Immortal slavers, they are back!

[PaulisKhan]

Nice capital, things are looking crowded though!

Spices+cow+floodplains looks to be the obvious choice but there's something to be said for trying to secure copper+deer before HC gets a hold of it. That could well be his only access to metal which would make for an easy rush.
Or are we planning on playing a Mansazuma trader strategy?

 

[Jet]

If all we wanted was to take out HC, I think we could do it just our capital. But I think the chance is above 50% that there are only 3 civs on our continent, since there are 7 civs total and Hemispheres sometimes generates more than two continents. From the map so far, I would also speculate that HC has mediocre land and Hannibal has a large amount of land, whatever is south of the jungle belt.

With no cottages, I suggest we keep two neighbors alive for tech trading until Optics. (Either our own Optics, or more likely the AI's Optics, if we concentrate on Liberalism and military instead.)

HC would be easier to befriend since his favorite civic is HR. Maybe we should try to Oracle to COL and pursue a shared religion?

 

[PaulisKhan]

I agree with your logic, I just wasn't sure how bloodthirsty the mood in this game would be =)

 

[PaulusIII]

Wouldn't it be a possibility to block Huayna off at the desert?

 

[Jet]

It looks to me like the map allows us to block HC if we want to.

Why did you phrase it that way? Do you see doing that as contradictory to something someone has already said?

 

[shyuhe]

I took a very short set. Basically finished wheel and a settler. Copper is still being hooked up. The settler is out, but there are barbs wandering around so we may not be able to settle quite yet:

I think 1W of the spice is a good location (food and hammers), but it's not very aggressive. I'm open to more aggressive settling locations, although we should probably wait till we can get an axe escort if we're going to try that.

 

[PaulusIII]

I don't think more aggressive settling is needed: by the looks of it I'd say there is a stretch of desert between our proposed settlement and HC. 1W of the spice is fine.

Why did you phrase it that way? Do you see doing that as contradictory to something someone has already said?

Me not really paying attention with my words, I guess. I wasn't yet fully awake at that time.

 

[Jet]

Got it for tonight.

From what shyue said in the last thread (std/imm barbs in borders ~2000 BC, earliest 2200 BC) I think we can settle with just the Warrior we have.

I prefer NW of spices over W of spices, supporting a dotmap such as:
* NW of spices
* deer/deer/fish
* 3S of spices
... blockihng HC with one border pop for the northern cities and no border pops for the southern one. And then maybe:
* plains hill/Cow/Sugar/Sugar/Banana
* 2W of Pigs

Any votes on Med-Pri-AH-Writing-COL (Oracle)? Partly for diplo, partly for the tech. Otherwise I'd suggest AH-Pot (whipping)-Writing, and more expansion. It might be hard to get the Sugar before Hannibal. After Writing (in the non-Oracle scenario) probably Alpha in hope of trading for Math and IW, but with two Financial leaders we would have to work for it; maybe skip AH?

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Got it for tonight.

From what shyue said in the last thread (std/imm barbs in borders ~2000 BC, earliest 2200 BC) I think we can settle with just the Warrior we have.

I prefer NW of spices over W of spices, supporting a dotmap such as:
* NW of spices
* deer/deer/fish
* 3S of spices
... blockihng HC with one border pop for the northern cities and no border pops for the southern one. And then maybe:
* plains hill/Cow/Sugar/Sugar/Banana
* 2W of Pigs

I quite like that dotmap to be honnest. I would go NW of spice -> 3 S of spices -> deer/deer/fish in that order. I am afraid the cow /sugars/banana is only a dream, but we'll see.

Any votes on Med-Pri-AH-Writing-COL (Oracle)? Partly for diplo, partly for the tech. Otherwise I'd suggest AH-Pot (whipping)-Writing, and more expansion. It might be hard to get the Sugar before Hannibal. After Writing (in the non-Oracle scenario) probably Alpha in hope of trading for Math and IW, but with two Financial leaders we would have to work for it; maybe skip AH?

Without gold/gems/silver/cottages/scientists, I don't see us going med -> Pri -> AH -> Writing -> Oracle. To few commerce for that and decent expansion imo. I would rather go directly Pot ->Writing, for better whip and scientists (as well as OB). We also want a fast alphabet as being left behind in trades by two financial AIs is bad... I am open to some other plan though

Cheers

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Btw Shyuhe, how many turns did you play? 9? If so, remember to grab a few more next set

 

[pigswill]

We can probably forget Oracle, 7 turns to finish AH then 17 more for med/PH before we can start building it makes it very marginal. Maybe AH>writing to run a scientist or two somewhere. No cottages and two financial civs probably means bulb and trade is the only way to keep up.

