HUI Game #1 - Pacal II

[learner gamer]

Wow, what an interesting thread! IMHO Shafi, TMIT has summarised your options almost perfectly and the strategy you should follow is along the lines of that proposed by TMIT and michmbk (apologies to anyone I missed!) Your next priority is definitely to tech animal husbandry – whilst it may reveal horses it will enable you to work the cows ASAP. (Apologies for the emphasis but the best advice I’ve seen on these forums is always simply to play the map.) Once researched, you can then examine whether a chariot or horse archer rush is feasible. For the record, I’d advise against a chariot rush because their base strength is the same as a Holkan (and you don’t get CR promos either) – so you’ll have to build similar numbers of either Holkans or chariots to hit Cathy (unless she’s defending with axes of course). To my mind, producing either unit in these numbers (around 3:1 vs archers) will require you to have a couple of cities producing them simultaneously - which is why I agree with TMIT’s advice: you need more land first. If you do decide to rush, horse archers seem to me to be a far better option IF you can settle and connect up any horses (which clearly depends on where they are) – and research horseback riding early enough.

All said, I’d therefore be inclined to simply follow the advice of those mentioned above and settle a few more cities first – city two as planned, then cities three and four somewhere by the rice to your SW, and in the vicinity of the wheat to your east, pending further exploration. Michmbk is also right to suggest BTW that you should also explore further north (or at least around the wheat) – I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen online gamers ignore the poles even when they start right next to them – only to discover much later a resource or two which would have sustained a city. For now, all this means that builds should still, IMHO, be focussed mainly on settlers and workers (and the odd warrior) in your capital and Holkans / warriors (and the odd monument) elsewhere.

As for when to strike Cathy, it depends on the location of the horses (if indeed there are any). To that end, after AH, I’d be inclined to begin to prioritise researching horseback riding or construction as appropriate (following michmbk’s suggested tech path of the wheel (to hook up any horses), pottery and writing first). Admittedly, whilst going the longer route via construction puts you at risk that Cathy (or more generally the monarch AI) has better defences because of its research and production bonuses, the food surplus in your capital is such that you can run two scientists in there (post building a library) to help boost your own research and reduce this risk. (Popping masonry will obviously also have helped cut construction’s research time too.) Moreover, whilst the latter route requires more research time, this could be used to build granaries, barracks and stables in your cities in readiness for war. Note also BTW that not only will construction bring both jumbos and catapults online to take her out, but it also enables your unique building, the ball court. With this building online (which I’d be directing elephant and catapult whip overflow into), you’ll get three extra happiness, meaning that you can whip your army together very hard, very fast (and it’ll also help limit the impact of war weariness)...something that I think will come in handy given the glaring lack of happiness resources available. Looking forward to the rest of the game!

 

[Shafi]

Well good news is i managed to play another short round, a few developments to report, but dont have the time to do the write ups with the screenies and post so it will have to wait till tomorrow so that i do a decent job of it. It's quite late and i need to sleep

 

[Shafi]

Our tribal elders have discovered the mysteries of Bronze Working but alas ….. there is no copper in our lands, An emergency council meeting is called and we decide to build an army of Holkans both for defense and as an invading force.
We set about researching Hunting and begin constructing a Barrack after completion of the warrior who is tasked with exploring the coastal wheat site.
Our worker completes work on the first corn and we seem to have plenty of food for now so we send him to chop the jungle on the hill NE of the corn he was working, to hurry the Barracks and also to improve the tile with a mine. Our warrior exploring the coastal wheat is attacked by a Lion but bravely fights him off and survives.

Spoiler :

We complete research of Hunting and begin researching the mysteries of Animal Husbandry to improve that cow tile + we desperately need horses.
Meanwhile our warrior to the south keeps exploring the enemy lands and reports back ….

Spoiler :

Cathy has copper!
Well that’s certainly a dampner because I was preparing for a Holkan rush, we promptly whip the Barracks and start on a settler immeadiately hoping that we will find horses.
Meanwhile a random event boosts our eastern warriors XP.

