Isolated

[hotstuffjsn]

I find myself playing a new game on Noble. It's an archipelago map, large, rocky, high sea level. As you can imagine there is a lot of water. I was put on an island with enough room for one city, albeit an awesome location! My only gripe is that I was in the middle of the ocean and could not find any coast around me. So essentially it's like 1300 AD maybe? I beelined to optics so I could at least see what was out there. I immediately found Gandhi and some others. I back traded a ton of techs and popped philosophy and traded a few more. At this point most are double my score or triple with no land available so far at this point. I have a ton of caravels out and astronomy at this point looks so far ahead and with just one city researching...well...I don't know if i can salvage the game. I guess i'll just play it out, i'm at very good relations with at least two civs and the others are annoyed or cautious. I'm not sure if i'll amount to anything but i've never been put in this situation before. I would normally have thought the generator would allow you access to found a few other cities to get things going...what would any of you have done? I mean seriously, astronomy before I can get a settler out across the ocean!? lol I used Ghandi's border to get my trireme across at first, but of course there was no land to settle.

So in conclusion, is it possible to play such an isolated start with one city and wait it out until Astronomy?

 

[Winston Hughes]

I used Ghandi's border to get my trireme across at first, but of course there was no land to settle.

If you can get to Gandhi with only a trireme, then couldn't you launch an attack using Galleys to transport your troops?

So in conclusion, is it possible to play such an isolated start with one city and wait it out until Astronomy?

If you can take a few cities before you end up too far behind in the tech race, then you may be in with a chance. In that case, and if your relations are not already screwed, you could try for a diplomatic victory:

Spoiler :

Choose your friends carefully (pay attention to who they like and dislike - avoid trading with the latter) and cultivate good relations with them (agree to any sane requests). Bribe the civs you want to win over to join you in your wars for the 'mutual military struggle' bonus. If you have a religion, then spread it to a few key cities in each civ you want to make friends with, and see if you can persuade them to convert (if not, stay out of religion).

Once you've carved out a decent empire and secured your friends, concentrate on building up the population in your cities (without slowing research too much) and beeline Biology, then Mass Media. Trade Biology to your friends, but be very jealous of techs on the route to MM until you're sure of getting the UN.

I'd be interested in having a go on the save, if you wouldn't mind posting it.

 

[hotstuffjsn]

I'm having an error message when trying to upload the save Says it has to be deleted so I delete it from my uploads page and it still doesn't upload right...grrr If i'm up to it i'll fool around with the tool some other time.

I've tried a few times and was able to get a picture of my position relative to my neighbors.

 

[Winston Hughes]

I'm having an error message when trying to upload the save

Pity, that map looks like a lot of fun. I'm afraid I can't help you with the issues, though - I've never had a problem myself.

By the looks of the screenshot, you could have fitted four cities on your little island - perhaps think about doing a couple of turns exploration before settling next time you play a similar map (coast and ocean tiles may be weak, but they're better than nothing, esp. if you can grab the Colossus). (Edit - and the cultural borders of those cities could have opened up routes to India and the island to the west much quicker, if I'm reading the picture right).

And I think you're going to have to give Gandhi a stomping very soon if you're going to stand any chance of winning. Even if you could settle the uninhabited islands before anyone else, the maintenence costs will be a pain, and the cities will need a lot of work to get them up and running. You'll at least get lighthouses or granaries and some improved tiles in cities you take from Gandhi.

 

[hotstuffjsn]

Good news, I managed to get my saved game uploaded! Give it a try and let me know what you think

 

[r_rolo1]

I agree with Winston Hughes: You should had made 3/4 cities in that island and go for Collosus/Great Lighthouse. Probably you would have 2x your current pop in the moment and that could have made all the diference

Gandhi looks like a good target, specially his capitol....

 

[hotstuffjsn]

With 3 or 4 cities on my small island there would be some serious city overlap; is this acceptable because of my marginal starting point?

 

[hotstuffjsn]

I took the recommendation of placing more then one city on my starting island and have thus come up with my very first dotmap I think I will start doing this before I settle any city in the future to help with better placement.

Does the dotmap i've come up with so far look ideal, or could I have sought better locations? If the latter is the case, where should I put them?

 

[pigswill]

Do you still have the starting save?

Maybe one for the Lonely Hearts Club (if they get fed up playing monarch/emperor).

 

[hotstuffjsn]

Here's the save; I would love to hear feedback on the progress of the game if you and others decided to play it.

 

[mudphud]

With 3 or 4 cities on my small island there would be some serious city overlap; is this acceptable because of my marginal starting point?

Overlap isn't as bad as you think. I used to avoid overlap like the plague but now I realize that while it isn't ideal, a few overlapping tiles isn't a huge problem. How long is it before your cities are going to be large enough that they are working every single tile? Sometimes it can even be useful to overlap a resource that doesn't produce food, like a gold mine, so that you can always be working it even if you lack a lot of food resources.

