges enough to convert that city into a new CM farm. So I propose our next GM gets merged there instead. We still have GE points in Lubeck BTW - gotta watch out for that. We've got to trust to luck for our next GM now too.

On the inherited turn I changed Lubeck from library to worker and Zwulle from worker to granary.

T1 Civil Service came in. Trade it to Washington for Machinery, start Paper (good trade value, often neglected by AI, on the way to economics). Whip forge in Visby, then revolt to Bureaucracy and Serfdom (1 turn anarchy).



T2 Anarchy

T3 Visby finishes a forge, starts a worker. Bruges finishes a granary, starts forge. Doesn't need a market because we will use caste system when we convert it to our GM farm.

T4 Kill barb sword.

T5 Well, we're traders to I trade CS to Cathy for Optics and 30 gold.



T7 Visby finishes worker, starts barracks.

T8 Danzig finishes barracks, starts maceman.

T9 Kill barb axe, promote sentry LBM to guerilla 1 in case sword attacks it next turn.

T10 No, barb sword runs away. Our axe kills a barb HA, but is faced with a sword next turn and is pretty wounded. Paper finishes, start Education but no beakers are invested yet. Possibly we should go for guilds next, as our horses are hooked up so we can build knights. But the AI likes guilds, so we should be able to trade for it. Not sure.



Saladin has Music but won't trade it yet. We should get it off him as soon as he will let us to build culture in our cities that need a border pop. I think this is better than wasting hammers on theatres or whatever.

 

[sooooo]

Save is here.

 

[hamtastic]

Well, we certainly are moving on at quite a clip. It seems like things are going well recently. I look forward to the future. Thoughts on education, folks? I think soooo is right that we'll be able to trade for guilds, and we will need education anyway... So I guess we should stay the course.

 

[sooooo]

Military is really good for us right now. Not only do we need it to fight off Genghis should he attack (got a -1 modifier for trading with Washington), but our cities are at happiness caps and need the military prescence to help them grow. Keep building and shifting around macemen and longbows for cities that need to grow. Other than that, the only thing to remember is not to let the game assign engineers! I turned on the growth, production and commerce governers in Lubeck to hopefully avoid this.

Oh, I just remembered I left the avoid growth button on in Danzig - please turn this off or be aware of it. I had it on temporarily while we lacked MP and I wanted to grow our cottages but not become unhappy.

 

[Cosmichail]

So in hindsight the GM should have gone to Bruges. DOH......

50/50 and I chose the wrong 50. Education is a good choice as the AI doesn't go for it right away and will be a good trading tech.

Yep notice that too with the AI as soon as a specialist spot is open will appoint engineer or priest. I watch every turn for the AI messing with the specialists. We really should try to get those borders popped in Bruges. Once we get all those food resources hooked up that city will be unbelieveable. With caste system we will be able to carry many, many merchants so I don't believe GM in Lubeck was a total smoke since we will get lots of them in Bruges. At the time our economy was needing a boost and Lubeck had the most base commerce.

Good getting more workers we will need lots. Especially with the jungle in Bruges but once that city gets going will be something. Danzig is quite good too.

For the most part this will be a peaceful game. Ah too bad it's always fun warring with Soooo.