The English Empire, Video et taceo (I see but say nothing)
A quick revision of the settings.
A quick revision of the traits.
And we're off! The start:
As usually, the map generator gives me some nice land for my capital. How else can I put this ... Marble baby! /drools
- We have 3 clams, I just love the early commerce on this. Once we get a workboat out there, it will provides us with 4F/3C because we're financial. It will help us keep the research slider up to 100% early game. I am planning to work these clams as much and as soon as possible. We start with fishing so getting a workboat out will be priority.
- We have marble in the capitals fat cross, which is just awesome. I always build early wonders, this saves us from placing a junk city to get access to early marble/stone. Or it will save us many trees at least.
Another great thing about marble is that once we got a quarry on top of it, it will produce 1F/3H/3C because we are financial.
- We are coastal, considering this is continents I'm going to get some nice trade routes and extra health.
- We have a "river". Beside the fact that this "river" gives us extra health, it's not going to serve much use early game. We have exactly 1 tile we can farm or put a cottage on for extra commerce.
I can't remember the last time I played with financial trait and this start makes me change my mind about how useful it can be early on. The only downside is that I'm missing the 4th clam, I see only one hill in the fat cross for now and the "London River" isn't exactly impressive. But I have no reason to complain, all in all this is a great start for sure. I can't believe we actually got marble in the fat cross muhahaha. /Evil laugh
I put the warrior on the grass hill to reveal a few more hills. Nothing special. I am not even considering moving my settler for an extra clam. Let's settle and let's reveal some more of the map.
4000 BC: The rise of London.
The AI usually does decent in deciding what tile to work first, however not in this case. We are currently working 2F/1H from a grassland forest, which doesn't make sense if we want that workboat out asap. The sooner we can work those clams, the sooner we can get the science slider back to 100%. As you can see the slider is forced at 80% for now.
I switch from working the 2F/1H grassland forest to a plain forest which gives us 1F/2H. Reducing the build time of the workboat by 5 turns.
We seem to have a great capital spot and this is one of the reasons I don't move my settler in 99% of my games. We have plain land cows which gives us 3F/3H once we get a pasture on it and we have bananas which will give us 5F. This spot is even better then it seemed at the start.
- Plenty of food with 3 clams, bananas and cow.
- Plenty of hammers with marble, cow and 2 crass hills.
- Good early commerce with 3 clams.
- Will have good health from coastal, river, clams, bananas and cow.
Now a closer look at the start:
- As the bananas indicated, we have jungle to the south and west.
- If you look closely 2E/1S of my warrior, there's a coast. I think we will run into a lot of water in the east and north.
Conclusion, there won't be much room to expand for us till Iron Working and we are likely to get built in by the ai. (Unless we're isolated) Slow expansion combined with marble just asks for some wonders. I'm not thinking about anything special yet. The oracle and the Parthenon seem obvious.
We start the researching Bronze Working. We need it as a pre-req for IW and might help us settling a good second city later. We unlock slavery and gain the ability to chop forests.
Afterwards I will go for the wheel and masonry to hook up the marble. It will provide us both hammers and commerce so I want it up fast.
3800 BC: The expansion of London's borders.
The London borders reveal more jungle and as I anticipated there isn't much land to the east of us.
The light blue cross indicates a fish resource, the dark blue cross indicates a possible 2nd city spot. This is the importance of scouting the coastlines well, you never know what's further in the sea.
The city would have some surplus food from fish and cows and would figure as our production city working those hills, possibly providing us with military throughout a major part of the game. It won't grow very big but it will be good enough.
3600 BC: Fishermen arrive in London.
Our workboat is finished and I switch the worked tile from the 1F/2H forest to the clams.
This greatly increases our research at this point. Bronze working would take 12 turns working the forest. Working the clams I can run 90% research instead of 80% and BW will only take 9 turns now. The city will grow to size 2 fast and I put that 1 silly hammer from my city tile into our next workboat.
If working one clam is great, working two clams will be even better.
3480 BC: Breeding.
We doubled in pop. We will keep working the clams and use the highest hammer tile available, 1F/2H, to get a second workboat out.
3200 BC: The era of slavery begins.
We finished researching BW and switched to slavery, no bronze to be seen. The next research will be the wheel, followed by masonry. For the reasons I mentioned earlier.