 

[pigswill]

Its an interesting scenario. If you play from the original without the benefit of hindsight then settling on the start location is a reasonable thing to do. However if you do that you have only one more potential city site and that doesn't have any food resource available. This means that only the capital gets to run scientists for GS lightbulbs.

Colossus sounds tempting but there's no copper and the main city doesn't pick up that many coastal tiles.

Great Lighthouse is marginal because you don't have the trade routes to start with.

Glib might also be useful but that puts you on alphalit beeline with no trading partners.

If you're only running a couple of cities then you could afford to run pacifism which means going for philosophy beeline.

If you get to optics and pick up calendar then you can bulb astronomy if you avoid CS/theology for paper.

You could also do liberalism beeline and pick up astronomy that way.

Even on noble you'll struggle to compete with such limited land and resources. You could probably only achieve one of these strategies and you'd still be pressed to mount a significant invasion anywhere.

 

[hotstuffjsn]

I decided to give the game another start. I went with one city this time and decided to use a SE to give myself an advantage. I did indeed get what I was looking for and managed to stay far ahead of the competition in technology. Below is a few screenshots of how things were right before I switched into my war mode.

I'm also posting a recent save where I managed to assault and take over one of Ghandi's cities with little effort. In fact I used camel archers and then longbowman to secure the city. I've since then managed to start building Grenadiers and I think i'll do ok at this point. Let me know what you guys think

I think i'll try a few more SE as I think they are must faster and efficient then CE albeit you have to plan out a strategy though! I do think if I managed to have an industrious and philosophical leader it would synergize better. I used the pyramids, representation, pacisfism and the national epic and a lot of scientists in the city to help me.

 

[InFlux5]

Just from glancing at the screenshot, shouldn't you have been able to settle the island to the west after your capital's boundaries expanded twice?

 

[aronnax]

If i had such a start, I would give up, but you seem to be doing a pretty good

 

[hotstuffjsn]

Just from glancing at the screenshot, shouldn't you have been able to settle the island to the west after your capital's boundaries expanded twice?

The western island doesn't open up at all. I don't remember when culture borders open but the second to last I just hit and it may have allowed me to, but even then I now have galleons so I might as well take over Ghandi as the island just doesn't have enough room for my empire. I could have moved my city to the west and made a gap to it, but I went an entirely different direction and just concentrated on massive specialists to help myself keep up in tech.

UPDATE: Things are looking good, i'm over halfway through taking out Ghandi's major island. My buddy Brennus declared war and since he's kind of far away he's not capturing cities, but just pillaging and giving me a helpful distraction. Asoka managed to get himself into trouble with Japan as well for some reason, and things are getting intense. Meanwhile the Americans and Greeks are at war giving me an exciting middle game. I'll post the latest screenshots in a few minutes.

My capital is now the powerhouse producing my entire war machine. One of my screenshots shows the next two cities i'm about to go take as the score on the side and you will see i'm not last anymore, woot! I really have no idea how i'll take over some of the other civilizations, but i'm probably going to have to raze them? I've never tried domination, but it sounds fun, especially on this map!

I managed to secure an Iron resource on the Ghandi's mainland, and was able to start building Frigate's to guard the waters and upgrade to cannon, exciting! What's next? hehe

 

[InFlux5]

Very impressive! It's almost making me want to play an Archipelago. I was wondering how you would have a chance with only one city, but I guess the AI's distant island cities aren't going to have much defense in them. Shouldn't be too hard to take several of them.

 

[hotstuffjsn]

UPDATE: I don't know if anyone is following along on my grand adventure here, but I figured i'd throw in an update because i've been very happy about my progress in this game.

I was unforntunate enough to have Ghandi vassalize to Brennus, thus sealing off my hopes of conquering them once and for all. I suppose there will be a time later of course

Seeming as how my war with Ghandi ended abruptly, I decided my next target would be Japan. With all of this war, you'd think i'd fall behind in gold and tech? Well money was not a problem because I pillaged a lot from the cities I captured and tech...well...I somewhat kept up, albeit a few steps ahead from all but the most powerful civs. So I did get a two city foothold on the Japan's homeland, and more would quickly follow. I dominate the seas with my frigates patrolling around them and keeping an eye out for stray Caravels here and there.

