KoS4 - Something more casual (?)

[timmy827]

OK, should clarify. Agree that our 1st settler should be started at size 4 when this warrior is done and built normally. However, with a Granary its far more effective to whip them in a capital with big food surplus and middling production, that would be my preference after this first one (of course we need to slip in some chariots for the chokes as well.)

mlinneak, the settler should take up all of your turnset. Once the farm and 2nd cow are done, probably the only worthwhile thing will be to start roading to the horse/rice site as BW will not be done yet.

Have you ever done a worker steal? As I said earlier I never have, but I get the idea is to grab one who is working a tile in their capital's 2nd ring (so that the AI's archer can't attack the next turn and take it back.) If the team wants an attempt, someone who knows what they're doing should explain it better Also, apologies to mlinneak if this advice is unnecessary, but since you didn't mention the steal in your plans I assumed you might not know how to do one.

 

[mlinneak]

Ok thanks guys. Bronzeworking and a naturally built settler it is.

timmy827, I have not done a worker steal before. Thanks for reminding me about it and how it goes. I'm supposed to try to get one from Napoleon, right?

The evening got away from me and it is much later than I thought. I apologize, but I am going to have to push this until tomorrow but I will try to get to it in the early afternoon.

 

[kossin]

Good job Mutineer

That WII warrior especially will be good for stealing workers prior to and after chariots.
Also agree about no-whip settlers, cows are better than hills for producing them and the food surplus isn't that high corn+wheat+plain cows+grass cows+city tile = 3+2+1+2+2 = 10. Granary costs as much as a worker now and I'd rather have a worker than a granary (plus the stolen ones).

I'm afraid that if we settle stone with second city we'll be too late to choke Zara (since the WII warrior will be heading for Nappy) and he may get his hands on copper. Moreover, for the settle-on-stone plan to work, we still need Masonry and Mysticism -> no bronzeworking

We could still try to get it in Carthage for free Monuments everywhere but it'll be busy pumping Settlers/workers. Unless we see that choking Zara and Nappy gives us over 10 cities, it's a gamble imo. Land is more important than culture pressure atm.

 

[mlinneak]

2875 BC - Inherited Turn

2850 BC
The Wheel is in

Set Bronzeworking

2800 BC
Uncovering fogged tiles reveals Napoleon has already farmed a second ring plains tile. May need to wait for him to mine a hill. Will continue to keep an eye on the area.

2775 BC
Carthage - Warrior -> Settler
Napoleon is already bringing out a second settler

2725 BC
Lord McCauley thinks we are hopeless. He should give us more credit I think.

We can see where Orleans has been founded.

2675 BC
Now this is interesting ~

I can see no reason for an Archer to be protecting a mine unless it is a copper mine. We are still 13 turns from confirming this, but I don't think he would be gaurding just a regular mine.

2600 BC
Of course, Napoleon wants to connect his new city to his empire...

So I take the unprotected worker.

2575 BC
We are now Napoleon's worst enemy.
We have connected cow

2550 BC
Was going to attempt to road to the horse / rice site as mentioned but spotted a barbarian archer and chickened out - began a farm instead.

2525 BC
Carthage - Settler -> Warrior
Now there is also a barbarian spearman close to our borders. Our settler will likely need an escort. We still have 6 turns before we find out if we have copper or not.

2500 BC
Stopped here.
While exploring found another barbarian archer we may lose our warrior over here.

Our capital

Info screen

Ethiopia is already taking off in culture.

The Save ~

 

[timmy827]

Well done nabbing the worker! Things are looking up

I'm up now with Tatran on deck. I could play tonight (Pacifc time zone) but will probably lean towards waiting a day for input, unless we get a flood of comments in the next 9 hours. Again, I have little experience with chokes so any tips appreciated. (Barracks yes/no? my inclination is no since we aren't planning on attacking anything besides units we catch on flatland). Also not sure what to do with the warrior still in Nappy's land.

Preliminary plan is to go ahead and found the horse/rice (hopefully the archer has wandered away). The eastern horse looks like a good candidate for a future city with rice/cow, but we need chariots ASAP and the original site is better since border pop not needed.

I'm not sure we want yet another warrior with chariots coming in the near future. Maybe swap to another worker right now? Even with the steal, I can plenty of jobs for a 3rd to do in the near future, it can start chopping right away.

Other misc items:

Who to focus EP on?

Next tech: Probably Pottery or Mysticism, not sure myself.

