Hatty Tries Again on Earth2 Instead of Earth18 (Emperor)

[Harv]

Earth2 is a map script that generates continents that look like the continents we are familiar with. Map size is standard and there are 7 civilizations, ourselves and 6 rivals. Everybody starts in the Old World, which includes Asia, Europe, and Africa. Nobody starts in the Americas and it is quite possible nobody has immediate access to Australia.

The terrain is randomly generated. Resources are randomly generated. I do not know if there are resources that are unique to the Americas. Africa is not guaranteed a desert - or the large flood plains. Hopefully we do not have things like Marble on an ice tile.

Given the general shape of Asia, Europe, and Africa, and 6 AI opponents, it is unlikely that an AI will start next to us - and there will be room for normal expansion. However, I have never played this random map script before.

Here are the settings:

Spoiler :

Difficulty is the same, except we are on a randomly generated map.
World size has been changed to Standard. Maybe this will make the late game micro less intense.
Maybe this will be easier on my computer system!
Speed has been changed to Normal.
Huts have been turned off.
Random events have been turned off.
Added:
Barbarians are normal again.
I turned off the Aggressive AI.
I turned off the Choose Religions.

We are Hatty of Egypt. Apparently she is a favorite leader of mine. We played her twice on Earth18 and actually completed the games. We played her again two years ago. So this is the fourth time we are playing her.

Spiritual - We can freely change civics without anarchy. On Epic speed, it was once every 5 turns. On Normal it might be less than that. I do not remember.
The resident Micro Queen has mentioned that we can also use it to shift out of civics when we are not using them. As an example, we can shift out of Slavery and possibly save a few gp.
We also get a discount on Temples.

Creative - We get that nice early border pop. The old guides said that this is an early game trait that diminishes quickly. I suppose the value of the early border pop diminishes when we can build Culture or run an early Artist. Until then, we are saving ourselves an early monument every time we found a city - and early bonuses are really helpful.
We also have cheaper Libraries which are really helpful.
We also have cheaper Theaters which are not so helpful.

Obelisk - This is circumstantial. In the last game we built a grand total of one obelisk in an effort to get a Great Prophet in our Holy City. If we are running specialists, then we can build a cheap Library and run 2 Scientists, and a cheap Obelisk and run 2 priests. This makes us similar to the Arabs and their special Library in a way.

War Chariot - We have a unique Chariot that has 5 Strength instead of 4 Strength. It is also immune to First Strikes. So it is kind of like having a cheaper, weaker Horse Archer much earlier in the game - If we can find Horses.

Here is the start:

Spoiler :

I will post a save, then edit in my comments.

1. I think we are in Southern Africa. We can test my general knowledge of geography as I name cities based on where I believe they are located. The rival locations I can think of are:
a. Northern Africa
b. Europe
c. Central Asia
d. Middle East
e. East Asia
f. Southeast Asia
Based on this, we will have 3 neighbors in a, b, and c.
My second guess is we are in India.

2. The initial location of Settler and Warrior on hills have us an incredible amount of visibility. I see a lot of green everywhere.
a. Green Pigs are a 6f tile
b. Wet Rice is a 5f1c tile
c. The Hills to the northeast is suspiciously clear of forest.
d. The land to the northeast looks brown.
e. There is a lot of forest nearby.
Put those together and we have 9f1h10c at Size 2.

3. Moving the Warrior south will reveal a couple of tiles next to the brown hill. I think - especially since I think we are in either Southern Africa or India, all we will find to the south is water. We should also have border pops at Turns 3 and 25, plus one turn if we move.

4. Settling the plains hill to the northeast still captures the rice and pig and grants us an extra hammer. It costs us one turn, but the hammer gain will give us our first Worker a turn earlier. Moving the Settler northeast will give us more visibility.

5. 9f2h10c at Size 2 seems huge. That's 11 hammers towards a Settler and we get it in 10 turns with 10 overflow.

6. I forgot to mention we start with Agriculture and The Wheel.
First choice research is Animal Husbandry. We can pasture up the pigs and farm up the rice. We will know quickly if there is horse nearby.
Second choice is Mining->Bronze Working.
If we don't have Copper, then we still have lots of wood.

7. Settling 1NE opens up 2 city sites to our south. One somewhere on the west coast. One maybe on the plains hill, maybe somewhere else. These spots will be closed if we settle 1W or SIP.
Added: The south is still open. It is the west cost that is currently closed with our current settler location.