With all this military out and about, I decided to make a city on Ghandi's homeland into another military production center. I popped a second great general and made a miltary academy to pump out units fast. I threw in a forge also for good measure

So here I am, with near a 100 turns left and a bunch of civs left to take out. I've done better then I thought I could have, but not running emancipation and my cultural borders being so tiny with the cities I take over, has given me a few growing problems in my newly captured cities

Anyhow, here's a few screenshots

 

[Uncle E]

I find myself playing a new game on Noble. It's an archipelago map, large, rocky, high sea level. As you can imagine there is a lot of water. I was put on an island with enough room for one city, albeit an awesome location! My only gripe is that I was in the middle of the ocean and could not find any coast around me. So essentially it's like 1300 AD maybe? I beelined to optics so I could at least see what was out there. I immediately found Gandhi and some others. I back traded a ton of techs and popped philosophy and traded a few more. At this point most are double my score or triple with no land available so far at this point. I have a ton of caravels out and astronomy at this point looks so far ahead and with just one city researching...well...I don't know if i can salvage the game. I guess i'll just play it out, i'm at very good relations with at least two civs and the others are annoyed or cautious. I'm not sure if i'll amount to anything but i've never been put in this situation before. I would normally have thought the generator would allow you access to found a few other cities to get things going...what would any of you have done? I mean seriously, astronomy before I can get a settler out across the ocean!? lol I used Ghandi's border to get my trireme across at first, but of course there was no land to settle.

So in conclusion, is it possible to play such an isolated start with one city and wait it out until Astronomy?

I'm noticing a "salvage" pattern from you ... maybe start with a difficulty level one lower and a normal continents game? I think you are stacking things against yourself a bit too much while still moving up the learning curve of the game.

 

[Winston Hughes]

I decided to give the game another start. I went with one city this time

This was a very, very move. Having previously found yourself stuck on an island with only one city, and having been told by us that you'd have been better off building more than one, you restart the game and build one city again?!

Some lessons from this game:

1) In most cases, two strong cities trump one very strong city - especially if space is limited. Just look at all those unused tiles!

2) Relatedly, overlap is not to be feared. Thinking long-term is all well and good, but having a strong early game is much more important than having some uber-city later on.

3) Don't be afraid to spend a turn or two exploring before settling your first city (especially on maps like this). Remember: land is power - if you can reserve land for later settlement whilst expanding towards your rivals, then you can weaken them at the same time as guaranteeing yourself a few more cities.

4) When playing archipeligo maps the main question to ask yourself is 'how do I get off this rock?' You want to be placing at least some of your cities in spots where their culture can open up routes to new lands sooner rather than later.

5) Relatedly, even on these kinds of maps, Astronomy is only needed when either (a) you run out of land (whether neutral or AI controlled) to expand into, (b) the AI has got it and so presents a potential naval threat, or (c) you are set up to take advantage of the overseas trade routes (if you have the ToA and/or Great Lighthouse, then early Astronomy can be very powerful).

I've been playing from the 4000bc save and I have to say that, if played right, this is a very strong starting location:

Spoiler :

By settling in the north-east corner of the island, I was able to open up a route to the Indian island very quickly, and researched Sailing (and built a Galley) to take advantage.

My second (awesome production - 1S of the southernmost elephant) and third (on the opposite coast) cities were used to cut off India, and secure another good site on the southern peninsula.

My fourth city was settled in the south of the starting island (on the grassland hill 1S of the starting location), and was immediately set to wonderbuilding - Oracle for MC, Forge then Colossus, Madrassa then Great Library. I had already built workboats elsewhere (one of which did my initial exploring), so the fish and clams were ready to go as soon as the city was settled.

So far the Colossus and GL have merely been used to prop up my war economy. But in the long-term (ie. once I'm done killing my neighbours) they will be the foundations of a supercharged tech-rush (the joy of being spiritual - you can quickly and painlessly switch between builder-mode (Slavery + Org. Rel.), war-mode (Slavery + Theology), and research-mode (Caste Sys. + Pacifism)). I will actually avoid researching Astronomy until absolutely necessary, so as to preserve the Colossus bonus.

After settling the southern pensinsula, and researching Construction for Cats and War Elephants, I quickly conquered India. I could have taken Asoka much earlier (with a chariot rush), but I wanted to let him build up his cities for me (inc. chopping the jungles) and to see if I could make some tech trades with him (in the end I traded for five or six techs, iirc).

I also used a Great Prophet and a Great Scientist (both born in the capital) to pop Theology and Philosophy respectively. I actually saved them for quite a while before finding suitable uses - it doesn't always pay to use a GP as soon as you get it.

At the present time, I've sued for peace (leaving Asoka with only one city, on the island to the west of his former capital) and I'm healing up whilst stabilising the economy (esp. building courthouses) to prepare for an invasion of the Celtic lands (using Asoka's island as a staging post). I'll also be moving the capital to my second city, to take full advantage of the Bureaucracy bonus to as it comes online. I've got a big tech lead on Brennus, and the demographics suggest I'm the frontrunner at this stage, so winning from here ought to be pretty straightforward.

Three saves to illustrate my progress:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/101561/Isolated_BC-1240.CivWarlordsSave

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/101561/Isolated_AD-200.CivWarlordsSave

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/101561/Isolated_AD-940.CivWarlordsSave