Immortal University 96 - Wang Kon

[Robert FIN]

Oh yeah! This map looks fun when you spawnbust a little. Thanks a lot Klonoklown. After I played today, I looked like this buddy:

 

[klonoklown]

No problem, and I think the capitol is a pretty decent commerce spot, especially with being financial, IMO.

 

[Izuul]

FPs are nice, but they also have a couple of drawbacks. They can lead to health issues as you try to grow the capitol, and they also require more worker turns to improve. The latter usually isn't a big deal, but if the -health can't be controlled you've lost a lot of the advantage of having the FPs.

 

[Gwynnja]

FPs are nice, but they also have a couple of drawbacks. They can lead to health issues as you try to grow the capitol, and they also require more worker turns to improve. The latter usually isn't a big deal, but if the -health can't be controlled you've lost a lot of the advantage of having the FPs.

In general you're right, but we've got rice, wheat, cows, crab, and fish readily available.

 

[Smilingrogue]

Not a good commerce spot? It's got wet corn, gold, at least 3 riverside grassland and plenty of green. On top of that you're financial, making cottaging away from rivers more attractive (but you want to do this regardless in your bureau spot). This city can easily support 10+ towns plus the gold hill. Flood plains are good but not at all necessary for a commerce city. Wet corn alone allows you to work the goldmine the whole game while still always growing if all your other worked tiles are grassland.

I guess it comes down to play-styles. Sure, this spot is excellent if you don't mind cottaging non-riversides. I never cottage them Financial or not, 15 citizen turns per cottage just to get it to the two commerce stage so the Financial trait kicks in? I will pass.

What appeals to me about the site to the North isn't the floodplains, it's all the riverside tiles. If there's food, it still gets gold and I would move the cap there. If I roll a map where I can't find enough tiles I think are worth cottaging, I forgo cottaging altogether and rely on other things. GLH, Pyramids and Rep or just plain beating some one up works. After a point, cottages don't matter as much as how big a land we control. That's my personal opinion and as I said, it's a matter of play styles and to each his own.

As for my game, I am onto try four now, thanks to bad luck. Chariot dies to Barb warrior at 93.9 odds this time and loses the city he was guarding.

Spoiler :

I don't mind bad luck, it happens. But this is now getting really irritating. If I played poorly and didn't build barb defence, yeah, I deserve to get my cities taken and razed. But I play by the book and arrange defences, still get screwed by RNG.

 

[Kingjester1]

Chiming in on the capital and cottages:

Spoiler :

I actually believe that the better cottage location is a city site to the north. I settled my 2nd city on the Marble and worked cottaged flood plains there and never looked back.

The thing about being Financial is that a riverside cottage is an immediate 3 commerce tile. You can net 4+ flood plains for a city to the north of the cap this way and since horses and gold are available, you can work those flood plains w/o happiness issues in the early game. The key here is to get the commerce up early and fast then let cities 3+ get the best food and hammer spots available (in my current play through I got Pottery prior to Writing just to get cottages online).

While the cap can certainly do well with non-riverside cottages, the cap is one of the few locations with a nice amount of hammers early on, so you don't want to waste time working cottages that are only putting out 1 commerce for several turns. In fact, the cap is the perfect place to get your first great scientist since it will likely have a Library before any other city, so this also punishes you in the early game for trying to cottage the cap since you'll be pulling 2 (or more depending on the food breakdown) citizens off of cottages.

Again, you can go either way. But with Giggles nearby, getting a military tech advantage ASAP is so important to avoid early aggression or to handle a sudden DoW.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

@settling location:
I don't think the Plains hills lacks production, provided whipping and happy cap. Wang isn't a bad leader (and this isn't a bad start) to Oracle -> Monarchy if happy sources are lacking.
It is also one of those situations where the FIN riverside plains cottage is actually a good tile (if you settle on plains hills, that is).
Not a good site to build wonders but ok for early expansion.