8. With a 1NE location, there are two locations on the west coast that can share two food sources.

9. All those green tiles suggest cottages.
So after Bronze Working, then we can research Pottery.
We can research Fishing if we spot a resource on one of the coasts.

10. Moving the Warrior 1E gives us a bunch of visibility of water tiles. It might show us if settling the Plains Hill is a mistake. Actually it verifies that it is not a mistake.
I see two Ocean tiles that can only be accessed by a city 1E of where the Warrior is standing

11. Given the food heavy start, we should very quickly find a location for a second city.

12. We are going to have a lot of Forest in our BFC if we settle 1NE.

13. I figured out why I believe we are in Southern Africa and not India. We have a lot of forest. If we were in India, then we would see more Jungle. If we were in central Africa, we would see more jungle.

So far I have:
1. Move Warrior ???.
2. Move Settler NE.
3. Research AH-Mining-BW-(Fishing)-Pottery

 

[Harv]

Part 1 - Turn 1 - 3960 BC - Striking Gooooold!

We moved the Warrior first to make sure that we were not making a mistake by settling a spot that eliminates important resources, such as Fish. The spot we were looking at eliminates the location 1E of where the Warrior is standing. By moving there, we revealed 3 Ocean tiles.

This freed up our Settler to move 1NE to where we are planning to found our first city - and we find.....

Spoiler :

Goooooold!

It's on a Plains Hill and the only shame is it is not also next to a river. This determines exactly where we are settling our first city. Our Warrior will move around what I believe is the southern coast of Africa.

Turn 1 - 3960 BC
Confident of my guess of our understanding of Earth geography, we named our Capital city Kampala. We might be a bit too far south for that location. I am imagining the Congo River to be the west of us. We have Forest instead of Jungle. We have a bunch of green to the southwest instead of a bunch of desert. We have great land to the southwest instead of junk. We appear to have junk to the north of us, but it is clear of forest and maybe we will reveal a nearby source of horses and shorten the distance to our first opponent.

However my initial planning centered around building to Size 2 and getting a Settler out Given the Gold, we will be changing this to Size 3. This might change with Animal Husbandry. I do not believe we will get to Bronze Working before it becomes relevant. It might be a good idea to keep an extra tile just in case a resource does pop up. We can make more of these decisions once Animal Husbandry is up.

Spoiler :

No need to post a save yet, just pictures.

 

[Gumbolt]

This does not look like a good map script. You would of been better just playing a pangea map.

Hatty again?

 

[Harv]

This does not look like a good map script. You would of been better just playing a pangea map.

Hatty again?

Map Script - You say it does not look like a good map script because we have 7 players on an 80x48 map, then force them all on one continents, therefore making the playing area smaller and therefore making player rush tactics easier?

Hatty - I was trying to minimize changes from one game to another. We kept difficulty, but changed to a random map script. We changed the map size and we changed the game speed. So keeping the leader and civilization was one change I did not have to worry about, because I have had some past success.

Part 2 - Turn 14 - 3440 BC - Men and.....

Sometimes it is interesting to look at the Demographics and figure out what is going on in the very early game. A quick check reveals that Mansa is not on this map. Another check on Turn 3 indicates 3 Creative leaders. Meanwhile, the BUG mod has a special spoiler for us!

Spoiler :

We have X and Y coordinates confirming our location! We are in the Southern Hemisphere. and Africa is the only place I can think of with a possible spawn location there. I thought the BUG mod only works with information that can be acquired, without the human going through the trouble of gathering it all. We had two other indicators. I could move the camera south some, but not all the way. I could move the camera north. That implies that we are able to find the southern limit of the map from our location. Better knowledge of this limit would yield a y-coordinate. Meanwhile, we were gathering more evidence that we landed in Southern Africa.

Exploring the southern coast of Africa revealed nothing. We might have a location to fill in a city and that is it. However, we did get a T4 border pop and that revealed a Crab to our west. This puts Fishing in our research plan following Bronze Working.

T8 - 3680 BC - We encountered our first AI opponent - Ragnar of the Vikings
His scout came in to see us from the north. The AI starts with 2 Archers and 2 Scouts, so it is more likely they will be finding us, because they can explore in two directions. I believe we will meet one more AI shortly, representing either Europe or the Middle East.

Meanwhile we continued to explore the west coast and spied what we will call the Niger River. It has a little bit of flood plain. However getting there is a bit of a gambit. We have one flat square, then a hill. There is a Panther patrolling, so we will have to kill it first and then move.