3080 BC: Jungle Book.
I'm scouting down south with my warrior and we run into a bear. A bear & jungle .. sounds familiar? I pretty much declared my warrior to be a goner but he actually survived, being in a jungle and the bear attacking across a river.
Well done my little warrior! Since he survived a panther attack in the past, I grant him the honor of me personally giving him a woodsman decoration for his brave deeds.
Still the same turn:
Our second workboat finishes, we gained another pop and start building a worker. We're facing a small choice. We have two options here:
1. Work a 2F/1H or 1F/2H for our third tile. This will result in worker done in 8 turns and the wheel in 4 turns.
2. Work the unimproved clam for 2F/3C. This will result in worker done in 9 and the wheel in 3.
I decide to get the most out of the financial trait and pick the second option. It won't only speed up the wheel, it will help a bunch with getting masonry faster afterwards. That way the worker should be able to go straight to the marble and start improving it.
2920 BC: A get together.
I meet Asoka, Saladin and Monty on the same turn. They have a little boasting contest about how great and powerful their nation is. We observe this primitive behaviour and say nothing. We plan to scout around some more to map these foreign lands, seeing is believing they say.
We finished researching the wheel and picked masonry for our next research.
2880 BC: Overview.
Nothing much to add here, I see some nice settling spots if it wasn't for all the freaking jungle south of us. There is no way to settle before IW and since I want some wonders going first, I'm not mapping future city spots yet.
Saladin is to the south of us and already has his second city out north of his capital. The jungle will prevent him from settling even further north towards us ... for now.
2720 BC: Work, work, work.
The worker is finished, I switched the tiles around again. Since I currently have no unit in my capital I can't grow to size 4. Remember vanilla has lower happiness cap then bts, I will be stuck with 4 max for a while.
Anyways, I switch from the 2F/3C tile to produce a warrior before I grow to pop 4.
We need 1 turn to finish masonry, which is pretty much perfect. My worker moved into the east forest at this point so next turn he can start making a quarry. We need to get some production going for a few warriors to fogbust and protection against barbs.
Barbs will most likely pop up S/E of my capital considering Saladin is S/W of me.
After masonry I will pick pottery, I feel like doing a Metal Casting slingshot with the marble we have. For those not familiar with MC slingshot. Metal Casting has bronze working and pottery as pre-req techs. Metal Castings is a fairly expensive tech at this stage so we could grab it from the oracle.
I can then build/whip/chop a forge and run an Engineer specialist. If I build the forge fast enough in a second city, the great Engineer points in that city will be faster then my Great Prophet points from oracle. The result is getting a Great Engineer.
The great engineer can be either used to rush a wonder such as the Pyramids or the Parthenon. Or .. it can be used to bulb machinery, which has MC as a prereq.
All in all this slingshot is rather powerful regardless from how you use it. So let's try to pull this baby off.
2400 BC: The recruits.
We finished Pottery and start researching Mysticism. (Don't mind the IW on the screenshot, it has no breakers in it.) After Mysticism, we'll go after Polytheism. It's not the cheapest way to priesthood but we need polytheism anyways since I'm thinking about getting the Great Library with this juicy marble. Polytheism is a pre-req for literature, which we'll need for the GL.
London finished a warrior and gains a pop, we are now size 4. We plan to continue making a few more warriors. Also our quarry is finished, look at that baby, 1F/3H/3C. Our fourth worked tile will be the highest hammer available which at this point is the plain forest.
The plan here is to get two more warriors while growing to pop 5, which will put us into "too crowded" unhappiness. I will then whip a third workboat because it's the only useful thing we can whip with 2 pop. (We don't really need a 3rd clam atm but we need to whip for at least two pop, else we'll be in unhappiness.)
This gives us 2 warriors and a workboat in the next 6 turns from now. I will then build+chop a settler at size 3 to place that production city I was talking about earlier. (The dark blue cross one)
Making a settler will halt our city growth some, since we will have whip unhappiness. After the settler is finished I'll need to switch tiles a bit, to avoid growing before the unhappiness wears off.
A few turns later:
As planned, two warriors and we reach pop 5. I whip the workboat and start making a settler, working 2 clams+marble. I haven't done much scouting yet by the way.
I pulled my original jungle Book warrior back to the south of my capital, he's fog busting on a jungle hill there.
Another warrior is fogbusting the eastern part where I want to run my settler later. I will put the next warrior to the S/E of my capital soon to fogbust as well.
