So I'm not a particularly great player, but I'm probably not going to let that slow me down as I rush through this game.
I'm calling it immoral because I cooked the settings. No screenshots sadly (I rerolled until I got a start with at least one island for trade routes and wasn't really planning on posting this as I have never done this before).
Spoiler for everything I knew going into the game (it is a lot):
Spoiler:
The mapscript is Full of Resources Islands with seafood increased from weight 27 to weight 45 (balanced such that oil and whales are largely unaffected), hills have been increased from 27% to 33%, rivers have in increased fro 1:12 to 1:6, tundra, snow, and jungle have all been scaled back and forests incread from 40% to 60%.
Each civ starts with 2 extra instances of a startegic resource and 2 instances of a luxury resource in their BFC as well as 2 instances each of two luxury resources nearby. Ours are cooked to be Copper and Gold in the BFC, and Silver and Gems nearby.
The Islands mapscript settings are high seas, several extra islands and some small islands.
Furthermore, I reloaded until I had a start with at least one offshore island I could reach with galleys and no culture.
There are 9 AIs which tends to generate between 12 and 15 islands total. About 1/5 the maps give an AI pre-Astro access to an uninhabited island, and most maps have a pair or two of AIs who can make contact pre-Astro.
Huts and events are on because I find them fun.
So that is our Immoral setup.
The game is set with unrestricted leaders and we are Pacal II of Portugal at Immortal difficulty.
Relative to a normal portugal game we have traded to weak Imp trait for the strong Fin trait. Our Unique building will activate Fin on ocean tiles as well as coasts, so we should be able to make any coastal city a good addition to our empire.
So without Further Ado let our screenshots begin!
Our fearless, cheeseridden leader:
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Our delcious start
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The settings and Turn 0 demographics
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I should say somewhere around here that I have never won a game at immortal (or even emperor) with the exception of a few cooked maps and a great plains one city challenge deity 18 civ space race game. I'm really looking for help from folks who are willing to critique my play.
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There will be no save files attached unless someone can explain why I can't open anyone else's saves (they all say corrupt). I'm assuming there is something glitchy about my version and that no one else will be able to read my saves either.
I should say somewhere around here that I have never won a game at immortal (or even emperor) with the exception of a few cooked maps and a great plains one city challenge deity 18 civ space race game. I'm really looking for help from folks who are willing to critique my play.
Since I'm writing up my turnsets as I play, I'm going to start them off with my goals for the turnset, and close them with a self evaluation of how well I achieved my goals and if they were even good ideas.
For the first turnset, I'm not going to bother spoilering my goals since I know I won't give anything away.
As an admission of flaws, I'm probably going to reload extensively because I don't understand the Immortal timetable very well and the cooked map throws it off even more. Most reloads will be for silly things like worker mismanagement, but if I lose the Great Lighthouse, I'll probably reload and figure out how to get an earlier date.
1st Turnset Goals:
Found my capitol and get a workboat and worker out ASAP.
Research Bronzeworking and pottery plus any other necessary worker techs.
Dot Map my landmass.
Build a settler
I'll know my first turnset is done when I have my first settler built.
Turn 0
Spoiler:
A warrior move to the SW revealed I wasn't missing out on food by settling on the wines 1E
So I settled 1E and got started building a workboat (look at those fish!)
My first Tech is bronzeworking to enable the whip, reveal copper, and let my worker chop forests. I am going workboat first, but will switch to a worker at 2 pop so I can whip as soon as slavery comes online. I'd rather whip my worker as I get 37 hammers per population point (22 food) with expansive where I would only get 22 hammers if I used food or 27 if I used hammer tiles of equal value. I think the extra 10 hammers will pay off in getting my workboat out sooner so Lisbon can grow. (@people with more micro experience, does this seem valid?)
Turn 1-4
Spoiler:
Unless I run into a hut or an animal, I'll leave most turns out here until interesting things happen, but I'll be saving the demographics page from every turn here. This might give us a sense of how well the AIs are doing and if any of them have access to a second landmass.
I'm not reading much out of the demographics page here except that an AI has a 5 food start, someone is matching us for commerce, someone is working a 0 food tile, and either Babylon or Mali is one of the civs, maybe both I don't know the numbers off the top of my head.
Spoiler:
Turn 1
Turn 2
Turn 3
Turn 4
Turn 5
Spoiler:
Stuff Happened this turn!