T14 - 3440 BC - Animal Husbandry

Spoiler :

We have a Horse resource in a very nice location!

Added - Elsewhere in the world, somebody founded Hinduism. So we have one AI that started with Mysticism and went straight to Polytheism. Surprisingly, we were able to reach equivalent technologies at the same time.

I will be adding thoughts here for about 30 minutes, then have a one hour appointment, then able to play another session.

1. Warrior 1 - Will take cover in the forest and will have very high odds against the Panther. Then he can heal up. With the Hill in sight, we have a very good probability of making it there and checking how much flood plain there is on the Niger River. Also, Warriors are very cheap.

2. Warrior 2 - There is a Plains Hill to the northeast of us that we would also like to check out. Also, if we have a neighbor or two, then we would do well to locate them.

3. Espionage Ratio - I could have checked the Espionage ratio to see how many neighbors Rags has and gain some insight into his location.

4. City location - (-3,-1) looks like a very good location. It shares both food tiles with Kampala and also has a Crab tile. It picks up the Horse.

5. T26 Border Pop should cover a lot of Southern Africa. This is well inside the grace period for Barbarian Warriors and we will have one front we do not have to worry about. For the other front, we will apparently have War Chariots.

6. Research Plan - Mining, Bronze Working, Fishing, Pottery - A question I have is if we should put Fishing before Bronze Working because our second city will have access to the Crabs.

7. Settler Build - We have 3 very strong tiles. I count 7f 5h 16c at Size 3. It would take 3 or 4 turns to get to Size 4, but I see no big gain in that. We gain one hammer and can take one turn less to get a Settler. I also think we will still be improving tiles when we hit Size 3, so that would be a good time to start a Settler.

 

[Harv]

Part 3 - Turn 33 - 2680 BC - Acuna.....

One big surprise is it turns out Ragnar did found Hinduism. He must have researched Mysticism-Polytheism in the same amount of time as we researched Animal Husbandry, putting his tech rate as 50% greater than ours.

Meanwhile our Warrior 1 was probably better off guarding a city site, but I suppose after a while it is not going to matter. We pushed northwards and found the Sahara Rainforest just north of the Congo Desert. There were times we thought we were going to lose this brave guy....
T14 Panther 2 vs 3.2 at 4.4% - Won with 70hp remaining
T21 Lion 2 vs 2.7 at 21.3% - Won with 66hp remaining
T23 Panther 2 vs 3.34 3.8% - Won with 48hp remaining and there was another one chasing us, so we looked for somewhere safer to hide.
We found a forested hill to make our stand.
T25 Panther 2 vs 1.96 78.3% - Won with 32hp remaining
So we managed to get Warrior 1 promoted to Woodsman 2 for easier transit across the Sahara Jungle.
We used this to help Warrior 2 also make it to the Sahara Jungle.

Spoiler :

T22 Kampala reached Size 3, so we took the quick opportunity to start a Settler. We knew where we were going to build.
T27 Fishing - Our first build in the new city will be a Work Boat.
T29 We encountered Sitting Bull. He probably represents Europe. He founded Buddhism back on T17.
We have both holy cities somewhere nearby. Maybe we end up siding with whoever shares their religion with us.
T32 Settler 2 complete
T33 Founded Matadi

Spoiler :

Our first build there will be a Work Boat. The next question is what tiles to work getting there. I will get my pen and paper and see if I can optimize something. We have 3 special tiles worked right now, the rice, the pigs, and the gold. We will have the horse in 4 turns and that will give us 4 hammers. When we get the Work Boat built, I would like to grow to Size 2 at the same time. Then we will be working 5 special tiles.
In the mean time, the fourth tile we work is a choice between 2f1h, 2f2c, and 1f2h.

I think Kampala should be building a Worker next. We have Bronze Working coming right up and a bunch of forest we can chop.

We have 2 Warriors in the Sahara Rainforest. We would like to find the Vikings and the Natives.

Research is Bronze Working -> Pottery -> Writing?

Next city is a plains hill to the Northeast. It has a Cow, 2 Flood Plains, and a Desert Stone.

 

[Harv]

Part 4 - Turn 46 - 2160 BC - We're From.....

We ran our micro in Matadi as well as we could and got our Work Boat and Crabs on Turn 43, a full 10 Turns after the city was founded. We finished Worker 2 in Turn 38 and started a road to our next city while building a Settler. Worker 1 had the horses hooked up on Turn 38 and started to work chopping out a mine on our original starting point. Settler 3 was complete Turn 45 and we founded Nairobi on Turn 46.