For those not familiar with fogbusting, barbarians only spawn in the fog. A fogbuster serves two uses:
- Reduce the fog, thus the chance on a barb, near your cities.
- You can see barbs coming before they are actually near your border, so you can anticipate earlier.
2160 BC: The magical woods.
I didn't want to keep this screeny from you. Instantly regrowing forest! The jungle is quite annoying as I can't put a mine on that hill now.
Anyways as you can see I chopped a forest for the settler, we will make a mine now on that hill with our worker. It would be nice to get some more hammers before we start building those shiny wonders.
Since I chopped a part of the Settler, we still need some more turns to get out of whip unhappiness. The obvious choice is building a worker next to improve some more land and get that future second city going. After the worker is done, we will work 3 clams to regrow to pop 4 asap. (You see that 3rd clam actually will serve it's use
)
1960 BC: The rise of York.
Our settler is finished and I run it to the mentioned location to settle York. We will have to lower our research to 80% soon because of maintenance. London is busy making a worker while waiting for whip unhappiness to go off. York starts making an obelisk and afterwards will be making a workboat to get to that fish. (don't mind the workboat on the screenshot, I switched it to an obelisk)
As you can see we finished the research on Polytheism and continue our path with Priesthood. Out of the way! Oracle coming up!
I like to found at least a second city before racking in some wonders. The second city can provide us with some military and can build more workers/settlers if needed, so we don't waste production in the capital.
1800 BC
I chopped a forest into the worker that was being build in london. Priesthood will be done in 2 turns, my worker will be done in 1 turn. I'm still working the same old tiles btw, 2 clams+quarry.
The overflow of the chop on the worker will go into a warrior. It should be done in one turn because of that.
Good timing because we can start working on the Oracle the turn we research Priesthood.
1720 BC
We research Priesthood and start researching Iron Working. We seriously need to get rid of that damned jungle blocking us. Not to mention, I'm starting to worry a bit about military resources. I still didn't spot any bronze on the map, let's hope we at least have some iron or this might become a bit tougher then I originally thought.
Made the warrior I mentioned in 1 turn as planned with overflow. We start the construction of the Oracle right away.
Now I have two workers ..
- One is on the move toward York, this obelisk is taking too long to my liking. I'm going to chop a forest there.
- Second worker stays near London, I'm going to spend some trees on the Oracle.
London is currently working 2 Clams and the marble, giving us a total of 9F/3H/9C. We lose our whip unhappiness soon. It will grow in 3 turns, reach pop 4 again and London will work 2 Clams, marble and a grass hill. We need hammers for the oracle.
1640 BC: Decisions.
I chopped a forest in the oracle and a forrest into the obelisk for York. York is making a workboat after. I move my worker to one of the grass hills near York to make a mine.
The London worker moves to the next forest and starts pre-chopping. For the newer players, pre-chopping means I chop the forests till I have 1 turn left on them and then move to the next forest and repeat. This means after I finish the Oracle, I can chop all those "1 turn forests" rapidly.
Now let me explain WHY in gods name I'm pre-chopping atm. I actually changed my mind about my plans getting a GE trough my second city.
One of the main reasons being, the Oracle will be finished at 1400 BC. We know this and I know that an Industrious Vanilla Immortal AI with stone nearby .. will finish the Pyramids around +-1350 BC.
I want to take a shot at the mids, I might be too late but I didn't meet any industrious AI's yet. I'm going to assume I have a decent shot at it, even though it will be rather late.
Now.. I want a GE asap. So I'm planning to chop+whip a forge in London. I will have some GP pollution but I'm guessing I still can get a 50-70% chance on a GE. The fact is I will get a Great person earlier trough combined gpp. I think this explains why exactly I'm pre-chopping at this point.
If I do get a GP, I will research monotheism and meditation. That way I can bulb Theology. Or I can settle him in the capital for extra hammers and gold.
If I do get a GE:
- If mids aren't built yet, I will rush it with the GE.
- If mids are built, I will use him to bulb Machinery or settle him in the capital for extra breakers and hammers.
It's a gamble and I would prefer a GE but regardless of that, it's a win/win.
2008 AD
I'm at 24 Images, I'll need to use the next post. /ok
with 3 clams and marble. Then you find out you have bananas and cows too. I would have researched AH by now since cows are almost the best starting resources in the game if you ask me and both cities will take advantage of this tech. But the game looks good so far. It is an incredible capital. Subscribed.
