Just a random map

[BornInCantaloup]

Less talkie-talkie, more playie-playie,
This is your average Deity, Big&Small, Normal continents, Islands mixed in, Standard size, Normal speed map.
Low sea level was thrown in, Tropical climate, 1 extra AI.

Islands mixed in on Big&Small mean that, more often than not, workboats can unlock the circumnavigation bonus.

AIs were handpicked but this is just your casual crew of : Mansa Musa, Pericles, Peter, Hannibal, Huayna Capac, Willem Von Orange, Justinian.
Leader is Lizbeth of the English Empire. A fair lady, if there ever was one, although she lacks a little in the early game department.

Mix it all, pour the juice, there you have it : a fair lady, on a fair map, sparing with fair opponents.

Pic of the start :

Spoiler :

Have thoughts about the start ? Intimidating ? Seems too fun ? Not enough options ? Too easy ? Too hard ?
Think you can handle the 1277 land tiles ? Maybe it's time to research your diplo and bulb your way to the U.N ? Worried about your trading partners ? Can you keep up with them ? Wanna kill them all instead ? You sure they won't be the ones invading you ?

Hey, well, best answer to these question starts with downloading the save file.
So many questions, only one save file.

Give it a go, have fun !

 

[Pedro78]

Looks like an ok start

To me it looks more intimidating than anything else. With this kind of start the game is "won" on turn 0, which means the challenge is to find the optimal strategy to get a good win date, whatever the VC you choose. So when I see this start, I see the dozens of hours it would take me to squeeze the whole juice out of this map. Not sure if I'll play it, might give it a go "just for fun", but first I have to get going with my Saladin game.

A fair lady, if there ever was one, although she lacks a little in the early game department

Starting techs aren't great but with a start like that it doesn't slow you down for one bit. Only regret is the unablility to bulb Engi on a start like that.

Mansa Musa, Pericles, Peter, Hannibal, Huayna Capac, Willem Von Orange, Justinian

Very easy crew to play with, can either make them go full tech mode or make them constantly fight with eachother, thus slowing down the tech pace.

Otherwise move warrior 1E and settle either 1E or 1NE depending on what is found.

 

[Rusten]

Another space gauntlet?
Should be able to beat my BOTM 117 game under these conditions.

 

[Rusten]

Yeah, I'm a sucker for these starts with a clear goal in mind.

T11:

Spoiler :

I settled in place. Goal is Space so I wanted to keep riverside tiles in BFC. Extremely rare that I don't go for the PH boost, but the long term matters here. Spotting sheep also influenced my decision as there's a nice city spot 1W of sheep to mature capital cottages and take the extra food at some point to run scientists.

I'm definitely going mining-bw over AH. The pigs can be mined and corn+cottaged FP is enough food. Chopping out early game settlers/workers is much more important wih the great land available.

 

[elitetroops]

If goal was space I'd also be reluctant to move onto PH here. I'd even consider 1W on FP. That appears to ensure that most of BFC is riverside and doesn't waste any forests. It also opens up more possibilities to share BFC resources. Destroying a flood plain doesn't matter at all in the early game. We have so many resources and at least 4 FP in the BFC, that it would be a very long time before having one more FP would gain anything.

1W would also connect capital to the other river, meaning less need for early roads.

 

[Rusten]

T35

Spoiler :

Had a change of heart on BW vs AH. BFC gold is a game changer and when present you should always ask yourself if the situation favours an alphabet beeline. Here I decided yes. Plenty of power tiles to work and improve even when delaying a bunch of techs.

Spoiler :

Settler immediately on size 3 as growing to size 4 would make little difference. Did not bother to finish the warrior as the desired city spot is completely safe (next to cows).
OB with everybody and ivory trade from Willem in the bag thanks to pig+corn.

Spoiler :

 

[Pedro78]

Haven't started playing yet, but I rolled a bunch of maps with similar settings and it appears there is tons of mining/sushi resources. Question to everybody - what do you think about corporations, assuming your goal is space?

From what I've tested, corps will give you a much better tech rate than SP if the following conditions are satisfied:

• You have a courthouse in every city, Wall Street is built in HQ (basic stuff)
• You can deal with the unhappiness caused by huge cities

Corp spread costs you 50 gold per city. Courthouse is 120 hammers (although you'll build many of them even without corps to sustain expansion). Execs are 100 hammers. So we're at around 200 gold per city investment. As this is a (fairly) normal game you'll have to deal with at least some emancipation anger late-game. You won't have many vassals/colonies to give you extra happiness. This means you won't be able to have many happy 20+ pop cities (the 5 that benefit from Rep happy bonus most likely).