Spoiler :

5/6 Leaders encountered:
T8 Ragnar
T29 Sitting Bull
T36 Gilgamesh
T37 Pericles
T42 Louis
With Writing and Open Borders, we are very likely to meet the final leader on this continent soon.

Two City Club:
T33 Hatty with Matadi
T33 Sitting Bull with Poverty Point
T36 Gilgamesh with 2 Cities
T37 Pericles with 2 Cities
T42 Ragnar with Upsala

Technology:
T36 Bronze Working

I stopped here to make a decision that might determine the course of the game. I believe, however, we are too late to start a War Chariot rush and this is because we founded a third city already. The Greeks and Vikings appear to be very far away to make a rush effective. I counted 12 tiles to the Vikings and we can get there from our Capital in 7 Turns. It is about 10 Turns from Nairobi to Athens.

We can have Writing next turn if we want it, for a cost of 1gp compared to binary research. Then we can OB and check out what they have inside their borders. If there is no metal, then a War Chariot rush might still be possible.

The cities look good to me. We have a total population of 6 and we are working a total of 5 special tiles. We will be growing into an improved tile and we will the the Cows up for Nairobi in 2 Turns. Nairobi will grow into a cottaged flood plain. We have some options to whip granaries and share tiles. Failing the rush, we should aggressively expand towards the Sahara Rainforest.
(Added. I looked again at the picture of Nairobi. It has only a few good tiles, the cows and 2 flood plains. To the north of that is all useless. There are 5 coast tiles and a couple of plains river tiles.)

Our second city, Matadi was profitable from the start. It cost 2gp and generated 2gp in trade revenue, plus the commerce it generated, which was 1 to 3. Now it generates 5, plus the extra trade in Kampala to make 6. It also generates 3 hammers. Nairobi is costing us 4gp, but only makes 3gp in revenue. It will remain at a loss until we grow into a cottaged flood plain. Each city will take a little longer to get to a breakeven point. Each city gets more expensive and our choices get more limited.

The next target I can think of for expansion is the flood plain on the west coast. This one has a lot of desert and no hammers. After that, there are still some green tiles on the west coast. All of this will take some time to develop. Maybe our start only had 3 good city sites and the rest is fill and the shape of Africa is limiting our expansion.

We don't have any metal and that could cause problems as the Barbarians get worse. We will have no response to Spears. Our best remedy to the Barbarians would be to set up spawnbusters. I think we have about 40 more turns to solve that issue.

After Writing, we research Sailing. Our OB will yield up to 3 more commerce.

Given the discussion of good city sites, maybe I should reconsider my thought about War Chariots.

 

[konata_LS]

Very detailed write-up. The game looks interesting

So, is earth2 map similar to Terra with real world land shape? Everyone starts on the old world continent, and needs Optics/Astro to settle in the new world.

About WC rush... Not sure. If all the AIs are far, or if their land is poor and you have large room to expand, maybe it's better to stay at peace for a while. Another concern is the diplomacy. Ragnar, Giggle, and Louis may like each other and dislike SB .

 

[Harv]

Very detailed write-up. The game looks interesting

So, is earth2 map similar to Terra with real world land shape? Everyone starts on the old world continent, and needs Optics/Astro to settle in the new world.

About WC rush... Not sure. If all the AIs are far, or if their land is poor and you have large room to expand, maybe it's better to stay at peace for a while. Another concern is the diplomacy. Ragnar, Giggle, and Louis may like each other and dislike SB .

Thank you for the compliments! The timing of your response indicates that you are likely to be located somewhere in Europe. I am Canadian, but currently live in the Eastern USA.

The Earth2 script is probably similar to the Terra script, but I have not looked up the details and differences. From a distance, it will kind of look like an earth map. Up close, there will be small differences in landmass shape and large differences in terrain details. So far, I have named the Congo Desert and the Sahara Rainforest, but it is quite possible I have underestimated the size of the African continent. I think the map generator has boxes to fit North and South America, some ocean zones, then Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Exactly as you said, Everyone starts on the old world continent, and needs Optics / Astronomy to settle in the New World.