 

[Tall German Joe]

update, 50 AD, Diety/Normal/NHNE:

Spoiler :

my little empire:

Spoiler :

game is going very nicely so far. CS is perhaps a wee bit late but i am quite far ahead in tech compared to my neighbors. won music AND first to CS? now that's nice. nobody got alphabet until mehmed did circa 400-500 BC i think it was. some decent tech trading going on since then, but nothing too wild. capital will have 4 towns + 1 village + gold + incense to work right away, plus a trio of hamlets that will upgrade very soon. i could have done better than this if saxon was in a better location, but you take what you can take. seoul is only lvl 9 at any rate. TGL was built there, but only because i didn't really have production to do it anywhere else. academy is already installed (got a very low odds GS with my first GP, and then a very low odds GP, for the shrine, with my second. woulda been nicer in the proper order, but hey, at least things worked out in the end)

so yeah, did manage to get the barb city to the south (Saxon) thanks to gilgy's half-assed assault, which opens up another spot (a relatively weak one) to the east. 7 cities compared to my neighbors, who all have about 13. that's manageable. larsa in the west will probably culture-flip to me at some point soon, which will make 8. gilgy, very annoyingly, just settled a city to the north of me, to try to steal my dyes, but the jokes on him because i'm very strongly considering letting the sistine chapel finish. if i can get taoism (founded by ghandi) and buddhism (founded by mehmed) to pop in one of my cities, then i can very reasonably do a cultural victory, either with saxon or pusan as my #3.

the other route would be to lib mil trad and go for cavalry. gigly is kind of behind, and if i don't trade with him nobody will. at the rate i'm teching, i might be able to get rifling before he even gets gunpowder! he does have a billion units, so unfortunately, so i'd need to take things slow... lure him out and let all his horses trample on my cottages. but, with 20 cities, i'd be in a much stronger position... could even try for space if he has some nice production spots on his half of the island.

 

[ben-jammin]

I guess it comes down to play-styles. Sure, this spot is excellent if you don't mind cottaging non-riversides. I never cottage them Financial or not, 15 citizen turns per cottage just to get it to the two commerce stage so the Financial trait kicks in? I will pass.

What appeals to me about the site to the North isn't the floodplains, it's all the riverside tiles. If there's food, it still gets gold and I would move the cap there. If I roll a map where I can't find enough tiles I think are worth cottaging, I forgo cottaging altogether and rely on other things. GLH, Pyramids and Rep or just plain beating some one up works. After a point, cottages don't matter as much as how big a land we control. That's my personal opinion and as I said, it's a matter of play styles and to each his own.

As for my game, I am onto try four now, thanks to bad luck. Chariot dies to Barb warrior at 93.9 odds this time and loses the city he was guarding.

Spoiler :

I don't mind bad luck, it happens. But this is now getting really irritating. If I played poorly and didn't build barb defence, yeah, I deserve to get my cities taken and razed. But I play by the book and arrange defences, still get screwed by RNG.

If you never cottage off-river I think you're missing the entire point of a commerce bureau capital. By the time you're able to switch to bureaucracy you should be looking at a total of a +125% boost to beakers at 100% science slider. That means a lowly 4 commerce tile is actually giving you 9 beakers. And it takes 10 turns for a cottage to become a hamlet, not 15.

 

[ben-jammin]

Chiming in on the capital and cottages:

Spoiler :

I actually believe that the better cottage location is a city site to the north. I settled my 2nd city on the Marble and worked cottaged flood plains there and never looked back.

The thing about being Financial is that a riverside cottage is an immediate 3 commerce tile. You can net 4+ flood plains for a city to the north of the cap this way and since horses and gold are available, you can work those flood plains w/o happiness issues in the early game. The key here is to get the commerce up early and fast then let cities 3+ get the best food and hammer spots available (in my current play through I got Pottery prior to Writing just to get cottages online).

