KA01B - A Simple Deity Space Race - PtW Roster

[Northern Pike]

, MB. Our first ring is looking good. RCP is going to be enormously productive for us.

The only thing that leaves me a little is that we've done nothing recently to grab luxuries. Our next two settlers absolutely have to try to claim the northern furs and the eastern ivory. Then we should start founding second-ring cities around the "La Mancha" tile, I think.

I like the idea of turning Barcelona into a two-turn worker pump after it completes its settler. As you imply, this will require us to irrigate two of the city's plains tiles.

Madrid is producing as many useless-in-the-long-term regular warriors as we need, and I don't think Zaragosa and Ciudad de la Luna should be doing the same. I'd switch both over to building barracks, though a temple in CdlL would also be good.

Santiago's next build should be a galley.

I'll take ten turns to go in the beaten-to-Polytheism sweepstakes.

 

[bed_head7]

If I remember correctly, this is me. I'll try not to screw up the warrior/settler pump either.

 

[mad-bax]

I tend to make warrior then worker the first two builds in +2spt,+2fpt towns, but if we intend to get a worker pump up then changing the warrior builds to barracks would be a lot better of course.

Grabbing the ivory and the furs is a priority, but I am comfortable with not having done it in my turns. Settling the first ring cities allows us to get productive cities running quicker, and of course they are settled 5 to 10 turns earlier because of the distances involved. Getting some roads down in the meantime saves even more turns. This is another reason for the warrior/worker sequences in outlying locations - to get an early worker to connect the roads and allow settlers to travel faster. The risk of the AI taking the locations is high I know, but I think they would be most likely settled by England or France. England would be my choice of first adversary, and France are the weakest civ in the game apart from us.

Good luck bed head.

 

[Northern Pike]

Thanks for explaining your logic, MB. I understand your reasoning about the ivory tile, given its distance from our core. I thought your decision concerning the furs was more of a gamble, since we had a settler only three or four turns from that site when your round began, and since we know the English are expanding in that direction. But we'll probably get away with it if we act now.

 

[bed_head7]

I change two warriors to workers, since they will complete on growth. We do have a lot of regular warriors, so we don't need too many more.

IT - England completes Colossus.

1250 BC (1) - Santiago builds temple, starts galley for exploration.

IT - France picks up Construction, both France and the Ottomans start Great Wall.

1225 BC (2) - Madrid completes settler, and I am not sure where to send it. Finally decide to head for the hill next to the wheat and furs to the north. The desert first ring spot can definitely wait, and no one else would consider settling the coastal first ring spot.

1200 BC (3) - Seville finishes temple, starts worker. Barcelona finishes settler, starts worker so it the necessary improvements can be made for a two turn worker pump. I guess I'll send the settler over to a distance 11 spot, I think, in between the iron and ivory.

IT - French finish the Great Wall in Lyons. Celts research Polytheism and trade it to the French, making Northern Pike our winner today.

1175 BC (4) - Roading roading roading, keep them workers roading.

IT - The Ottomans also have Polytheism now.

1150 BC (5) - Also some warriors still wandering about.

1125 BC (6) - Aaaaah. Screwed up the settler pump, so now we'll get two warriors and then our next settler. Pamplona founded next to furs.

IT - Ottomans learn Currency, Fuedalism is their free tech. the English learn Polytheism also.

1100 BC (7) - Cuidad de la Luna finishes worker, starts temple though that might change to barracks.

1075 BC (8) - Aldea de Ribannah founded on first ring coastal spot.

IT - Shaka demands territory map and 22 gold, and I give in on the off chance that the Zulu research Construction or something and we can trade when we get Polytheism. I am not even sure where the Zulu are though, so I probably should have just refused.

1050 BC (9) - I remembered to MM Madrid! Toledo finishes Temple, and starts a Horseman.

1025 BC (10) - Casa del Bamrapido founded next to ivory and iron. French settler pair spotted to our north next to the iron hill.

I am not particularly attached to any of the builds, especially in Casa del Bamrapido, except for the galley builds which I think we definitely need as we are falling behind, so feel free to make changes.

 

[Northern Pike]

Nice round, BH. Having four luxuries will help us tremendously once we get marketplaces built.

Our next settler should probably claim the horses next to the "La Mancha" tile.

 

[ainwood]

Guess we did get beaten to Poly. Not really surprising given that all the civs have contact with each other - the tech pace is just too fast.

Perhaps we should be looking to crowd the french in the south off that iron - I really don't know why they didn't found on it or right next to it.

 

[Karasu]

Hello there
We just reached the Middle Ages thanks to Alan's trading skills. I have marked a post on page 10 of our thread that you can safely read up to as soon as you reach that point too.

There is a potentially spoiling map that shows a suicide galley's path across the unknown seas, so you may want to wait a bit more before checking our progress. On the other hand, many of us have already played GOTM20 and are already spoiled -so, it's up to your judgement I guess.

Do you think that we should open another thread somewhere to discuss our approaches to the game, or just wildly cross post in these two? I have no strong opinion on this.

 

[Northern Pike]

Perhaps we should be looking to crowd the french in the south off that iron - I really don't know why they didn't found on it or right next to it.

I like this idea a lot, though I'd still claim the southern horses first. A city founded on the BG northwest of the iron would fit properly into our second ring; and its cultural overlap with Chartres, though considerable, would be less than we're already tolerating in Seville.

Do you think that we should open another thread somewhere to discuss our approaches to the game, or just wildly cross post in these two? I have no strong opinion on this.

Cross-posting would expose people to spoiler information however good their intentions, so I'd opt for the separate thread; though there is some risk, as has probably occurred to you, that no one will go to the trouble of writing separate posts for it.