The comment about the WC rush brings up a bunch of questions and issues.
What turn / year is it? 46 / 2160 BC
What is our city count / population? 3 / 6
Can we win with 3 cities? Very unlikely
Where can we settle more cities?
I see a green tile approximately 4NW of Kampala that captures 2 flood plains and 2 green hills. Based on that, I count 2 food and 7 hammers at size 4 - 4 food if we farm the flood plains on the Niger River. I believe this is in Nigeria.
After that, we have the Congo Desert, then the Sahara Rainforest. We might be able to claim a Cow on the East Coast in the southern part of the Sahara Rainforest. That puts us at 3 hammers.
We can fill in a city in South Africa. With a Plains Hill, we are at 5 hammers.
After that, we will have to clear out the Sahara Rainforest.
Can we win with 6 cities? This is also unlikely.
I spoilered our X and Y coordinates and we are at Y=15. If we draw a line between Y=24 and Y=25 as the Equator, then we are at 10S and the Vikings are at Y=27 / 3N. (They are 7.5 degrees north and we are 37.5 degrees south.) The abundance of jungle tiles also indicates the equator. There are 14 tiles to the south of us and there are 21 tiles to the north of the Vikings. They might have all of Europe to expand to - Or Sitting Bull might be there.


The idea I had at the very start was to quickly build a second city, because we had 2 great food resources. The location of the second city was very obvious to me. I rank the third city as okay for the beginning of the game. Our route to expansion is blocked by the Congo Desert and the Sahara Jungle. We have to reconsider a WC rush.

It's also Turn 46. Could we have known everything above a lot sooner?

Was building Nairobi an error? I rank it as 5 hammers. A Settler is 100 hammers and the cows are up in Nairobi in 2 turns. So we will be 22 turns recovering our investment if we are measuring in War Chariots. In 22 turns, we will have acquired 104 hammers. If we are also building a Barracks, then it will be another 50 hammers, or 10 turns. That will put us at Turn 78, or 925 BC. Our rivals might have Iron by then. We have Nairobi set to Granary. This is 60 Hammers or 12 turns. We have to check if we can recover the cost quickly.

Next turn we will have Writing and we can start scouting our neighbors. Then we will know more. I can make some calculations to see if we can recover costs for Granaries and Barracks in some whip cycles. We will probably be building a stack of 10 WC and catch our first target by surprise.

 

[Harv]

Part 5 - Turn 65 - 1400 BC - The Calm Before......

It's another long set of turns, 19 total. So if we did it well, then we did it well. If we messed it up, well then, there's always the CTD error. I am actually doubtful of my computer's health. I crash if I switch out of the game and I can't change the screen setting. I can play in windowed mode. I might try something different in a few weeks to see if that is causing issues. It might be how apps like Discord and Steam talk to the system. I remember a recent Steam update. Maybe I try playing in offline mode.

ADDED: I found a very old thread and I'm not sure if it is relevant.

Spoiler :

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/civ-iv-alt-tab-switching-causes-game-freeze.452733/

Production in Kampala:
T48 Warrior 5
T50 Granary
T52 War Chariot 1
T56 War Chariot 3
T58 War Chariot 4
T60 Barracks
T61 War Chariot 5
T62 War Chariot 8
T65 War Chariot 9

Production in Matadi:
T47 Warrior 4
T54 Granary
T55 War Chariot 2
T61 War Chariot 6
T63 Barracks
T65 War Chariot 10

Production in Nairobi:
T55 Granary
T61 War Chariot 7
T64 Barracks
T65 War Chariot 11

Wonders and the Three City Club:
T51 Perry build Stonehenge in Athens
T51 Giggles founded Kish for this third city
T52 Louis founded Orleans for his second city
T57 Perry founded Corinth for his third city
T58 Sitting Bull founded Mound City for his third city
T64 Encountered Churchill and he has 3 cities.
T64 Rags founded Hithabu for his third city. All of the cool civs have 3 cities. Louis is not cool.

Technology:
T47 Writing
T54 Sailing

We are slowly grinding our way to Mathematics. After that, we can either go Construction or Currency. We will not have Elepults, but we can combine Chariots and Catapults.

The good news: We have 11 War Chariots.
The bad news: Rags will have Iron Working next turn. We do not know if he has Iron anywhere. He probably does, because I did not see any copper or horse and it is very likely the script would give him Iron so that he is able to build something. We are about 6 Turns away from reaching Nidaros. We can cut this to 5 by moving our forces right now. I saw one green mine that might be a candidate for the Iron. Assuming he has a Worker nearby, then he can have a road in 3 Turns. If he is clever with his worker micro, then it is 2 turns. If he is also clever with his production micro, then he has the equivalent of 14/15 hammers in a Warrior that transitions into 14/25 hammers into a Spearman. Then when we launch into his territory, he is defending with 2 Spears and 3 Archers and it will be a nightmare.