Thus, the only advantage I see in corporations over "standard" SP economy is that you'll be able to whip Factories+Coal Plants and maybe Grocers and Levees and grow back at 1pop per turn, and overall grow your cities to "optimal size" much quicker. But is that worth going Corps over SP? I don't think so, but haven't tried it. Maybe some of you have experimented both paths and can share some useful knowledge?

 

[Pedro78]

Corporations, however, are only relevant for a space race victory...

Yeah but my question was: do you think corps can be better than SP for a Space race on this settings?

 

[Pedro78]

I liked Elite's suggestion to settle 1W so I did it after moving warrior 1NE and finding "bad" tiles. Pretty satisfied with this decision, even though the opening is much slower than with the PH settle.

Spoiler turn 51 :

• Agriculture-AH-Writing-Alpha-backfill
• I first thought about something like Ag-BW-AH-Wheel-Pottery, but I figured that I wouldn't have the worker force to use all these techs extremely early. So an Alpha beeline doesn't lose much on land improvement here. I usually don't like Alpha beelines because it forces you to cheap out on land improvement, but here it doesn't slow you down much and puts you far ahead in tech. Another advantage of Alpha beeline on this map is that it allows you to get IW extremely early to settle the rich jungle land.
• Worker improved corn-gold-pig-farm 2N1W of London-Sheep-farm 1NE of London
• Warrior fortified in the north early to prevent any unfortunate barb spawns:

Spoiler :

• Settler at size 3. Then finish the warrior and build another one while growing to size 4. Then another settler.
• York is settled 3N of London. Grows to size 2 and builds 2 workers in a row.
• Edit: soon after AH I also traded Pigs+Corn for Ivory from Willem
• The abundance of AI units makes barbs much less of an issue:

Spoiler :

• The FP farm allows to time York's worker and London's settler a little better, I like that

Spoiler :

• Alpha comes in T51:

Spoiler a couple of trades :

No one has writing yet:

Trades (in order):

• Writing for Sailing to Justinian
• Writing for Mysticism + The Wheel to Willem
• Writing for Masonry to Mansa as he's the only one who will trade it and Pericles and Justinian don't have it yet

Oracle not built yet. SH went T29 (Pericles). I want to get Priesthood and take a shot at the Oracle. Costs me nothing but can be a big gain.

Now the tech screen looks like that:

Then I'll probably trade Alpha for BW+Poly+Pottery to Mansa and then Writing+Sailing+Masonry for IW to Pericles (not sure if that's realistic). Also have to get PH somehow. Not sure, but I'm done for today.

Spoiler empire overview and city plan :

You'll have guessed that the yellow spots are the post-calendar cities. Might lose them to Willem but that's no big deal. Next city is probably the jungle-pig one that will take the gold from London so the latter can grow.

Now I'm thinking CoL (Oracle'd or self-teched) - Civil Service. I don't think a medieval war is good on this map. Willem has ivory so I don't want to elepult him, plus I have a reasonable amount of good land. Maybe go for Cuirs really early and roll over the continent? The target being space I really want to expand ASAP. With such a nice capital one would probably want to get Oxford really early. Maybe skip Academy, double-bulb Edu and build Oxford in the BCs? These starts open so many possibilities, hard to know which one is the best.

Edit - @Rusten why the cows before the sheep? Better production but lower commerce and leaves you vulnerable to barbs from the north. And while it doesn't exactly "kill" the clam it will take you quite some time to be able to work that tile.

 

[elmurcis]

Hmmm.. Pedro78

Spoiler :

unless its modified game or it was just quick dot-mapping and was only another option for city, you can't settle that 2x fish spot (to north-west) - 1N only possible

(keep going - fun to read My brain math is set to Mara-ntt-imm-noob-speed so can't do anything on normal )

 

[elitetroops]

Yeah but my question was: do you think corps can be better than SP for a Space race on this settings?

I'm not convinced corps are better with these settings. I'm no expert on corps either, but my general impression is that they are much more powerful on slower speed (and larger maps obviously). One reason is that you have to factor in the time it takes you to spread the corp. If you are at 40 cities, then it's probably a minimum of 10-15 turns, which is quite a lot at that stage in a normal speed game. Conquering a large enough empire is also much easier on slower speeds.

Planning for corps is good to start early. If you go SP, then you want to stick mainly to the large continents. If corps, you want to expand aggressively out in the archipelago for more seafood. Also, quite early you need to have a plan for the GE to found mining.

 

[Pedro78]

@elmurcis You're right... I played to quickly and settled Nottingham in the wrong spot, ruined one fish... Won't kill my game but it's still a stupid mistake.

@elitetroops Yeah that was my feeling aswell. If I plan to launch my spaceship on say T190, it means I'll have AL around T160 and need to have spread sushi to most cities by then. This means ~T150 sushi and mining needs to follow quickly. And all cities have to be out of revolt and have a courthouse by T150, which is nearly impossible in this case (unless I go for medieval warfare and stay at 20 cities afterwards, but that's even worse).