Spoiler :

We promote him to Woodsman I. Woody I promptly gets attacked by two wolves and survives, sheesh this guy is having a tough time with the animals ….
Our southern warrior keeps exploring and this ugly dude shows up

Spoiler :

His Archers seemed to have trekked through the jungle to the south of Cathy’s capital.

Spoiler :

We finish exploring the east coast near the whet and,

Spoiler :

Nothing interesting there as far as I can tell, Although I see a crab on the coast I cant think of a decent city location there.
Our worker completes the mine and starts work on the 2nd corn tile.

Oh … how wonderful look what the cat dragged in …

Spoiler :

Some wonderful neighbors I seem to be having, and they seem to be getting uglier too … his scout came from the south too.

Spoiler :

I usually take out Shaka / Monty super early or die trying, it’s gonna be different here, we need to first get past cathy and then figure out what to do with the two clowns we met.
We are informed that Cathy has founded her 2nd city.

Spoiler :

We finish building the settler and start work on a Holkan for Defense. Reserch on AH is complete and we begin researching the wheel next.
Ahhhh ….. Horses!!!

Spoiler :

Where shall we put the horse city then? And what should be our plan now?Have a look at the proposed sites for the Horse & Ivory cities and see if you agree.

Spoiler :

Which city do we settle first? If we don’t settle the ivory immediately, I feel we may lose it to cathy.
Finally here’s a look at the world as we know it,

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

So at this point we decided to post our progress, heres a summary of whats happened,

1) We don’t have Copper
2) Cathy has Copper
3) We can grab horses.
4) Shaka & Napolean are somewhere to the south

Now what should be our plan of action? I am thinking settle Horse & Ivory cities and prepare for a HA charge. I don’t think I have ever done one (unless you include a Keshik rush) so will need some advice on how to go about it. How soon do tech HBR? My estimate is Cathy will have around 4 – 5 cities when we hit her.

Save game attached.

 

[lymond]

So what can we talk about now? I'm not familiar with the rules.

 

[CarlH]

Re: city placement

White should go 1SE, 1 more green tile (maybe 2) and a source of ivory. First build should be a monument - so quick access to horses.

Green could then go on the northern elephant (1 extra hammer in that city), which, if u get there before cathy settles a city in that areas, will give u more workable land, free of cathy's cultural pressure and not lose many FPs. it would also mean that you could relax a little about settling it quickly.

Re HBR: make sure you have some cottage laid down and writing before you go for it. Its an expensive tech and you can really limp along if you dont have some financial/science support before going for it.

Re the rush:

1. Once you have HBR, they key to success is speed.
2. Build stables in decent production cities straight away, which all 3 look to be, and spam 8 - 12 HAs - half with flanking 2 promos, 1 healer, and the rest a mix of combat/shock.
3. When you are ready to declare, position your stack as close as you can to your target's copper and pillage it on the 1st/2nd turn. This way you can avoid too many annoying spearmen showing up, which can kill your chances of a successful rush.
4. If practical, go for the capital first - its the biggest prize and will signficantly impair/cripple your target's ability to counter attack. Also, if you find ur stack signficantly depleted, it will allow you to get peace more easily as the AI get upset about losing their capital and feel weak/vulnerable.

Good luck

 

[Shafi]

So what can we talk about now? I'm not familiar with the rules.

Just about anything except disclosing information which is not known at the time of my last update

 

[Slvynn]

Agree on white city 1SE. 1SE White spot is much better for Fin cottage spam and more riverside grassland will be necessary for using Post-Con Maya grow cap.

Though i think Green city on southern phant is better - 1 desert tile less, closer to enemy, and phants connected instantly to capital (+1 happy)

 

[Shafi]

So the plan should be,
we research Wheel>Pottery>Writing>HBR
Settel the Horse & Ivory cities, and build up infrastructure. cottage heavily and build library to help with research of HBR.
Then build stables and an Army of HA's.
That sound right?
I am just about done with work and will be playing a round in a couple of hours.

