JR-O1: Noble, New Players

[Japanrocks12]

lurker's comment: That is a really good dot map, Pholkhero!

Don't worry too much about the cities overlapping. You don't often have size 20+ cities where you will work every tile. As for the food in blue dot, are those pigs and horses on grassland? I'm having a hard time telling from the screenshot. If they are, the city should be fine, especially after irrigation with that fresh water lake. As you say, a good production city!

As for pink dot being in Mansa's direction, that is a reason to settle it. Grab it before he does! What about the other 3 cities on pholk's map?

Yes, both food resources are on grasslands. Pink dot might be more difficult because Mansa might head there before us and grab it. You never know, AI plops cities randomly.

We can also get green dot and have that expand and basically have the northern portion of the continent to ourselves. Yellow and red dots get us some key resources, but I'm worried about food there.

 

[pholkhero]

Pink might be good for a third city, but it is in Mansa's direction.

THAT's why i'd rather settle it first, before blue dot. Let's grab what land we can from Mansa ~ it wouldn't do to have a city of his so close to our capital. Blue, IMO, should then be 3rd, but whatever the group decides.

I will, however, probably change the build @ Mecca to a workboat. building the worker first was but no big deal. since i don't think he'll have much to do ~ at least we'll have him ready to chop some forests since i'm guessing we're heading for Priesthood for the Oracle...what, no BW?!? well, that'll be next then. We should discuss what we want for the free tech, though, and plan for that.

We should perhaps think about spreading our religion to Mansa. As a tech-whore, he'll give up just about anything to you for a halfway decent trade, and you almost never run into the WFYABTA limit with him.

@ Conroe: D'oh ~ i always forget Judaism and the Oracle are two different techs. Thanks on the dotmap, though; i like dots

 

[pholkhero]

if i had to bet, i'd say that there'll be metal to the west of blue dot, too, near those sheep and rice if we're lucky, and maybe some near Pink dot.

Red Dot, with the wheat and crabs should be a-okay. Also, at yellow, the cows and the multitude of beavers should make it alright.

 

[Japanrocks12]

if i had to bet, i'd say that there'll be metal to the west of blue dot, too, near those sheep and rice if we're lucky, and maybe some near Pink dot.

Red Dot, with the wheat and crabs should be a-okay. Also, at yellow, the cows and the multitude of beavers should make it alright.

I understand why we might want to settle pink dot first, but wouldn't it be better to deny the other civs access to our portion of the continent? Settling blue dot and denying open borders will basically secure the northern part of the continent for us. Just some thoughts, pink dot is probably the best move now, but I really don't want any AI cities near the marble/horses/pigs area.

It's probably faulty logic though on my part. Don't listen to me

 

[pholkhero]

I can see the concern (that site is nice), but at this point in time, i'm not too worried about AI cities (and now watch an AI settle on both pink and blue )

in my mind, i was going to build the workboat, research BW, and then go ahead and whip a settler once we hit Pop4 if i have time in 15 turns, then we should repeat it w/a 2nd settler.

I don't think it would matter if an AI took one of those other citysites north of us, though. We could probably easily flip them with all our cities.

 

[Japanrocks12]

I can see the concern (that site is nice), but at this point in time, i'm not too worried about AI cities (and now watch an AI settle on both pink and blue )

in my mind, i was going to build the workboat, research BW, and then go ahead and whip a settler once we hit Pop4 if i have time in 15 turns, then we should repeat it w/a 2nd settler.

I don't think it would matter if an AI took one of those other citysites north of us, though. We could probably easily flip them with all our cities.

Sounds like a sound plan to me

 

[Conroe]

lurker's comment: You've hashed out pink and blue dots ...

We can also get green dot and have that expand and basically have the northern portion of the continent to ourselves. Yellow and red dots get us some key resources, but I'm worried about food there.

Green dot is a great fishing village with enough food to any infrastructure needed.

Red and Yellow dots are some rather interesting cities. Take a look at pholk's screenshot with the city radius drawn in:

If you move red dot west 1 tile, it can work the gold without a border expansion. It still picks up both food resources and eliminates a lot of the overlap between these 2 cities. So why did pholkhero put it north of the wheat? The answer is absolutely great!

Spoiler the answer :

Without a border expansion yellow dot can use the cow to grow to size 2 and then start working the fur. You'll need to pick up Hunting, but that is one of the cheaper techs.

Red dot can use the wheat to grow until it gets a border expansion. Once it grows, it can work the gold mine for the extra commerce. But look! It can steal 2 of the fur tiles from yellow dot. And, with 2 food resources, red dot can easily the infrastructure to capitalize on that commerce.

Yellow dot is a mediocre city that can pay for itself immediately. Red dot is a slow starter but will become a high-commerce city. By placing red dot in that position, pholkhero is allowing you leverage your existing abilities without sacrificing your later economic benefit.

As I said, it's a great dot map.

But wait! Green, Red, Yellow and Pink are all coastal cities. Anybody thinking about Colossus?

 

[pholkhero]

2640:
Change the build @ Mecca to a workboat, and MM to work 2 plains forests. It stops growth, but the boat will be done in 6 now Also, i noticed that some warriors were on GoTo's ~ i changed the one heading to Mecca to explore some more, and i move the one further west to check out Toku's land.

Okay, that's it for the inherited turn. Press Enter.

