Immortal at turn 72. Can't figure out how to establish decent cities

[Araius]

Standard fractal map with random leader (Rolled Frederick). No events or huts

I got to about turn 72, was ready to get my settler to found a new city.
I then realised I have no idea where I would possibly put this settler as every food resource was either in jungle (Pig, Banana)(No IW or Calendar yet) or was ocean fish a fair distance from my other cities.
I feel like there isn't any time to develop these new cities before Mongolia comes at me with a big stack and just ends me.

I'm wondering if this is still playable for someone who isn't exactly Deity material and is terrified of jungles and plains

Turn 72

Spoiler :

I really hope I formatted those images right...
Attached starting save and turn 72

 

[Chalybion]

Your fear of Mongolia coming with a big stack is justified. If I may humbly suggest - take the fight to Mongolia! You have horses; three cities+one happy face (ivory) is plenty to beeline horseback riding, whip an army of horse archers, conquer Mongolia while researching Alphabet with conquest gold, then extort an entire era of technology from Mr. Khan.

 

[lymond]

Looked at the save. A few observations:

1) you are not whipping and chopping enough. expansion is too slow.
2) worry less about roads and more about chopping and getting necessary improvements. Hamburg only needs 1 road to connect to Berlin. You have 2 roads on desert tiles which is at this point is 6 wasted worker turns.
3) A city could go 1W of horses E of Hamburg and share sheep.
4) In this situation, I don't mind settle a jungle city or two as long as there is something to work in the mean time. And honestly, given this apparent semi-iso with Sir Khan himself, I'm inclined to grab IW here sooner than later anyway. A fast library in Berlin and some cottages should speed that along fine enough.

However, assuming no unmet AIs W of GK, he is most definitely going to attack you and probably soonish.

Your spawnbusting is decent, but I might have tried to explore past the Mongols now to see if you can meet anyone. (a workboat does a good job of that too, especially on a map like fractal)

It's really about time to get horse online for a chariot or two as you should start feeling some barb press soon.

Sailing seems a pretty irrelevant tech right now.

Run binary research...0% or 100%...not in between.

whip Hamburg and Berlin...now. try to avoid what is happening in Munich

 

[Fippy]

Jungle and founding more cities looks like the wrong focus here, plan for Elepult with 3-4 cities instead
With libraries (or at least one) PHI allows an easy maths bulb, meanwhile you can gather some gold and get masonry.
After the bulb 100% on Construction.

Scouting behind Genghis is very important here, there might be more AIs.
If there are, you will only get warned with a red fist if you met somebody else.
Barbs cannot spawn near Hamburg anymore and the warrior can move NW and scout.

Sailing was not needed as Lymo wrote, for traderoutes you could build a road in Genghis territory.
It's still very much playable, but you'd need to get focused now.

Some Archers are good builds, they can guard captured cities later and you are afraid of getting attacked anyways.
2 scientists for GS needed asap.
I would avoid the jungle city, can go with Lymo's sheep sharing suggestion. Berlin will be okay without and can use cottages + scientists.

 

[krikav]

A map that looks like this, is always playable and always winable!

Spoiler :

 

[Heathcliff]

Spoiler Use :

 

[Araius]

Now you guys mention it, attacking Genghis himself would probably be the best course of action
I guess I'm just too cowardly to attack without trebs, but I'll certainly tech to construction for catas and elephants.
How I didn't notice I had elephants the whole time, I have no idea.

Popping a GS for mathematics seems good.

I guess the plan now would be to get around 5 workers by whipping/chopping (I have no idea how many are needed at any given time, I've heard 1.5 per city is good but I don't know if I got time for that many) and then chop and whip libraries as quickly as possible.

I will send the warrior to explore Genghis. That just slipped my mind, no need to fogbust somewhere full of cities right. Also I can't see if someone is plotting unless I know more than one civ or am I wrong there.

I will settle 1W of the horses. I'm usually afraid to foodshare but I guess whipping is more effective when you don't waste food from whipping anger.