 

[JTMacc99]

Cathy's second city? I'm guessing it must be West of her capital, and it wouldn't shock me if it's going to grab that elephant that we're thinking about capturing with our horse/rice city.

I gotta be honest here:
-- Your capital is a top-notch REX-machine (you could seriously spam workers and settlers from that sucker), but I have no idea where you would send them to put yourself in a good position.
-- Cathy's capital is a MAJOR prize. Look at that sucker.
-- She's probably going to grab or at least put major pressure on one or both of your decent expansion cities.

Is there ANY way to put the rush back on the table?

 

[dr_s]

I think you're too concerned about Russia copper, which is not even with its borders yet, unless the second city was founded down there. If not, you can still prevent Russia from building axes by judicial DOW and pillaging. So if you want to Holkan rush, you still can, just settle a good second hammer city, (green dot) and start chopping.

Just send your southern warrior back north to find her second city. You should also make sure that there isn't any seafood over by the horses before you decide on that city placement.

 

[JTMacc99]

I think you're too concerned about Russia copper, which is not even with its borders yet, unless the second city was founded down there. If not, you can still prevent Russia from building axes by judicial DOW and pillaging. So if you want to Holkan rush, you still can, just settle a good second hammer city, (green dot) and start chopping.

Just send your southern warrior back north to find her second city. You should also make sure that there isn't any seafood over by the horses before you decide on that city placement.

I agree on both points.

 

[UWHabs]

Yeah, if you planned for a rush, I wouldn't worry about that copper. It's outside her borders.

Personally, if I were playing this game, I'd be all giddy about the great capital, and then I'd see the rest of the map and be all "Oh, crap", and probably restart, although that probably doesn't teach you very well how to improve your game

Only tips to improve is that once you got the mine on the hill, I would have gone to improve the cow instead of the second corn. Especially if you're building units, the cow will be more valuable to you. And other little things are when you went to chop, you should probably have gone to chop the riverside hill next to the floodplain. 3 reasons:
1. It wouldn't have taken any more time to get there
2. riverside grass hill = 1/2/0. Riverside grass mine = 1/3/1. Nonriverside grass mine = 1/3/0. clearing the forest gets you one extra commerce.
3. the riverside hill is surrounded by forests/floodplains, so nothing that a forest could spread to. The one you chopped has one open square that a forest could have grown into.

Obviously none of those are are major effects, but enough little things to give an advantage can help.

 

[Shafi]

Cathy's second city? I'm guessing it must be West of her capital, and it wouldn't shock me if it's going to grab that elephant that we're thinking about capturing with our horse/rice city.

Is there ANY way to put the rush back on the table?

Her 2nd city could also be on the east coast somewhere around the fish & rice.

Yup - I'm thinking what the heck lets try a Holkan rush.

I think you're too concerned about Russia copper, which is not even with its borders yet, unless the second city was founded down there. If not, you can still prevent Russia from building axes by judicial DOW and pillaging. So if you want to Holkan rush, you still can, just settle a good second hammer city, (green dot) and start chopping.

Just send your southern warrior back north to find her second city. You should also make sure that there isn't any seafood over by the horses before you decide on that city placement.

I dont think the 2nd city claimed the copper, my warrior was in the vicinity when i got the notification.
With regard to the Holkan rush - normally i would charge into it head first and either pull of brilliant rush or go down in a blaze of glory - i guess it's just that i am playing this one online and dont want to look daft
But you know what to hell with it ... i'm gonna rush them. I will start building Holkans and hook up the horse and build some chariots in case she has acess to copper and axes start showing up.

 

[Shafi]

Yeah, if you planned for a rush, I wouldn't worry about that copper. It's outside her borders.