Here is a look at the territory:

Spoiler :

Turn 65 plus 5 more turns is Turn 70. This is probably very late for a War Chariot rush.

We built Nairobi. That cost us 100 hammers. Nairobi built 2 War Chariots. That's worth 60 hammers, so we are at a loss on that build so far.
We build 3 Granaries. That cost us 180 hammers. We probably recovered the cost of the hammers by saving more food and growing faster. Then this got spent.
Then we built 3 Barracks. Based on my production report, we have 6 Chariots at L1 and 5 Chariots at L2. We can initiate an attack with a L2 Chariot and use the L1 Chariots to clean up.

Our total production bill over this 19 turn session:
180 Hammers - 3 Granaries
150 Hammers - 3 Barracks
330 Hammers - 11 War Chariots
20 Hammers - 2 Warriors
680 Hammers - Grand Total
That's an average of nearly 12 hammers per turn for each of our 3 cities! We can take out 15 hammers based on the warriors starting partially produced and change that average to 11 hammers per turn.

 

[Harv]

Part 6 - Turn 74 - 1040 BC - The Storm

The Vikings had Iron. We sent our scouts looking around, but we could see no signs of any new mines coming up or any new production. We saw no signs of any roads being built. In fact, we saw now roads at all. We suspect, although they discovered Iron Working, their primitive civilization had not even discovered the Wheel. We were rolling in with dozens of wheels.

On the way there, Churchill demanded we stop trading with the Vikings. We refused. We need our eyes on Nidaros and a few more gold coins are a few more gold coins.

T70 1200 BC we declared war on Ragnar and launched 8 War Chariots right on top of Nidaros. By the time we reached the capital, it had only two Archers defending. Meanwhile, four more War Chariots rolled on the desert outpost of Haithbu and we burned it to the ground. We lost one in the process.
T71 1160 BC we captured Nidaros, losing one more War Chariot. Miraculously, we won the first attack against the Guerilla defenders the first round at 9.0%. Then we lost the second battle. The rest was cleanup. We sent all of our reserves at the final Viking holdout.
T74 1040 BC The Vikings made their brave final stand at Uppsala. We sent our best War Chariot in first, number 10. It had a 6.00 to 5.85 strength advantage and a 64% probability of winning and it struck out. We went 0 and 6. That's about 1 in 64, so it's worse than rolling a 1 on a d20. I guess the RNG balances out in places. Undiscouraged and about eight more War Chariots where that one came from, we still had that 2 to 1 numerical advantage and pressed the attack. We lost one more War Chariot.

The Vikings are defeated. Schkull!

Spoiler :

Kampala:
T68 War Chariot 13
T72 Library

Matadi:
T70 Library
T74 Worker 3

Nairobi:
T67 War Chariot 12
T74 War Chariot 14

Technology:
T70 Mathematics
T73 Mysticism (We figured it was cheap and saved an extra 16gp on Masonry an we might build our single Obelisk before our next conquest.)
T74 Masonry

The 4-City Club and World Wonders and Events
T67 Perry founded Thebes and now has 4 Cities
T67 Giggles founded Lagash and now has 4 Cities
T72 Sumeria built the Great Wall

We built a total of 14 War Chariots and lost 4. 10 remain. I might look up which ones have how many experience points.
420 Hammers invested and we have an AI capital to show for it. This Capital appears to have a food surplus of 4 and a a grassland gem mine.

We have no scouts on Perry and it will be several turns before we can arrive there with our forces. Construction appears to be quite a few turns away with our economy shot to pieces. We will take some of these turns to consolidate our gains.

 

[Harv]

Part 7 - T80 - 875 BC- The Crash After the Storm

Well if we did not succeed in crashing the economy by 1000 BC, then we are not expanding as fast as we could be. So we have to get better at this part of the game.

We made a quick change of research to grab Hunting, because there are Elephants nearby and no matter where we decide to settle next, we will gain access to these Elephants. We should have gone HBR next, because that grants us the Stables. However we went with Construction.