While the cap can certainly do well with non-riverside cottages, the cap is one of the few locations with a nice amount of hammers early on, so you don't want to waste time working cottages that are only putting out 1 commerce for several turns. In fact, the cap is the perfect place to get your first great scientist since it will likely have a Library before any other city, so this also punishes you in the early game for trying to cottage the cap since you'll be pulling 2 (or more depending on the food breakdown) citizens off of cottages.

Again, you can go either way. But with Giggles nearby, getting a military tech advantage ASAP is so important to avoid early aggression or to handle a sudden DoW.

Spoiler :

why would you settle your future bureau site ON the marble? It's an extremely good tile (1F4H4C).

 

[Pengu]

Well, considering the last map with continents I went with an emp game this time hoping it wouldn't be a long one... i was wrong, continents are never short games.

Until 1590 AD

Spoiler :

Couldn't resist the fp so I wanted to settled north. Warriors saw the dry rice and a hill to the west so I settled 1 w of the ph so I got some production.
Met Gilga and not much else. I did not want him to get his damn vultures so operation choke started right away. it's not like he will trade with me if there are only 2 of us.
But shortly thereafter Mehmet and Gandhi came with WBs.
Went straight for oracle after pottery and bw taking burea switching into cs right away.
My axes was terrorising Gilga preventing him for getting iron or bw limiting him to 3 cities. the tech rate was slow so I went for alpha and backfilled some techs.
Then just to slow down Gandhi and Mehmet I bribed in Mehmet on Gandhi.
(Didn't know they were on seperate islands at the time). Still slowed them down a little I am sure. Built TGL and MoM while getting failg from some wonders to keep me going.
I amde peace with Gilga when i knew he wasn't going to be a threat in the future.
But he still managed to slow me down as he just had to dow me with a pathetic stack. So I decided to slow down lib and cap him 1st instead. With 2 cities left he capped giving med a couple of techs. I was expanding filling out the continent which slowed me down considerably. At 23 cities I was done and got a late lib and took MT.
I wanted economics 1st so I could get rifling pretty quickly after lib. Whipped out some cavs and dowed mehmet. Gandhi is a cupcake and can be dealt with any time. It is a slow map and even at 1500 AD Mehmet had nothing to put up againt me and capped after losing his entire island. it is now 1590 AD and I am planning to attack either Saladin or Joao. None of them have rifling so it will probably be the one who gets rp 1st who is going down. With over double the city amount as any other AI and huge tech lead this will just be mop up.
Nice and fun game

 

[Kingjester1]

Spoiler :

why would you settle your future bureau site ON the marble? It's an extremely good tile (1F4H4C).

Spoiler :

My 2nd city settle was a mistake in my case, you are right in that the marble tile is totally worth waiting for Masonry to come in. I'm hoping that it won't be something that can't be overcome as I play.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

@Gwynnja, 50 AD:

Spoiler :

It's a pity you couldn't stop Gilgamesh from expanding north. Those are 2 "free" cities for him, that claim lots of resources and bring him to 11 cities, securing even some more...
South end was much better controled but it isn't as rich. Gilgamesh would be strong anyways but he'll be stronger with additional cities.

Settling Pyongyang (city 2!) by the gems wasn't needed and probably slowed you down: food is in second ring and, city 3 being down south, worker actions were needed in very far away spots. Also, the gems require IW... City 2 requires immediate yields.

@blocking Gilgamesh: not sure if it applies, because of the timings, but one thing to consider would be to avoid splitting the southern city: gives him more room to expand into (further securing north), costs 1 less settler (letting player secure north) and, finally, it can provide a high-food city to host the National Epic.

You don't seem to be in a bad spot, though. Got strong sites. But then again, if many settlers are needed (because many sites are good?), then sharing tiles or optimizing the dotmap loses value compared to simply claiming them and reducing city maintenance (less cities covering the same territory).