Personally, if I were playing this game, I'd be all giddy about the great capital, and then I'd see the rest of the map and be all "Oh, crap", and probably restart, although that probably doesn't teach you very well how to improve your game

Only tips to improve is that once you got the mine on the hill, I would have gone to improve the cow instead of the second corn. Especially if you're building units, the cow will be more valuable to you. And other little things are when you went to chop, you should probably have gone to chop the riverside hill next to the floodplain. 3 reasons:
1. It wouldn't have taken any more time to get there
2. riverside grass hill = 1/2/0. Riverside grass mine = 1/3/1. Nonriverside grass mine = 1/3/0. clearing the forest gets you one extra commerce.
3. the riverside hill is surrounded by forests/floodplains, so nothing that a forest could spread to. The one you chopped has one open square that a forest could have grown into.

Obviously none of those are are major effects, but enough little things to give an advantage can help.

I would usually abandon the game and restart as well, which is what i have always been doing, thats why i decided to start playing online to see if i can get myself to even play out situations like this.

On all of the little tips. Thank you, i am looking for any advice on all aspects of my game + i think they would be helpful to others lurking / shadowing etc.

 

[michmbk]

Her 2nd city could also be on the east coast somewhere around the fish & rice.

Yup - I'm thinking what the heck lets try a Holkan rush.



I dont think the 2nd city claimed the copper, my warrior was in the vicinity when i got the notification.
With regard to the Holkan rush - normally i would charge into it head first and either pull of brilliant rush or go down in a blaze of glory - i guess it's just that i am playing this one online and dont want to look daft
But you know what to hell with it ... i'm gonna rush them. I will start building Holkans and hook up the horse and build some chariots in case she has acess to copper and axes start showing up.

With a capital at size 2, it'd be a stretch to get another settler out to claim both spots, which would set you up well for an HA charge - I would have liked to see you grow to size 4 first (which would have been quick with the cow, corn and wheat) and then get 2 settlers out to claim those spots. Remember my example had two workers and a settler out at turn 39, and a size 4 capital, so you're a bit behind compared to that example.

From where you are, some sort of rush makes sense. My preference would probably be to rush a settler through chopping, so you can claim both southern sites, setting you up to grow a bit into an HA charge (pottery, writing, HBR, build stables, archery). CarlH has decent advice on how to do that - I'd add to use your trees to chop the HAs out - speed speed speed, and don't promote any of your units until you see what defensive units you're facing...but flanking would likely be a good choice for at least the first few attackers.

The alternative rush is holkans - in that case, it'd need to happen FAST. Speed is of the essence - you're deciding on a rush now as opposed to deciding it when you met her 30 turns ago, so it has to go full bore from here. Use those trees and get your holkans out as fast as possible. I don't think where you are you have time to hook up the horse with your worker - I think you need to chop.

If you told me to play your save from this point and holkan rush, I'd chop the next 20 turns to get holkans out - I think you can get 120-140 hammers through chops in that time - with production and growth, I'm hoping you can get 8-10 holkans in the next 20 or so turns. If you're not hitting her by turn 60-65 on normal speed with enough holkans to take Moscow at a minimum, you're playing russian roulette with the rush, even on monarch.

 

[Slvynn]

Agree fully, though 2nd city is must, and it should be set as early as possible. 2nd city in necessary asset when rushing. Thats why i advised WWS and focus on 2nd city earliest setting. (Though i talked to mich and i agreed that with such awesome cap bfc growth is better) Few turns do matter to you, and now imo you should focus on setting 2nd city asap, close as possible to Cathy. Grow it asap and then Whip that baby too. Whips is also awesome way of production of necessary 3 holkans at least (Later just cottage those FPs) . If built on southern phants it get good food to grow and +1 happy, that mean you can abuse whipping abit in name of your vital sucess. Chops in other places, as michmbk said, and road connecting 2nd city with cap.
You have cheap workers so it may be wise to build more 1-2 as soon as your cap hits size 4.

Another good new is that she HAVE horse in her culture borders. That mean, for sure, some % of her hammers will go into chariots. Thats a good news, because our Holkans love to eat some horse meat at dinner.