 

[Tatran]

Zara has settled the stone area, so we had no chance.
Maybe he will do some stone wonder spamming, I don't know if that's good or bad.
(The stele gives 25% )

Bronze Working comes in 5 turns, working the wines in 4.
I prefer metals over horses.

 

[kossin]

I agree with Tatran, bronze would be better here if we can manage it. 1 turn earlier by working wine is worth it (switch back once it doesn't change # of turns)
It might get us a better city than the horse/rice too.

The warrior in Nap's land should stick to forests and don't move 2 squares at once (just in case).
If we're lucky, we can nab another unprotected worker from him.

When do barbs start entering culture on Emp/Epic?

Settler can move 1 tile/turn and run away if more barbs show up. Same for stolen workers... safer this way even though it's slower.
I'd say we have to get a choke on Zara pretty soon. If we can limit him to 2 cities (unlikely... 3 or 4 I think), his culture will be far less annoying. It also needs to be done before he gets copper (we'll know shortly).

 

[timmy827]

I played four turns until BW and holding settler, working the wines mostly as suggested. In short we did not luck out, no copper visible and both Napoleon and Zara have some within their current borders:

The warrior by Paris got chased out of his borders by a pair of archers, I will try to circle around and pillage his. Also found Hammy's borders to the east rather close...

Will finish set tonight. The horse city will be founded this turn. Ideas for how to choke AI's when they get strat resources before you are needed. Nappy has two archers on the move, if they head east things could get dicey; right now he will talk but not peace.

 

[Tatran]

That's great, no copper and surrounded by city spammers (ORG trait).

Back up plan (archers)?
Warriors and chariots versus spearmen is something you don't want.
Prioritize iron working?
All leaders have Bronze Working (slavery), except Zara.

The numidian cavalry has a 50% bonus versus melee units.

 

[Stochastic]

Wow, the land is not looking all that good. With all that food Zara is going nuts with settlers, I feel like it might be too late to choke Zara as it looks like he's got 3 cities out +horses and will soon have BW.

So maybe we should try to keep a lid on Nappy for a while while getting blockers out for Zara.

Are we going to settle 1S of the rice to let us use it right off the bat?

So my suggestion is after the current worker in our capital, settler-granary(if pottery)-warrior/chariot (brings us to ~size 6) settler- 2pop whip settler. Our other city would build nothing but chariots.

What is the opinion on SH? I'm worried that it is now too late. But if we still want to go for it I'd settle on the plains hill between the corn and plains cows. There are just enough forests to chop it out, we'd probably have to start prechopping as soon as we have a barb guard down there. We would also have to switch to Mysticism as the next tech because otherwise the settler will get there before it is done.

If we aren't going for SH, I think we should grab the fish rice spot on the East coast, it will be a good commerce city for us b/c of financial.

Finally we should keep in mind that there is a really good blocking spot to keep Hammurabi out. Maybe our 5th city?

@ Tartan I think going for IW is a good plan as the next 2-3 tech, hopefully we will be settling in the jungle, and we really need the metals.

 

[timmy827]

I only see evidence of two Zara cities from the borders, though of course can't be sure without scouts in the area. However, depending on when he gets Slavery it may be possible to get chariots down there before anything is completed.

 

[timmy827]

With trepidation, I continued:

Score! I left one warrior NW of the copper, and Nappy's worker did not return. I used the Woody 2 to swoop in/out each turn, was not able to snipe the worker but kept it from doing anything useful. As of this turn it was holed up in Paris, still with 4 archers. I'm pretty sure it's his only worker too.

Aided by some deforestation, we now possess 3 shiny new chariots, which are in various stages of approaching Zara (more on this later). Apologies, Nappy sent an archer in our direction which made me panic and deoptimize the workers a bit (finishing the extra road instead of getting a start on the rice) but it was only scouting. Teched pottery->partway through mysticism. The chop overflow in Utica could go into chariot or worker or granary depending on how many we think we need to choke Zara. Yet another chariot in Carthage was a placeholder to get growth to 6, I imagine we probably want another settler. Speaking of which, I found our copper:

Assuming we also choke Zara, these are where our next two cities should go to block us off from the east (well, I guess if we go with "a" for copper, we will want a 3rd city for corn/marble).

Zara plan:

That elephant tile is the closest we can get to the copper, the 2nd chariot will be there in 3t. He just revolted to Slavery T72, so we can probably stop him from building any metal units if we move quickly. I thought the horse would be easy, but on this last turn I discovered a new city so that's the fastest routes I see. The blue is his borders (both because the green blends in well, and to fill in some out of date maps), someone should double check to make sure my guesswork is correct. The tile SW of the horse should not have his culture, but it will take a while to go through that jungle (if only the woody II warrior could be two places at once). Complicating things is his Creativeness, so that new city could pop borders any turn. OTOH, with that horse being outside any fat cross it's possible he hasn't improved it (?)