The demographics
As you can see someone had their crop yield push up to 8! that could be a second citizen, or it could be a wet corn/wheat farm. Since we can also see that some AIs got their second citizen I'm not quite sure which it is.
But that isn't the exciting part!
Check out what we learned when our borders popped!
Look at that little hill island to the SE that is going to be a great source of early trade routes and sharing fish with the capital along with a pile of other sea foods and the extra early production should make it a top contender for our first 5 cities.
But that is not all, look to the SW those fish reveal a landmass I can get to by galley but can't see! I need to get a workboat scouting early.
I should be able to throw up at least two off island cities in the early game, possibly three, so Great Lighthouse is officially on the menu as something the map calls for.
Since in the early game we won't be able to run great merchant trade missions for gold and we aren't likely to found a religion (my experience is code of laws goes very early if we tech math first for chops, and settled great merchants in a religion city can end up funding an empire decently well), we will probably try to build a library in our second or third city and run scientists until we get an academy for our capital.
Turns 6-7 (just demographics)
Spoiler:
Turn 8
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So buddhism was founded in a distant land. This is fairly early, but I'm nut surprised. We've also seen the AIs pulling ahead of us in population, production, and GNP. We'll get our revenge eventually. The key point here though is that hut we found...
Because with it...
We popped Sailing
Say what you want about huts changing the nature of the game and screwing with optimization. I agree it is right for many people and for many styles of play, but I really like having to adapt to changed circumstances. This will give us a real leg up on our early research. We should be able to pursue an extra worker tech or something because of this.
Turns 9-10 (Just demographics)
Spoiler:
Turn 9
Turn 10
Turn 11
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So we gained our second point of population here. We can't have switched to building a worker before now, but now might be a great time to. We will need a total of 4 turns building our worker before we can whip it in (6 production per turn, we need 23/60 done for our 37 hammer whip to finish it) but what I elected to do was finish the workboat in two turn as we finish teching bronzeworking. This way we can revolt into slavery as the workboat moves to that coastal fish tile and shave one turn off the time spent working on a worker. It increases the delay on getting the worker out from 2 turns after slavery to 3 turns after slavery, but we will already have to workboat done instead of waiting another turn to finish the workboat. In exchange we will have some production overflow into our next build and some extra commerce.
Here you can see the city preparing that workboat as fast as possible
Turn 12
Spoiler:
We meet our first barbarian under less that desirable circumstances. Lions greet us when we enter the grasslands to see the coast. We could have moved south into the forests first then NE to the grassland when there were no adjacent barbs. My rush to discover the coastline and get my dot map up made me sloppy here. I'm not sure what the best play would have been.
Turn 13
Spoiler:
Luckily we survived the barb lion's attack and gained much needed experience. But this turn was also full of other big things!
And we finished our workboat!
We immediately revolted into slavery to give our workboat a chance to get into position.
As these demographics remind me, when a non-spiritual civ switches civics, it will show up here as having 1 point of GNP. Since most AIs (all?) switch to slavery as soon as they get it, this will give us some sense of how fast the AIs are to discover military techs (actually its flavor is military 6, production 5, science 4, and culture 1). Of course we don't really know who started with mining, so whatever.
Someone who really cared and took the time could go through the costs we spend on techs and find out how many civs already had each tech we don't that we can research which could have told us the list of possible AI civilizations on turn 0. Maybe the first time I try to play deity on even ground I'll do that.
Turn 14
Spoiler:
I'm researching the wheel before agriculture into animal husbandry here. This means I will mine the copper 2n first, then the gold NE then hook the gold up by road. After that I will move to the pigs and build a road. When I finish the road, I should be getting animal husbandry to build a pasture. Of course that assumes nobody discovers any of these techs, that overflow is irrelevant, and that my commerce does not increase. Since likely none of these things are true, I might shave off enough time to not have to road the pigs first.
Turns 15-17 Demographics only
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Turn 17
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So as you may have noticed in the turn 17 demographics, I whipped my worker in this turn. We did this ASAP for minimum overflow because right now food is more valuable than hammers and we need to improve our tiles yesterday.
We still ended up with 12 extra hammers that are going into our next build
I played ahead for a bit here without scouting or anything just to check some numbers I'd been doing in my head, then reloaded after i'd confirmed them. Once I meet AIs I will have less freedom to do this without spoiling the game, but for now, it is a great tool. Even so, I ended up seeing a barb lion I wouldn't have known was there. ooops!
We will pretend I never knew about the barb lion and I'll keep scouting along the coast like I have been.