Note that by block, here, I don't mean a 1 city hard block - it would be very poor on this map. I mean slowly reaching towards the opposite coast, keeping as much good land as possible within your borders.

Finally, spotting islands and overseas AIs is a strong argument for an early coastal city (3rd at the latest).

 

[BornInCantaloup]

My attempt, 1000 BC, immortal, normal:

Spoiler :

Opening:
Capital: Size 3 settler while farming the floodplains. Comple warrior. Worker at size 3 (to help with quarry and connecting city 2). Grow to 4: worker (city 2 is building a settler).
City 2: grow to 2 on units. Settler at size 2.
Tech path: Agriculture, Bronze Working, Animal Husbandry, The Wheel, Masonry, Polytheism, Priesthood, Pottery, Sailing
Oracled Metal Casting a little late, in the 1700 Bcs. Sea-based map + FIN trait + islands make Colossus an ok wonder. Forges yield +2happy.

Situation at 2000 BC:

Spoiler :

City 2 claimed two strong tiles: cow and marble.
City 3 is coastal to build at least a Galley and maybe wonders.

And at 1000 BC

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

City on the copper does seem odd but it claims the right tiles with a monument (for other cities to use?). Also, the low food area makes plains hill a not so attractive tile to work. Finally, reaching 6 cities by 1000BC is a little heavy on maintenance. That city could focus on production while the others develop commerce/infrastructure. Sacrifice is for the cause. I think it's a fair option.
Two barbs cities spawned. Galley is in progress. Pyongyang works a farm when Seoul should. Wonders went very late, so did Judaism (founded by Gandhi).

Southern city is the 5th city. Hence no splitting the food to better control Gilgamesh's expansion - as advocated in my post above. The spot is definitely strong enough to be settled earlier than I did. Splitting is also valid. Well..

There are 4 worker for 6 cities (last settled this turn). That works temporarily because, earlier, we had 3 workers for 2 cities and our happy cap stagnated for a while. With the first Granaries/Libraries/Lighthouses coming online, now is a good time to reinforce the workers.

 

[Gwynnja]

@ BornInCantaloup

Spoiler :

I think I decided to move City 2 1 E because I'd unfogged the elephants, but yeah, I was certainly behind in worker turns until after the Oracle. I wasn't too keen on settling the north because it's covered in jungle. Giggles is pretty big, and right behind me in tech, but he's friendly. I'm thinking about heading towards combustion/flight for domination and siccing Giggles on someone to slow him down.

 

[Izuul]

Imm 1870 Space

Spoiler :

I wanted to try Deity, but the map settings scared me away.

Oracled CoL, used missionary to convert Gilgamesh. Sent 2 missionaries on a galley later to infect Mehmed and Gandhi. I managed to convert Mehmed, but Gandhi founded Taoism before i could get over there. I intentionally got a priest as my 2nd GP and actually built a shrine. I even detoured to Theology and built the AP for the hammers.

Went on to Lib, took out Gilgamesh and Gandhi with Cuirs. Teched a bit and went after Mehmed with Cavs. That war was a pain in the ass. I was destroying him on land, but he had seemingly 100 frigates in the water driving me insane. I ended up building a fort on the NE corner of my continent where my galleons could move to and from Istanbul safely in 1 turn to ferry troops. I lost two of my mainland cities (not important ones) to some random boat attacks, but was able to retake them rather easily. I guess i should've made sure i had more rifles in my mainland cities.. oh well.

After capping Mehmed i went the lazy route and won Space rather than engaging in more tedious overseas warring.

 

[Tall German Joe]

@Izuul

Spoiler :

nice work! and i hardly think spacerace is the easy route in this type of map - it means you've already done the hard work of stopping the inevitable cultural victory attempts by the other ais!