 

[jatamixx]

BIC is treating us with the start we deserve No maso.

 

[jatamixx]

@ BIC

Spoiler :

Founding Confucianism in fish farm would be ideal. Chop into workboat.

 

[jatamixx]

T54

Spoiler :

FML ​

​

 

[Imploding]

A good start indeed.. fun to see what you seasoned players will turn out of this!

@bic nice granary micro!
If William starts to settle a couple juicy jungle spots.. and I would consider a engineer push against him. That is some slow cities for William to settle and develop

Also nice to see the usage of the "research multipliers trick".. I did not know about that! Will try to use it! a full turn of 40 % is kind of a big deal..

@jatamixx Tough luck! The oracle loss is painfull.. but oh well now you have some nice failgold

 

[Rusten]

I've played to 500 BC. I'll wait for others to catch up before giving an update.

This is what my empire looked like T51 (very brief update):

Spoiler :

Alphabet completed and trades starting. Currency is a natural follow-up.
I've got my tricore of cities. The next ones are not immediately profitable and will thus be settled in a wave a while later.

@Pedro78 Chose cows first because the area was secured against barbarians unlike the north. The two spots are very comparable. The clam is a non-factor. With flood plains available I would not want to spend 30H on a wb early regardless.

 

[Imploding]

"Engineer push" as in "Trebuchets" ? I'm thinking Macemen. Maybe with a couple of Woody Macemen to steal workers in the jungle. Jungle is the ideal terrain for that.

Yeah.. was thinking about engineering for the trebuchets and the +1 movement.. but I guess it can be delayed and the +1 movement is more important when you get deeper into his land.
I like your reasoning for the CS instead.. he will be slow and catapults will do the job. Byro will also be nice with that capitol and PHI gives the possible of a quick academy.
I have not tried a mace push in ages tho.. but I guess the jungle is ideal for that kind of play.

For this to work out nicely, I/we/you need to set up the early cities fast and have excess production by the time you unlock Macemen (set up infrastructure, grow to happy cap).

Whats roughly the ETA on CS? 30-40 turns?

Spoiler I tested it :

Got a fast academy in cap.. and got CS @ 575 BC.. that's 39 turns. if I counted correct

Guess a core of 4-5 cities will do the job. London Notthingham an York will be ready. Maybe the superfoodspot aswell..
I did continue ur save BiC.. with the intention of going for fast mace.. kind of had a little change of plans tho. but I think The game is in a promising position..

Spoiler My attempt. :

Did get a academy in cap.. and that sure speed things along did go for a fast CS.. Then i used the second GS to start a golden age.
Picked up 2 merchants and started to train warriors to be upgraded.. ended up picking up 3400 gold from the merchants.

Did also go for a fast engineering.

Spoiler The army :

Also really lucked out.. Perciles attacked william. So Williams army is marching towards him.. it also made him research much slower.

Probably just going to steam roll him.. and see how easy perci will be after

But yeah.. this kind of start there is a lot of different ways to maximise the game.. hm almost find good starts harder than bad starts in that way.. so many possibilities!

 

[Rusten]

There's no rush BIC -- take your time. I like the short girthy updates.

But yeah.. this kind of start there is a lot of different ways to maximise the game.. hm almost find good starts harder than bad starts in that way.. so many possibilities!

That's the fun part of these kind of games. Same with BOTM. Extra resources can allow for special plays.

 

[Imploding]

Spoiler Turn 112 - 146 :

I attacked the turn after Middelburg AND maastricht picked up 40 % cultural defence.. whats up with that timing..kind of lucked out a little with the first maces and had minimal losses.. also killed of a big stack of William in maastricht.
Going for The Hauge while kind of faking for utrecht.. his production kind of surprised me.. but I guess he has been at war for a while.

Spoiler super spoiler :

Mansa also seems to be thriving.. picked up lib @ 150 AD.. thats crazy even for him.. glad i didn't go for the lib route myself..
With this crazy start.. I might have been able to picked it up before him.. but would probably not be able to pick anything good from lib.

Ended up taking longer than I expected to cap him.. but @ t146 he finally caved in.. I'm thinking about going for Pericles next.. his capital is full of goodies. (Mids.. SH.. Parthhenon.. MoM.. basically the dream for a potential space victory) He can research Gunpowder.. but I don't think that will matter to much. Since we have CR3 maces, Trebs and knigths. BTW he has been fighting mansa for 30 turns.. after we bribed Mansa on him.

I guess its pretty much in the bag.. Maybe mansa can be a bit scary.. he has 13 cities.. and advanced.. But he generally dont build to much units..

Fun map.. Think my approach was strong.. but I'm not sure its even is close to what kind of crazyness is possible with this land.. so it's going to be fun to see what you guys pick up!