That's all the images I can fit in one post, the next post will be up soon, but don't wait for it! Tell me what you think. I know I am including way more information that is probably necessary and I haven't done anything with all of the demographics screen really, but I don't know what people will find useful for critiquing me, so I decided to include it all.
I posted this (and played through turn 21) before I saw all the posts! I forgot about not everyone playing with their telescope in hand as I grew up in a family of birdwatchers and coin collectors, I am still getting used to small things being hard to see. I'll turn on resource bubbles from turn 22 on.
@TMIT
It is most certainly not a typo. Playing a Full of resources map as Pacal of Portugal with known empty islands is about as immoral a headstart over the AIs as I will play.
@VoiceOfUnreason
PointPoint! totally forgot about that. I went right ahead into playing without laying out plans and checking for advice. I was really stunned by how fast people responded (and the big names I follow too!).
Since I knew there was another BFC gold source (yay cooked maps) and that I wasn't going to be able to work both of them in my capital due to whipping and building as much as I could, decided to move for the extra early commerce and the hope of extra food. I'll probably settle my second city to grab that gold and share the pigs.
@Pangaea
I know the numbers of resources is bonkers. I think that the principles that will make me a better civ player (micromanagement being core among them) are still going to apply in large part, and this is a way I can have a lot of fun while I do it. I'm not sure I'd have the stamina to play through a game in this much detail if it wasn't so fun to find new land and build new cities. I guess I just like big numbers
Damn those are a lot of resources. I love the remark where you say look at all the fish, but I can't see it. Resource bubbles indeed The start is incredible. Wine to settle upon, enormous obscene amounts of food (too much to be honest) There is 12 more sea food close to your capital making this map a breeze propably. Still interesting to see how this works out as the AI will also have those resources. Good luck.
So our next build is actually something of a question. We want workboats and will eventually need a lighthouse. A lighthouse is worth two workboats, but we have 12 overflow and are going to chop a forest pretty soon (before we could slowbuild a workboat) and will then have the option to whip on top of that which means we could get out a lighthouse more or less on the same turn we could get out a workboat. We are going for the lighthouse because it will provide an extra food on the fish we are already working. This might be a bad call. Someone with more experience might be able to tell me if I should slowbuild the workboat now or even slowbuild the lighthouse and not whip until I discover pottery and whip my granary (maybe I should be working on that rather than worker techs?) some numbers I know how to crunch, but others I miss.
Turns 19-20 Just Demographics
Spoiler:
Turn 20
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We met that lion I totally didn't see coming Anyway, we made it to the forests, but just in case I never saw my warrior again I thought I'd take this picture
Turn 21
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Guess what we discovered!
Also that lions are no match for our seasoned troops in the forests
The extra XP brings them up to the 2 XP needed for their first promotion, but since we have almost no more scouting to do and are about to start using them for fogbusting, I'm not so sure that we will be able to get the promotions needed to make woodsman 2 I'll leave them un-promoted for now and get to that if they meet a barb archer.
We just discovered the wheel so now we need a new tech, but what tech should it be? I've been planning on going Agriculture into Animal Husbandry, but now I'm thinking that if I could put all my lighthouse overflow into a granary (maybe by wasting a few turns prebuilding a worker/workboat?) I could really improve my whip returns. Pottery will take me 7 turns, and I need it pretty badly, so I'm going for it. I've saved here though, and if it feels really awkward and slow, I'll come back.
My rough number crunching says I will need to spend 1 turn in the middle building a worker to get my granary as soon as possible and then grow to population 2 while saving my 11 food. That is just fine by me as I have a lot of forests and will probably want to grow on a workboat and then whip/chop out a worker before building my settler. I don't have my dotmap set yet because I still don't know the center tile of my map, but I think my next city is going to be on a square currently forested, so having the extra worker to chop it for the hammers would be great.
In all the excitement I almost forget to take a picture of the demographics!
And before we hit end turn, look what our warrior found!
Land! to the east too!
This looks like we'd be able to get three intercontinental trade routes per city before astronomy. Great lighthouse should be VERY high on our priority list. Of course land masses could be pretty close together so it is very possible that there is an AI on that landmass (or to our south, from the trees it looks like we are in the northern of the three strips of islands) or that has access to it which would be both great, international trade routes, and terrible, having to build a military and maintain it.
Wow this has been crazy. Thank you for all the responses! By popular demand, resource bubbles are now on. I also now have to put my magnifying glass away, so please forgive any delays.