2520:
One of our warriors survives a panther attack. Interesting to note is that some barb animals are NOT attacking still, and moving away from our units.

2480:
A lion takes another warrior down to .8, but he survives. I also meet this little turd:

2440:
Priesthood comes in, and I select aim for Mining>BW.

2400:
I sent our worker to the Grassland tile south of Mecca with the aim of farming it. Once Pottery comes in, we can probably cottage over it at some point. Our one work boat is done and i start on another one for those crabs. We should probably focus on Growth here at the capital so that we can everything we need domestically, i.e., workers & settlers.

Next turn:

2280:
Oooo...Cathy revolts to Slavery.

2200:
The 2nd WB is done, and Mecca starts on a Barracks until we get to Pop4 when we should go back to a settler and whip it ASAP.

2160:
The crabs get netted, and I have our worker build a road from the grass to Mecca. I try to road over Rivers so that we won't lose any turns, so rather than roading immediately west, i went south for one space and then crossed the river. That way, as I said, when units cross it before bridges (what tech is that again?), they won't lose the other half their mvmt pt.

2000:
Okay, that's that. i played one extra turn to bring us to 410 turns left. We've only got 3 turns left on BW, with 4 left until growth to Pop4. At that point, we should swap to slavery (no anarchy, viva la spiritual) and keep an eye on it every turn until we can whip it for 2 pop, then go back to the 'rax.

Here's an overview map:

I moved the Beaver City one north in the current save (this pic was taken before) so that we could keep the forest tundra there for more shields. Plus, the cows are already in our borders so this will let us work all 3 beavers if we want, w/o even popping our borders.

And ze zave:

 

[lost_civantares]

Couple questions:

Are planning to nail Mansa with axes/swords, so we're building a baracks, or is it just a "dump" for hammers until grainaries come in, and the capital needs to grow, so it shouldn't build a settler? It's just that the barracks doesn't seem needed right now to me, especially since if we're not carefull we'll start to lose hammers on the settler that we've already put in.

Also what are we planning for tech wise? Are we still think about running for the oracle and metal casting?

 

[pholkhero]

Yeah, the barracks is just to eat up hammers until size 4. I put in a brief turn befoire the completion of the 2nd WB, so we shouldn't lose much of anything to decay.

I was thinking keep Mansa around b/c he's a good tech trader for now. If anything, last night i was thinking just expand out to 6 cities or so, adn take out Tokugawa with swords and cats. He's a real pain and never too firendly with his neighbors, so . . .

I think still yes on the oracle, but no one else has said much about it, and i don't know what tech folks want to get with it.

 

[lost_civantares]

Okay, we'll I'll play tonight.

Tech wise then I'll go for the oracle and head for metal casting unless I hear otherwise.

 

[Japanrocks12]

Metal Casting is a MUST if we're planning on warring (Forges, anyone?)

 

[lost_civantares]

Turn 1

Gibbon decides that our three warriors are just not up to the task of protecting us and declares that we are the least powerfull.

Turn 2
Just Pulling up a chair.

Turn 3
Grabbing a cup of coffee

Turn 4
We pick up Bronze Working!

I start Pottery (Since when did anyone use pottery to do Metal Casting?)

The good news is that there is copper right next one of the projected city sites (though missing the corn isn't good, what would happen if we moved it NW one?):

Turn 5
Mecca hits size 4, I resume building the settler and move the city's workers around a bit to squeeze out more science with out lousing anything else.

Turn 6
Nothing special.

Turn 7
Nothing.

Turn 8
We get Pottery, tenitivly start Metal Casting (31 turns! Are we sure we want to do this?)

Turn 9
Nothing much happining.

Turn 10
Nothing.

Notes

There's a barb warrior to the east of our southern most warrior (between Alex's and Cathy's borders), so watch out for him.

Mansa ready and willing to go and poach our copper, if we are want to get it we need to put a settler down there fast because Mansa already has a city by it.

The Save:

 

[princecharles]

I got the save. Any special orders? I already know we want Metal Casting, but should we listen to Civantares and settle one NW from the planned spot?

 

[pholkhero]

not NW ~ thats one off the coast. I meant to stick it 1 north, but we will need to build mostly culture bldgs there for a while to grab that copper.

we will also need to bring a warrior up to act as a guard for the new city. and probably one for Mecca still

Did you revolt to slavery, too, by any chance??

 

[lost_civantares]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that, I did not revolt at the time, we only have one city, and we are trying to increase pop as much as possible, so I felt that we might as well wait till we had another needed civic to change to.

 

[pholkhero]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that, I did not revolt at the time, we only have one city, and we are trying to increase pop as much as possible,

once we swapped to teh settler, we have no growth. We'll be able to whip the Settler for 2pop when it's about halfway done or so.

Unless something is about to finish (tech or build), i almost always revolt right away. In the early game, those 60 hammers are HUGE ~ like worth at least 7-10 turns . . . not to mention once we're building city improvements and we can't stack our food production it'll be that much more powerful. PLUS, we can chop now, too.

 

[princecharles]

Okay, so 1 N for city, and revolt to slavery. Anything else? What should I do if Mansa takes the spot? In about 2-3 hours I will start playing, so speak now or forever hold your peace.

 

[Japanrocks12]

get to size four, whip, use warrior escort, cross your fingers

 

[picardathon]

We're spiritual.
No anarchy
Next player switches at start of playset