T75 Hunting

The number I use to gauge economic strength is the nearest percentage to breakeven, plus the budget surplus for an approximation. This started at 18 on T74 and bottomed out at 13 on Turn 76. Then it seemed to recover and go back up. In a properly crashed economy, this number is negative. Then ideally the income side of the equation grows faster than the expenses. Cottage tiles improve. Trade routes develop. In our case, we have a gem mine in Timbuktu and a few turns later, we got trade with the Greek City States. So our indicator is showing 28. and it means Classical era technology will come slowly. However we are also early in the Classical era, so it will take some time.

T76 War Chariot 15 in Matadi
T80 Settler in Kampala
T80 Library in Nairobi

Based on land routes, Perry is our only neighbor right now. He has 5 cities and access to Copper. All of the cool civs have 5 cities. Sitting Bull is a bit behind at 4. Louis is way behind at 2 for some reason. He might have been boxed in India.

We have a short break in the action. I think our best counter to Perry is to expand. We should choose spots to keep his territory limited to Mesopotamia. Right now, we do not have a good counter to Phalanx. We certainly do not have a good counter to Spear. Perry can build both. Elepults should be able to fix everything.

Here are the sites I am thinking:

Spoiler :

The first site where the settler is standing is immediately accessible and we can claim it any time. If we claim it next turn, then we have at least two Workers nearby to develop the Flood Plains, then work on the mines. There is not really food. We have a food surplus of 4 with 2 flood plain cottages. This goes back to 2 with the mines and we have 7 hammers.

The second city is Cyrene? We claim the Elephants quickly. we have Cows and Clams for a food surplus of 5. It will take our Settler about 6 more turns to get there. We should have another settler in about 4 more turns. I will think about this overnight.

Timbuktu has a bunch of forest to clear. I count 7. 210 Hammers. What should we do with all of that? The Libreville site will also have about 5 forest tiles. The answer to that depends on whether we want to be good guys or bad. 9 Turns to Construction and we can start building Catapults. 12 Turns to HBR. Ouch. It will be T100 by the time we have access to Elepults.

In case you are wondering why we built that road along the river to the south of Kampala instead of a cottage, I have a story:
The Islamic missionary is sometimes referred to as an Imam. The Christian missionary might be referred to as a Priest. Well, a Priest, Imam, and Rabbit were at a clinic to donate blood. When asked for blood type, the Rabbit spoke up first. I must be a type O.

 

[Gumbolt]

Your +24 gold at 0%. I would hardly call that a crashed economy.

You need to settle the city with 3xsea and 1xcow asap to block out the Greeks.(1N of cows). Fish is best food resource in area. You can back fill the ivory clams later. Settle on the ivory. You will get ivory in 11 turns from the holy city anyway, Whip the cowx 3 seafood city asap. That or send your cottage settler there now?

I would settle that other settler in place and build cottages. Not a great city but a lot of grassland and 2 flood plains eventually.

You really wanted calendar here and to trade for IW. Construction is only useful if you are going to war soon. To whip construction units now would be very bad as 1mp units would take 13+ turns to reach the Greeks. Roads on desert use up 3 worker turns?

I suspect the Greeks will be boxed in soon. Do not let Greeks capture the barb cities.

You need to explore map more. You need copper or iron in case Greek's attack.You could gift resources to help keep pleased.

 

[Harv]

Your +24 gold at 0%. I would hardly call that a crashed economy.

You need to settle the city with 3xsea and 1xcow asap to block out the Greeks.(1N of cows). Fish is best food resource in area. You can back fill the ivory clams later. Settle on the ivory. You will get ivory in 11 turns from the holy city anyway, Whip the cowx 3 seafood city asap. That or send your cottage settler there now?

I would settle that other settler in place and build cottages. Not a great city but a lot of grassland and 2 flood plains eventually.

You really wanted calendar here and to trade for IW. Construction is only useful if you are going to war soon. To whip construction units now would be very bad as 1mp units would take 13+ turns to reach the Greeks. Roads on desert use up 3 worker turns?

I suspect the Greeks will be boxed in soon. Do not let Greeks capture the barb cities.

You need to explore map more. You need copper or iron in case Greek's attack.You could gift resources to help keep pleased.

Several subjects. A lot of them are mental barriers I'm dealing with.

Crashed Economy - For some reason, I see this as a stage of the game and an indication that we have maximized early expansion, whether by settling or by war. The mental image I have is with a fixed number of cities, the economy will get better over time. The cities are getting bigger and the land is getting better faster than the expenses are growing and this effect is maximized if the net income is negative at 0% slider. This never seemed to happen in the turn set I was describing, so we might not have maximized. I also try to watch this carefully.