Turns 22-24 (demographics only)
Spoiler:
Turn 24
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Here begins the most insane set of production flips I've ever attempted.
I will spend one turn on a worker here, then another turn on my lighthouse as the chop comes in. Next I will whip in the lighthouse the turn before I discover pottery. With pottery in hand I will put the overflow into a granary and and work the copper mine so I don't grow but instead finish the granary. The I will build a workboat to size two (three?) before going back and finishing that worker.
I'll be doing this to get my granary as soon as possible (faster than if I whipped it because I won't have to wait a turn first) and then take advantage of it to grow before building my worker.
Anyway, pictures! Pictures with bubbles!
Here you can see my single turn of worker cued up, madness to ensue shortly.
Also I met a wolf. Remember how I said I wasn't going to promote that warrior until I met an archer, well wolves are kind of like archers. I didn't like being at 1.4/2 so I gave him woodsman I (despite being on a nonforested hill) to bring him to 1.7/2 which combined with the hill and the river bonus I am confident will protect him.
Turn 25
Spoiler:
I just chopped that copper mine 2N of Lisbon and am immediately working it (something I usually forget to do until I see the worker is ready to move the next turn!) We have one turn to build into the lighthouse before we whip it into the granary.
The wolf didn't attack this turn, but moved to another location it could attack from. Since our warrior is in the spot that fogbusts the maximum number of land tiles, I'm having him fortify.
Turn 25-27 Just demographics
Spoiler:
Turn 27
Spoiler:
So whipped the lighthouse this turn, but I forgot to take a screenshot. Ooops. We'll see the results next turn. Also the worker finished the mine last turn, so this turn it moved to the gold where it will first mine, then road.
Turn 28
Spoiler:
This is the reason we went through all this nonsense. Finishing granary this turn on the copper hill, next turn we work the 6 food fish (thanks to lighthouse) and grow to pop 2 exactly
Turn 29
Spoiler:
We finished our granary this turn and are now growing on a workboat
Turn 30
Spoiler:
Working the copper mine and the fish we will grow to pop 3 the same turn we finish the workboat which will also be the same turn our worker finishes that gold mine and chops in 20 hammers.
Turn 31
Spoiler:
It's probably too small to see without a microscope, but the grey text up there says that stonehenge was built in a far away land. That feels pretty early to me, so I'm going to prioritize working my gold mine and try to get out animal husbandry and masonry ASAP. I'm starting to think I should have teched masonry before agriculture. It would have meant I'd spend several worker turns building roads, and I would have worked on a settler instead of a second worker. We'll see how much use I get out of the pair of workers. If I still make it to GLH on time I think it will be the stronger play, but I'm feeling the pressure.
Turn 32-33 (Demographics only)
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Turn 33
Spoiler:
We just finished that gold mine and here comes our workboat.
Turn 34
Spoiler:
Work boat sent out working coming in really soon with all that overflow
Notice how we are out of last place in the GNP again? Gold mines are awesome.
And the third half. This one is short, just the overflow from the second part. The dotmap images at the end might help folks understand what I've been saying about fish and stuff.
Turn 35
Spoiler:
Worker coming in next turn, all this is exactly what you would expect, expect that someone just completed the great wall. I am really feeling behind in the great lighthouse now. I might very well miss it. I will try to prechop everything to finish it as soon as masonry comes in.
Turn 36
Spoiler:
And I'm stumped. I'm not sure how to use my workers to get the great lighthouse and a settler as soon as possible.
I made a dotmap that I'd love some criticism on. It is really city dense to take advantage of all the seafood. My goal is to found the one conveniently labeled "second city" next. After that I'm not sure. Military Production has a lot of hills and forests and could really help me churn out the workboats, workers and settlers I need, but it doesn't have enough food for whip abuse which will be strong early on.
I made another discovery this turn looking more closely at the map. It looks like coast tiles on the west side of that ocean. Maybe settling there early would let me get myself onto yet another landmass/meet an AI who couldn't attack me.
Dotmap with resource bubbles
Spoiler:
I don't know how to make the pretty colored dotmaps with with real dot in the middle and the city radius thing, so sign maps are the best I have.
Whew that was long. I am feeling pretty stuck in terms of what to do with these workers. Suggestions?
If you are working with BUG then you can push Alt X to insert city placement BFC's. I find that one incredible. Now that I see the resource bubbles all I can say is, way too much resources. Each city you settle has at least 4 sea food. That is just madness Cut back on the demographics though. It is not necessary to show those every turn if you ask me.