 

[Jet]

Played 18 turns to Writing.
40 - RRR's no Oracle argument is sound so I switch to Pot for whipping and faster Alpha.
42 - Teotihuacan NW of spice. Judaism IBT, not local.
48 - Pot -> Writing
50 - Slavery to whip Monument in City #2.
53 - GW BIDA.
57 - neither HC nor Hannibal has Writing
58 - Writing
* 3 Workers. 4 Axes: 1 guarding city #2, 2 exploring, 1 positioning for the next city on the floods although we could settle somewhere else. Since that barb city is kind of in HC's way, maybe we should grab the Sugar spot next? The Warrior from City #2 is now on the north coast.
* Monument in city #2, half Granary. (Please check my sloppy/nonexistent micro for the Granary.) Just a Barracks in the capital.
* You can see Hannibal's culture at the south edge.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Nice turns Jet!

About the granary micro, I think there is an interesting plan:

Next turn: move the worker which is farming the fp on the forest west of the mountain. Turn after that, chop. The chop would be done in 4 turns from now. So the food bin would be at 12 (4 +4*2) working the fp and the spice in the meantime.
Meanwhile the hammer bar: 16+ 4*3 =28. + a chop =48 .
Then we switch from the fp to the other plain forest (borders will have poped) during 3 turn, making 5 hammers a turns without growth.
With this set up, we can have the granary in 7 turns, with the food bar exactly half full (best situation).

About settling:
Now we can see Hannibal border and forget about the banana site , I suggest we go with the city 3 S of the spice and the pig one to block Hannibal. Meanwhile our axes could attempt to grab the barb city to block Huayna

Thoughts?

Roster duty:

Paulus -> up!
Pigswill -> on deck!

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

 

[PaulisKhan]

I like the idea of capturing the barb city and backfilling later.
I think it could be worth it to claim a southern cow+sugar city, that's an extra happy for whatever we want to do with it and Hannibal hasn't dumped any culture on there yet.
A good argument against that though is to avoid becoming a military target until we get him happy with us.

 

[Jet]

I don't think the target argument is very strong since the city is on a hill and we are Agg. In my opinion better arguments are pro:
* sugar with few happy resources on the map (but 2 other calendar), also banana
* excluding the barb city, 6 good cities for national wonders [although i guess there are other ways to get 6 cities - fish, the other deer, barb city...]
* with pig city, blocks hannibal (although at that point there's not much to block him from)
* HC might be partly blocked by the barb city
con:
* expensive at first, might slow down alpha or other early techs
* weak at first with no AH
* long time to road to it, road vulnerable to barbs
* we might not get it
* we might not get all the tiles

I advocate that city next.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

My main problem with it is that until calendar, this city will be nothing but expenses (well, it can work 2 scientists at least)... and I really think there won't be any problems getting to 6 cities...
You said the arguments already, it's just that I find the con more important then the pro .
I would rather settle the fps for an even more explosive start ...

Btw, good point about the lack of happiness, might trade for Monarchy sooner than later (also means a friendly Huyana)!

Cheers

 

[pigswill]

Couple of scientists for 6 beakers and the city will at least break even until calendar and give us more land. In the longer term it will become profitable.
Whatever happens someone will take the site so some kind of border pressure is inevitable.

 

[PaulusIII]

Got the save, not going to play before Saturday though.

I think settling the FP first is the way to go here. The calendar resources would slow us down greatly, we cannot afford a blocking city like that.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

One slight concern about the tech path:
Going directly alpha is good as it allows us to build research when we can't afford more troops/settlers/workers, as well as the trades. But if we are beaten to that by one of the two guys out there, it will have 0 trade value. So I wonder if going directly for COL is not stronger (always a good trade value)...

Thoughts about that?

 

[PaulusIII]

Okay, this one will be quick as not much has happened in the meantime. Settled a few cities and teched.

I took the liberty of continuing until Alphabet. When we finished teching it nobody already had it and they were both willing to cough up a lot for it, so I presume nobody is teching Alphabet at the moment either.

We settled two cities, and have another settler on the way. I settled the sugar city on the plains hill - it's an excellent fortress city against Han and we'll get an extra happy resource out of it. I also settled the city 3S of the spice and have been farming the FP's. Both cities get a granary and then a library so they can start contributing... I figure at least the second FP city does not need a monument. The southern city might want one to fight back Han's culture but for now a granary is more important.

I also built a few axes as fogbusters (the road to the southern city) and garrison troops. But still I don't have much to say... it was a really quiet turnset, without much happening.

A view of the empire as it is now.