 

[Northern Pike]

Kaiser Berger, do you know you're up?

 

[Kaiser_Berger]

Ahhh yes, yes I do. Sorry, I don't have reliable access to the forums on the weekends. I've got it.

 

[Karasu]

You're right of course, NP, nor am I too eager to start a wild exchange of ideas between games while we're playing it.

Anyway, there is the opportunity for a mid-way check for those who would like it, trying not to get spoiled of course (for which I am sure everyone's judgement is more than sufficient).

It will be certainly very interesting to discuss the whole game once we have finished.

 

[Kaiser_Berger]

Preturn- Things look good.

IT- Celts finish Great Lighthouse.

T1 1000 BC

Not much. Settler is heading south to claim the horses by La Mancha.

IT- zzz

T2 975

The French bastards have stolen the LaMancha spot Our settler will head to a thrid ring spot instead.

Not much else.

IT- Celts establish an embassy with us.

T3 950

Not much. India now has Poly and Construction, so no deal possible once we get Poly.

IT- We learn Polytheism.

Start min run on Republic.

T4 925

Not much new.

IT- zzz

T5 900

Lots of tech is learned by the AI, so some deals open up. We get Currency from the Ottomans for 246g and 10gpt. That goes to India with 5gpt for Construction, and we enter the Middle Ages. Poly, Construction, and Currency and 6gpt goes to the Zulu to get us Republic. We sell currency to Celts for 90g and WM. Republic goes to India for 60g and 1gpt. Republic goes to France for 60g. We revolt and get the expected 1 turn of Anarchy.

IT- We become a Republic.

T6 875

Not much. We're running a bit of a defecit right now. We need to get markets up to improve our economic situation.

IT- zzz

T7 850

Vitoria founded in southern jungle.

IT- zzz

T8 825

Nothing much. With the Ivory now hooked up, we still need 20% lux to keep Madrid happy.

IT- zzz

T9 800

We start two suicide runs westward, one from the North end, one from the South end.

IT- We lose both galleys

T10 775

Not much again. I'll take one more turn to even things out.

IT- zzz

T11 750

Santander founded on the inland sea.


Summary

Well, we've gone Medieval and we're in a Republic. We have a few more cities and a settler on the way in the north. He's heading to settle right on the iron. Barcelona is now set up as a two turn worker factory.

 

[a space oddity]

Well done! Too bad about losing the race for those Horses. Will we still be attacking England first? We might be limited to slow units only, if that's the case.

 

[Kaiser_Berger]

IIRC, we already have horses from another source, as I remember having a horseman in production. I'd say England is a good choice, as they have poached a good deal of land that is rightfully ours. A war against France later on wouldn't be bad either, to gain the spots they've taken.

 

[ainwood]

Great set of turns - the republic will help us. Seeing as Space-Race is our ultimate goal, shall we start a few libraries? Maybe we can look for the highest base commerce cities (Barcelona, Madrid, Toledo & Santiago) and perhaps have one of them building a library at a time. Probably don't want to invest too much whilst the AI tech rate is still spanking along though, especially as we're not really researching ourselves. Perhaps building marketplaces in these cities would be a better short-term investment. And how about getting the FP started?
We can sell the republic to the celts, if we so choose, and might be able to buy Feudalism from the ottomans and on-sell it (Probably don't have enough gold / turn for that though. )

 

[Kaiser_Berger]

I started up a couple of markets, but aside from Madrid, we don't really have many cities with good production power, so it'll take a while for them to come online. And I concur, we're a bit hamstringed economically right now. We've gotten up to around +5 gpt or so, but thats about all we'll get for now. Once we get markets up and running we can lower the lux rate. Also we should have furs hooked up by the end of the next set, so that might allow us to lower to 10% right there on its own.

 

[Northern Pike]

, KB. I appreciate the way you've kept all our third-ring cities at RCP distance 11--they'll probably be totally corrupt anyway, but it's the right thing to do aesthetically.

We face the usual difficult trade-offs at this point in the game. If I emphasize marketplaces, which seems necessary, I won't be able to do anything about building up our army.

Got it, of course.

 

[ainwood]

A marketplace in Madrid or Barcelona looks to be worth about 5 GPT to us. We appear to have caught-up in cities, which makes me a bit suspicious that the AI civs have cut-back on their expansion - possibly due to building wonders, but they could be starting to invest in military.

As such, I don't think that we should be neglecting our military - we should identify a target that is preferably iron-deficient, and hopefully horse deficient as well, and maybe use that to fuel our next phase of expansion. That said, switching one city to produce a marketplace may be a good option. Assuming a marketplace is 100 shields = 400 gold, then if we built one in Madrid, we could build it in about 11 turns, or build for 5 turns then rush it for about 220 gold - that option isn't great, because the payback is quite slow (50+ turns!).

 

[mad-bax]

I would advocate the english as our first target, the land is good and they have the pyramids. The French are Jungle bound. Let them clear some of it first with their industrious workers. I think we need a war fairly soon to generate a leader for our FP. For maximum research pace we need the FP somewhere outside our third ring radius.

As for markets, well we need them, and so the sooner we get them the better. The payback will be quicker than 50 turns I expect since we can allow cities with markets to grow bigger. The trick is to get them into play at the point we need to start self research, and this could be in the middle of the MA I think. Since Research Speed is the key, I see no reason to build a huge military. A dozen knights and half a dozen MDI shold be more than enough to start a war with England that can net us enough real estate for 4 turn research - which is all we need.

It's then a question of how brave we can be in keeping the AI level with us in tech.