 

[Tall German Joe]

update, diety, normal, NHNE, 1400 AD

Spoiler :

something very very interesting just happened!

so, a little backstory first:

landed lib for mil trad @ 640AD, landed taj @ 780 AD. actually did not have very many horchers prepared to upgrade at this point, due to low production capabilities not compensating for my lack of planning; thus decided to pump cuirs while waiting for cavalry. made an odd decision at this point - switched into nationhood for 5 turns during the golden age and drafted a bunch of muskets. on one hand, this got me about a dozen protective defenders, which came in handy during the initial stages of the war. on the other hand, it certainly left my cuir stacks a bit depleted, and slowed down my rifling date by a few turns at least

mehmed declared on me @ 1100AD, and promptly proceded to walk 4 galleons full of longbows off the plank directly into a stack of about a dozen cuirs. mmmmmmmmmmmm oooo-kay, good plan there. he settled for peace 4 turns later for 120 gold - talk about a low effort war. immediately that turn i declared on gilgamesh - a full 6 turns before i landed rifling! why? because he finally got education, and was thus almost at gunpowder!! his huge stacks of medieval units would be bad enough with 2:1 to 3:1 odds against the top defender; didnt want to deal with anything worse. even with such a large number of cuirs, i had to play a very slow defensive war at first. i was faced with a HUGE C-shaped front and he had quite a large number of units. i turtled in behind my muskets and just waited for his SOD to arrive... i had most of my cuirs in my capital, where i could dispatch them within a turn to whatever direction he approached. every turn, he sent 4-5 knights looking to pillage, which was a convenient way to whittle him down. it took about 4 turns before the SOD finally showed up at larsa; it was about 40 units large, evenly divided between longbows, war elephants, maces, knights, and cats. it was wiped the next turn with only 3 losses of my own. after that, i split my stack into 2 fronts, north and south, with a great medic a piece, and started to take cities with the aim of meeting at his capital. upgrading to cavs slowly along the way, i finally capped him in 1390 AD with about 30-35 cavs left over.

which brings me to the VERY INTERESTING situation !! ghandi is going for a cultural victory; scoreboard sez he's still about 100 turns away. HOWEVER, all of a sudden, mehmed and recent buddhist convert cyrus have decided to invade him! hey guys, i have this monopoly tech here, its called rifling - take it as a free gift from me! this is such great news and at such perfect timing, as it gives me a chance to not only purify my island of bangelore's presence without retribution, but also to raze his buddhist holy shrine to the ground. i figure that if i can quickly whip 4 galleons, i can drop 3 quickly whipped cannons and 9 cavs off at his doorstep, followed by 12 more cavs the next turn. that should be more than enough to take him out of the game.

and speaking of cultural victories, look what i scored off gilgy:

yes, that's 6 religions! methinks a switch into universal suffrage is due shortly in my future...

 

[Robert FIN]

-125 AD

Spoiler :

Settled in Place (SiP):


Then I meet my neightbors:


1) Gilgamesh- He is annoying neightbor in my opinion. He is aggressive and he has Vultures.. He is in the same landmass with me.

2) Gandhi- Nice guy! He came with work boat from east I quess.

Here is my 2nd city:



I REXed quite well. I have something like 10 cities in 125 AD! Gilga is now kinda blocked in his own area and he won't be a treat to me.

Then I got Oracle and I chose CoL to reward:


Confusianism was founded in city of Wonsan and I already built the Kong Miao with my 1st GPP:


I'm doing good! Actually no need for big help or something. I think that I'll own the AI easily this time.

Map:

Save:

 

[Pengu]

emp 1780 dom

Spoiler :

Well, as I said before it was just a mop up.
Saladin was next on the chopping block and then followed Pacal, Joao and Perisa. Din't even have to bother about Gandhi. While Mehmet and Saladin were getting to rifling pacal and Joao was teching radio and such useless stuff which made it so easy to just roll over them. Makes a big difference when there are more than 2 continents as the Ai's can't get those major lovefests going with massive trade.