I'll keep shooting the demographics pics, but I'll leave them in my folder. I find it really helps me to stay involved and not make silly neglect mistakes to check them at the end of every turn and see what I can learn from them.
To be honest, I don't think it's a good idea to play games like this. If you can't beat emperor on a standard map, then your goal should be to learn how to beat it. Playing with these weird settings you will probably just learn a lot of bad habits that will get you in trouble when you try to play a normal game.
But of course, if your goal is just to play and have fun your own way, without ambitions to learn this or that, then go ahead and play whatever you like. In this game you should probably just spam the coast with cities asap, chop out GLH and pyramids, settle a few islands for trade routes, run a ton of scientists in every city under rep and you should be ready for space or modern warfare in no time.
To be honest, I don't think it's a good idea to play games like this. If you can't beat emperor on a standard map, then your goal should be to learn how to beat it. Playing with these weird settings you will probably just learn a lot of bad habits that will get you in trouble when you try to play a normal game.
This is what I meant earlier as well. I don't think a map with so many resources is going to teach you too much. You can found cities anywhere and you'll have food coming out your ears and behind. If you want to play it for fun, that's understandable - it's certainly different! - but if you want to improve your play then I think it's better to play a 'normal' map and work on your micromanagement.
With so many resources you could get Mids, GLH, run a billion specialists, found Sushi, win (probably a long time before Sushi ).
From your screenies, you seem not focused on tech goals.
Agri and AH, what for?
I see no farm res. and you certainly need no pigs for even more food (and could mine those instead), what you really need here with these food amounts would be Monarchy. Or Metal Casting for forge happy.
Please do not take this offensive, but demographics against AIs are boring and checking them useless (for you above everyone else).
Use this time on making tech goals instead, maybe wonder plans (GLH, Pyramids instead of Monarchy?).
Also Oracle!!
It's no guarantee that you will get many wonders with so many resources because the AIs have a similar amount of resources so they can compete. However, AIs are notoriously bad at maps with lots of seafood so it might not be that difficult.
I think the plan for the first WB+worker is correct. After that it might make sense instead to go Myst->Med->PH->Masonry->Sailing (no Agri->AH; these aren't needed) and build your second city on marble instead of investing in a second worker or a lighthouse. You can move the settler to marble in 1 turn with roads in the right places. This would let you build Oracle very quickly before starting the GLH and take Monarchy as a free tech. Also, you probably should build 2 warriors to guard your second city location from barbs and avoid moving them on flatland as much as possible to keep them safe, and there is no need to build a road on the gold tile until you actually need the happiness.
Actually a better idea than my previous one: build WB->worker as before, then start a second workboat and chop/mine the gold, timing the chop hammers so they go toward a second worker on the turn you reach size 2 (turns spent mining are not wasted!). Then immediately whip the worker. The overflow should come close to completing the second workboat. The new worker can chop/mine the copper 2W of your capitol while the original worker finishes the gold mine and then chop/mines the copper 2N of your capitol, and then both workers can road toward the marble. Copper chops can go toward the settler if they aren't needed for workboats.
While I agree that this is a very different game from normal, I do still think I can learn something from it. Great points from everyone on the power of monarchy here. I felt like I wouldn't be able to get enough cities while still grabbing mids and GLH and the trade routes would be amazing (plus with all the water, I'll have a hard time getting out of slavery for caste scientists).
I fear being wonder dependent and the AIs probably have as many (or more) chops than I do and start with extra workers.
Is there a consensus that a stronger early play would be tech path
Bronzeworking-theWheel-Pottery-Mysticism-Masonry-Meditation-Priesthood-Writing settling on the marble and rushing Oracle monarchy?
Monarchy would certainly give me a reason to keep pumping out warriors and keep my power rating from falling too far behind.
You guys are totally right that I don't have a strong sense of the early tech path, especially when I know I'm going to be self-teching everything.
If it makes a difference this is with the Better AI mod, so they may be better at dealing with the seafood start.
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I've misplaced the binoculars.
. Someone even asked me to pursue a fast immoral victory recently, as if I ever do otherwise.
The start is incredible. Wine to settle upon, enormous obscene amounts of food (too much to be honest) There is 12 more sea food close to your capital making this map a breeze propably. Still interesting to see how this works out as the AI will also have those resources. Good luck.
Cut back on the demographics though. It is not necessary to show those every turn if you ask me.
