@Wafflecakes
- Good job in laying down cottages for our capital
- Nice work in following the suggestion of Farming Athens and hiring a lot of Great People there. It's definitely a well-set-up Great Person Farm
- Good job in having built The Heroic Epic. However, since you chose Nippur, I would suggest paving over a couple of the newly-worked Cottages there in favour of Farms, then also work some of the higher Hammer-based squares. I would also not build so many superfluous buildings there, like a Market. Even in Peacetime, your Heroic Epic City should be focusing on building Military Units as much as your Building-addiction allows you to create
- Good job in spreading around your State Religion! However, don't forget to spread it to new Cities, too! It costs you Gold per Turn to run Organized Religion, even if you don't use it. Also, it becomes a net loss of Hammers for every City that builds several buildings without having access to your State Religion, when building a Missionary would have cost you less Hammers overall and could have been built in a City where the Hammers mattered less than they do in a new City trying to get established
- Uh oh! Our Fish + Iron City doesn't have a Work Boat on our Fish! Maybe it was pillaged, but we're not currently building a replacement, and not only would it provide more Food for that City, but it would give us +1 Health, which would help out 6 of your Cities
- Hmmmm. Akkad is working an unimproved Hills square and could be working a second Hills square if you improved it. Forests on Hills need to be chopped and replaced with Mines. Even if you are suffering Health issues, then you can simply switch over from Farms to Mines. It does look like you are at least on top of this issue with your Workers
- While I understand that you are delaying tech trading in order to get a leg-up on being the first to Liberalism, Saladin is far behind the others and I think that it would be safe to trade Philosophy to him. Out of the deal, not only could you get both Horseback Riding and Construction, but you'd also unlock our Unique Building. Babylon's Unique Building is a strong Colosseum that offers +2 Health, which would be one of the solutions to your empire's current Health deficit
- I advise you to check the F4 -> RESOURCES screen more frequently. Certainly, Darius will offer you a Dye Resource for a Spice Resource or a Wine Resource. Several AIs will offer you a Gold per Turn value for the other one of your Spices or Wines that you don't trade to Darius. Further, Justinian will offer you Fur for your Incense, which sounds like a trade that won't gain you anything, but don't forget that some of the Markets that you are building will provide an EXTRA +1 Happiness for having Fur, but they won't give you that extra Happiness for having Incense. So, trading away your only source of Incense for Fur would make any City with a Market a bit Happier
- If only one of those nice AIs would go and build the Apostolic Palace already, you'd be able to benefit from the relatively large number of Religious buildings that you have constructed!
@Fierabras
- Nice work in securing a lock on the Taj Mahal!
- Note that Peter will give you a hearty 11 Gold per Turn for your Copper, but otherwise, it seems like you've captured most of the good Resource-trading opportunities--nice work!
- Good job in improving a lot of the Cottages around Babylon
- Nice work in growing our Heroic Epic City, in pumping up its Hammer output, and in keeping the infrastructure there minimal (meaning a high output of Military Units)
- Moai Statues where you picked to put it isn't so bad, since the City is still growing relatively quickly and the National Wonder wasn't ready in time for your first Golden Age, regardless of which City you chose to put Moai Statues, meaning that where you put it doesn't really matter, as long as you are putting it somewhere. Certainly, the site that you chose is better in the long-run, since there are most Coast squares there, as long as you can continue to keep growing the City. I had the unfair advantage of Russia's Stone, anyway, plus the fact that I'd built a Forge in my Moai-to-be City while waiting for the Stone to be mined
- Neat idea in making Sparta a helper Great-Person-producing City
- Good idea in using a defensive Spy
- Great job in prioritizing Printing Press. You have 18 Villages + Towns, giving you a good boost to your base-Commerce output
- You refused to give Tribute to Saladin and now he hates you. Was it worth it? I don't know what he asked for, but could you have spared it, in exchange for some positive Diplo modifiers with Saladin?
- Why do 2 Workers need to chop the same Forest near Babylon? It doesn't look like the Forest Chop will complete the Wonder in Babylon any faster by chopping in 2 turns instead of 3 turns, while the other Worker could be using his Worker actions more effectively elsewhere
- I notice that Dur-Kurgalzu, the Cow + Copper City, is working an unimproved Plains square in favour of a Grassland Mine square--that's 2 free Hammers per turn just by swapping where the citizens are working. I also think that it would be worth chaining Irrigation to that City, starting from the barely-worked Cottage GRiv square SW + S of Babylon, replacing Cottages with Farms on that GRiv square and on the Grassland Cottage to the east of it, 2W of Dur-Kurigalzu
- A war between two AIs is often a great opportunity for you to capture some Cities. Even if you don't start the war until slightly after they've stopped fighting, certainly both AIs will have been weakened from the ordeal. Therefore, I'd recommend picking one of them as your future target and focusing your Espionage Points on that target. They are likely spending all of their Espionage Points on their war enemy, so it's a fast way for you to get free intelligence on where they have stationed their units
- Oops! We haven't connected our Incense in the east yet!