3 Seafood 1 Cow - I honestly missed that and need to reprogram myself. 3 food sources better than fresh water and river. The last turn set I published was Turn 80 and the adjustment is to settle that instead of what I had centered in the picture. The settler you recommended to settle in place needs a few turns or so to reach the 3 Seafood 1 Cow spot and it's a footrace against the Greeks. It takes 1 turn to get there from the capital and we can fill that spot any time. At the time I was thinking the workers were right there to build up the city.

Calendar versus Construction - Previous turn set was Turn 74. I guess I was thinking Greeks were the next visible target - only target. I did not think of Calendar as an option, because all the resources were covered by jungle. The trade for IW becomes available when somebody gets to Alphabet. Going Calendar implies that we will be at peace for a while.

Exploration - Usually I thought people overexplore the map. We should probably do this with surplus chariots.
-------------------------

General question about the map script - Is it still a silly map script because of a few factors?
a. Assuming the Old World is three times bigger than the New World, we are essentially playing a Pangea map that is 75% the size. So it is 33% more crowded, favoring the human over the AI.
b. The script creates bottlenecks. As the human player, we encountered two and had to rush one. AI France appears to have one.

Spoiler :

Europe appears to be currently bottlenecked out of play.

Are we better off just playing a Pangea map as you originally suggested? I understand it is very popular among players leveling up. It might be because we take out a lot of extra things to worry about. More specifically, it is (on a continents map) what is going on on the other continent and how to reach the other continent.

 

[Gumbolt]

1. Your economy is not crashed. On my Earth 18 diety game I was losing 20-30 GPT at 0% tax. That is a crashed economy! No reason not to have 10-15 cities by 1ad. Land=power. Reason people get stuck on emperor level is they dopn't expand enough.On my Earth 18 Aztec game i had close to 17 cities very early on.
2. No idea about fresh water. I just see a nice site that can run multiple workboats and be good as a GP city during a golden age.
3. Alphabet has it's uses. AI will be really slow to alphabet. Calendar will allow you to increase happiness cap. You could just self tech IW. If most AI have it, it will be much cheaper to tech. So always look at that.
4.You should be expanding and exploring. You have not explored north of where the Viking's are. You need metal or phants if Greeks attack you. Don't be afraid of workboat exploration.

As for the script it's not really an Earth map. Having Americas is pointless as the AI get crammed into tight small areas in Europe. French stuck on 2 cities. You killed Viking with WC. (Basically a free war.) Leaving 3 AI that will be any challenge. If you take pults/phants to Greeks they will quickly die. Then a case of how much land the other AI have left. If you keep expanding they should all be stuck at 4-9 cities? Pangea is a much better script as I simply don't see this as a Earth map. Might of been better to have 2-3 Ai across the pond. Where do you see the challenge on this map coming from? Guess a Greek DOW now would cause issues as you have no answer to spears. Albeit you could build archers.

You do need to play more challenging leaders.

 

[Harv]

On my Earth 18 Aztec game i had close to 17 cities very early on.

When did you play your Aztec Earth18 game? I tried that a very long time ago, but most likely made worse errors than more recent games. I stopped because the wars were getting tedious and for some reason I did not want to vassal countries like Russia.

I looked at the Ice Age map for fun. One thing I notice is the number of civs changed from 18 to 14 and they are more spread out. It also seems to feature even more ridiculous tiles. The Nile River features a Flood Plain Cow.

Something I find frustrating on the map scripts I have run are things like marble on an ice tile. On this map, I saw a fur on an ice tile. So we never get to see that resource make a nice tile.

Where do you see the challenge on this map coming from? Guess a Greek DOW now would cause issues as you have no answer to spears. Albeit you could build archers.

Well, I did not tech Archery, so can't build Archers. In the event of Greek DoW in the very near future......
War Chariot versus Phalanx on flat ground is even money.
Cherrypult would be the only answer I can think of for spears. Where we left off, this is 9 turns away.
After that, it's time. If Perry DoWs, then he is most likely to choose a city and sent a stack after it, probably a couple of spears and a bunch of phalanx.
If we take out his source of copper, then his supply of spears and phalanxes will be limited.
I do not remember seeing another source of copper. I did not see any horses. Iron is harder to spot right now.

You do need to play more challenging leaders.

I'm not a fan of random leaders and do not understand why so many people play random leader. If I start a Pangea map, do you have a suggestion of a leader to play?