 

[learner gamer]

Re: city placement. I think green looks fine...I recall that you had it 1N in an earlier post but, either way, it’s an early candidate for the Heroic Epic, particularly with (Cathy’s) marble online. Re: white, I’d suggest that it depends on the order in which you’ll be settling the two cities. Assuming the rice & horses city is city number three (and green is city number two), bear in mind that settling 1SE of white means that you’ll need to wait eighteen turns before you can begin to pasture the horses (eight to pop 2 to whip the monument and 10 for the border pop). In addition, you’ll have to allow worker turns to build the pasture and roads to both your capital and the ivory city to enable them all to builds / whip HAs (unless that is, you add sailing to the tech path in which case you can build a single road from the river to the horses). On balance, I’d suggest the need to get the horses online earlier outweighs the potential long term gain from building 1SE of white, so white is also fine (although I note that dr_s makes a very valid point re: exploration of the surrounding area.)

Re: tech path. This is fine – archery gets teched after HBR.

Re cottages, I think the key is actually to follow the building of the library in your capital after writing with two scientist specialists ASAP. Whilst they won’t provide the long term benefits of cottages, they will provide a significant, immediate boost to the time taken to research HBR. By my reckoning, your capital will still have more than enough food even after adding the specialists to enable whipping. If you have sufficient idle workers, by all means use them to build cottages to help in the post rush recovery – however, my guess is that you’ll want them chopping as many forests as possible to help produce infrastructure (eg. library, granary, barracks, stables) and HAs.

Re: the HA rush. Based on my experience of such rushes in the past, I think the key here will be to split your stack in two. After you open borders with Cathy (post writing), I’d suggest taking two of the earliest produced HAs through her lands to (a) scout for her second city (if you don’t know where it is by then) and (b) more importantly, move them to a point just outside her border where you can either pillage (i) the mine or (ii) any / all roads leading to it (followed by a subsequent pillage of the mine) on the first turn of the rush. IMHO, you’ll need two HAs to guard against any possible counter that might kill a lone pillager.

Re: the Holkan rush. I still suggest that the maths don’t work...however (i) this is YOUR game, so play it YOUR way and (ii) as I understand it, your thread is entitled Help Us Improve. At the very least therefore, if you do decide on a Holkan rush then, irrespective of whether it succeeds or fails, we’ll all have gained some more civ experience and learnt something in the process – which hopefully will benefit future games. I look forward to seeing how it goes!

 

[michmbk]

Re: white, I’d suggest that it depends on the order in which you’ll be settling the two cities. Assuming the rice & horses city is city number three (and green is city number two), bear in mind that settling 1SE of white means that you’ll need to wait eighteen turns before you can begin to pasture the horses (eight to pop 2 to whip the monument and 10 for the border pop).

This is a great point - short term benefit to getting horse online sooner probably outweighs long-term benefit of more optimal city placement, if you're going down the HA path.

I would definitely keep your current save and don't save over it. whichever choice you make from here, it'd probably be a good learning point for you to try both options (speed a third city, go for HA charge, or holkan rush) along the way.

 

[dr_s]

It would be nice to post the current save as well.

Re: the horses, if you can take Moscow with just two cities and Holkans, the other horse tile become irrelevant, which would allow more freedom in the rice city placement.

 

[vicawoo]

Second city is very useful on axe and chariot rushes, but you can pull off one city resourceless rushes with this many forests.

Do you have a second worker? Your capital has more tiles to improve and so does your second city. With a committed rush you don't need the 3rd food tile; you want hammers, you're going to be building for many turns, and you're going to overflow with red faces soon. With a delayed 2nd worker, the holkan rush is going to be a lot later. Horse archers are your safest rush at this point.

A size 2 settler before 2nd worker is close to the fastest settler build, but your production drops dramatically.

White city should go 1E for a rush so you can work hills without a monument.

And due to the issue with spoilers, I don't see much benefit of posting current saves. It's early enough that most of the relevant information has been revealed. And games where you get boxed in are common and you should learn to take advantage of the situation..