@drlake
- It is nice that you have started to build Religious Buildings to match The Apostolic Palace's Religion. I would recommend prioritizing them in your Cities, even before building your Universities. Don't forget that a Monastery gives part of the same benefit that a University will give to you, but it will give it to you faster (since the building will be built faster) and the bonus Hammers will speed up the time that it will take to build your University, too
- Nice work in resisting the urge to build a ton of superfluous buildings in your Heroic Epic City! That said, I'd even be strongly tempted to build the Apostolic Palace Religion's buildings in your Heroic Epic City, which means getting that Religion spread to that City, which shouldn't be TOO hard to do if you're building Jewish Monasteries in other Cities for the free Hammers that they will provide to you
- Good job in getting several Cottages worked in Babylon
- Great job in leveraging Farms to pump out Great Scientists in Athens
- Excellent work in getting up a Moai Statues City
- Nice army of War Elephants, Cats, and other units--which will soon be joined by more Maces and some Trebs. As you said, you appear to have scared off Zara and are putting yourself in a good position to attack one of the combatants in the Darius + Peter war
- Smart move to give Horses to Saladin in tribute. You can cancel the deal now that more than 10 turns have elapsed, without any penalty
- You could certainly afford to chop more Forests around Babylon. For example, it looks like you ALMOST had the Apostolic Palace built--a bit more aggression on those Forests would have netted you that Wonder
- While your Heroic Epic City location is decent, compare it to the location 1SW of there, which would have given you 3 more Hammers for 1 less Food per turn (an additional Grassland Hills square). Since you still have a lot of Plains Forest squares, which also provide some Hammers for 1 Food, you could claim that it is only a difference between working a 1F2H square (the Plains Forest) and working a 1F3H square (a mined Grassland Hills square). Really, that's only 1 Hammer per turn (or 2 Hammers per turn when building Military Units) of difference, but every Hammer helps in your Heroic Epic City. In the long run, it might work out in your favour, once you can lay down Lumbermills, but the Heroic Epic City is meant to be a medium-term value City--in the long run, every City can potentially produce a ton of Hammers using Workshops or other Hammer-based improvements, so it is usually preferable to focus the Heroic Epic City on a location that can get you the most medium-term gains possible, which means a location that is ideal in the pre-Lumbermill eras
- It looks like you could net a Silk Resource from Zara if you were to trade him one of your surplus Wines. Similarly, Saladin would give you a whopping 8 Gold per Turn for a surplus Spice Resource
- You have stopped working the Flood Plains Farms squares in Sparta. I would suggest that you either work them and whip (which you can't do since you are running Caste System) or else re-tool them to another improvement and work said squares--more Cottages, Watermills, Workshops, or whatever. For example, instead of working a Grassland River Watermill, it would be better to work a Flood Plains River Watermill, right? Okay, I exited the City and noticed that a Worker in converting one of those Flood Plains Farms into a Cottage--you're already on top of this idea. But, the advice still stands in that if you have the Worker turns to build a Watermill for a Grassland square, you'd be better off spending those Worker turns on an improvement for the Flood Plains square that you had stopped working
@GKey
- Interesting choice of using Caste System with some Workshops in your Heroic Epic City
- Great job against Zara!
- Good job in teching quite well and still having a couple of Great Scientists to show for it. I would guess that a lot of your Gold obtained from your wars has been helping to maintain your Science Rate. Is the plan to self-tech Nationalism and then Military Tradition, followed by Liberalising Gunpowder?
Or did you select Military Tradition just to "let us know" which tech to Liberalise? If you truly want to Liberalise Steel, then I think that chasing after Military Tradition first is spreading yourself a bit too thin and risks you losing the Liberalism race
- While it means one less Cottage City, why didn't you share your idea of building a Heroic Epic City in Akkad with the rest of us as part of the pre-turnset discussion?
- I would have thought that it would have been a no-brainer choice to settle your Great General in a Heroic Epic City that has a lot of Hammer output and is building City-Raider types of units (currently a Maceman), especially when you aren't running any Experience-points-based Civics. Okay, having a choice is nice, but when that choice is really no choice, it's not really much of a choice now, is it?
- You really could use a more widely-spread State Religion. It's like you said to yourself at the end of your turnset "oh yeah, I forgot about that part of my game, let's queue up 3 Missionaries in Babylon at the minute and hope that no one notices that I haven't been building them for a while."
- By taking on a Vassal, we are not going to be able to get past the We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced limits. If you take on a Vassal, normally you want to make sure that they can help you out a lot. I am not convinced that Zara fits into this category
- Trades using your surplus Spice and Sugar Resources are currently possible (to Saladin and Darius, respectively)
- Your Incense in the east needs to be connected
- Queuing up 4 buildings, with the 4th one being Moai Statues, doesn't "count" as having started on that National Wonder
My Votes
GKey = 3 points. While I don't like having a weak Vassal wreaking our potential for trading tehcs beyond the WFYABTA limits, we've made good progress against 1 AI (Zara) and have made some initial progress against another AI (Peter). We also have a potential Military Tech to be Liberalismed shortly, so war should soon become fun (but it may be a struggle for the first little while against Peter).
Fierabras = 2 points. Nice tech pace and an almost-guaranteed Taj Mahal will set us up to quickly tech some Military Techs and take on the world.
drlake = 1 point. We've started to build the Apostolic Palace's buildings, we have our Moai Statues up and running, and we're building a pretty decent army that can be used to wipe out one of those eastern or south-eastern AIs.
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