On the point about roads, I get confused about what counts as a trade route and what doesn't.
I've looked up how it works and yeah, I'll definitely build roads more efficiently from now on.

 

[Gumbolt]

You could of settled near the corn east of Mongols first. Size 2 settler skipping AH till after BW will get a second settler circa 2760bc. Follow up with AH. This way you block the mongol in. Assuming he does not settle east first but I don't think this happened on your save. Of course this would of made him more likely to go war mode. I am not sure this would of worked unless you were prepared to defend against an axe/spear stack. Archers need to be defending in a hill city to have any chance. You would of needed 4-6 of them to defend. Chariots are okay vs axes but not good vs spears. Chariots make good chokig units.

Otherwise early libraries or choking Mongols to ensure he gets no copper. Very hard if he settles on copper so might not of worked here.

Whatever you did it's likely Khan could of attacked you. Gifting him a city here helps but he can declare at pleased. Albeit pleased AI are meant to be much less likely to attack. You would need friendly to be sure. When Ai run out of land to expand they generally attack.

From where you are i think you will need a lot of luck to get construction in time. Catapults and chariots can kill his stacks till he gets his Keshik. You need to build 4-5 archers now and tech towards construction asap and hope you can eventually use construction to take him down.

 

[Henrik75]

3 city horse archer rush or 4 city elephant + catapult rush. Attack before 1ad and you can get him easy.

On your side of things, you are too slow with expansion, working unimproved forest tiles is a no-no, and having that helpless unhappy city without the warrior in it is also a no-no.

Never work unimproved tiles if possible (outside of initial worker build obviously), whip newborn cities if you need to (e.g. grow size 4 then whip a worker for 2 pop if nothing happening there, or just slow build the worker at size 2.)

That capital is FULL of forests you should have chopped several of them out to get settlers and workers by this point in the game.

 

[Gumbolt]

Will he really last to 1ad without Mongol attacking? Very doubtful! I think whipping 1-2 barracks and getting 3-4 CG1 archers should soak up any attack here. He already has units in the border city. As long as first stack is not all axes he will survive the first wave. Could whip a wall if he goes masonry early.

Then decide if HA will make any dent here or if he needs phants. With a unit spammer you want catapults/phants as HA won't like spears.

 

[Araius]

Well, I gottem

Spoiler :

Well... except they took a barb city while I was about to take it. Thanks barbs for suiciding against my units while leaving the AI alone for like 50 turns. They also got vassalised by Monty, but I feel like the AI loves vassalising when they're about to die.

The war went pretty bad. I kept losing the cities I took and had to take them back. Damn Genghis was getting iron from one of his mates for swordmen.

I'm way behind in tech and I have nearly nothing explored but with 12-13 cities I feel like I should catch up at some point.

Thanks for the tips guys.

 

[Gumbolt]

Looks like early expansion at start cost you here. Plus a 1000 year war with Mongols. Albeit it looks like you took peace mid war. Mongols just never give up and are one of the few Ai you can be fighting for years and they always get new stacks.

Can you get an edu trade bait here? Looks like you are 9-11+ techs behind? Albeit many relatively cheap techs. They should have engineering and all early techs by now. If you can get edu is Lib still possible? Hmmm.

 

[Araius]

Looks like early expansion at start cost you here. Plus a 1000 year war with Mongols. Albeit it looks like you took peace mid war. Mongols just never give up and are one of the few Ai you can be fighting for years and they always get new stacks.

Can you get an edu trade bait here? Looks like you are 9-11+ techs behind? Albeit many relatively cheap techs. They should have engineering and all early techs by now. If you can get edu is Lib still possible? Hmmm.

Yeah, I didn't defy the AP resolution that rolled in the immediate turn I flipped to Buddism after Brennus demanded that I convert. I thought I could ceasefire and avoid the resolution giving a 10 turn peace, but apparently not.

I'm very much beelining for Education right now. Even if I can't trade that much tech for it, I'm looking to build Oxford in my bureau capital.
Brennus has Paper already so I imagine he'd go for Liberalism before me and even if he doesn't, there are two unmet civs I need to find.