Zara power breakdown: we are at 41K soldiers and he is just above us, so 42k.
from: War Academy - he has probably 24 from techs (hunting, archery, BW, mining for sure, wheel and AH almost certainly), maybe 2 more from Sailing, ~4 from 8 pop, leaving 12-14K for troops. Archers are 3 each so I think he MAYBE has one chariot and rest archers.

Espionage, I switched all to Zara as Napoleon seems to be locked down pretty well. Also I have still not revolted to Slavery. Left one worker unmoved at Utica; it could speed the rice farm or start the chop on that forest that just grew over our road depending on what the team thinks is best.

 

[Stochastic]

Just time for a quick check before bed, but looks like that last set went really well!

So here are some thoughts just based on the post:
Woody II is doing a very nice job, too bad Zara is settling towards us though, that puts quit a bit of pressure on us.
I think of the two copper sites definitely Copper A, as financial +cothon really makes coastal cities a good choice, I'll just keep my fingers crossed that Hammurabi is going to go east for a bit. I think that should probably be the city we found after the next one. The next one being something to get in Zara's face (fish rice cow? Unless still going SH...). A note about cities on Zara's border, I think we will want them very close together so that they can help support eachother culturally.

I think with Zara we will want to choke just long enough to get up blocking cities and then pull back for a bit so that hopefully he expands some to the south, preventing other leaders from gobbling up all the land and running away in tech/power/pop.
Nappy looks like he might be our first vassal, it looks like he is stuck with his back to the sea as well so there shouldn't be any leaders coming up from behind him.

What is needed most now is a consensus on Stonehenge. Is it too late or should we go for it. I vote for trying, it will be sorely needed vs Zara's culture and the only strong wonder spammer I saw in the list is currently being choked by us.

 

[kossin]

Looks good!

Stonehenge is 180 Hammers so only Carthage can build it in a reasonable amount of time, but that means perhaps 2 less cities with Hammy settling towards us... so I say let's lose it. Mysticism is still good to block land which we'll need.

Agree about coastal vs inland. Financial coast isn't that bad to work after a lighthouse before other improvements (irrigation/workshops) kick in.

We still need to explore some more (for instance, is there someone that can settle south of Zara? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes)... there's some mighty good land down there.
And we also need to get a Chariot going to Nappy as warriors won't last forever and he'll have better movement plus the ability of pillaging tiles. That gold is going to be quite useful as we expand.

Hammurabi has axes but I couldn't determine what Zara currently has (just talk to them until they mention their troops, that's their current best)... he'd only say hello and stuff.

Expansion for the moment should be east and it will allow us to connect our network to Hammy more easily after Writing is done.

Copper site A looks good, while not a great city in itself it will be a plus for the empire.

I don't understand the logic behind focusing espionage on 2 locked down AIs that aren't going to tech???

Tatran is now up!
With babybluepants on deck - if he has the time ofc.

 

[timmy827]

I thought we'd already hit consensus on choking over Stonehenge, so that's why I ignored it and agree with kossin on that point. Also agree that a chariot towards Nap is good, probably if we have one en route by end of Tatran's set it will be fine. Pillage gold is nice, but I will point out that Napoleon only has two non-road improvements so we aren't getting much from him.

Sorry about the EP - I shifted off Napoleon once I realized he was choked, I should have put them on Mansa. Since he trades techs so easily, he's generally the best person to see reasearch of.

 

[Tatran]

Some input is required :
Research path?
Try to get feudalism from the orcale?
City planning? (see picture)
The copper (city E, all random btw) should be settled first.
Stay at war with Napoleon and leave Zara alone?
Cottage economy?



I'll wait 1 or 2 days.

 

[kossin]

Research path?
Try to get feudalism from the orcale?
I like this, but unfortunately I think we won't get Monarchy in time for the gamble. Monarchy would be a good option OTOH with the Wine and for HR.

City planning? (see picture)
Let's give cities close to Zara some room. We can expect his culture to gobble up the first 2 rings easily, and put some serious pressure on ring #3.
Site C should be moved north a bit, S or SW of the sugar imo.
city? is just too close, NE or NNE would be better.
We can also place a city for the Ivory+Wheat by Nappy.

The copper (city E, all random btw) should be settled first.
I agree, followed by F to block off Hammy.

Stay at war with Napoleon and leave Zara alone?
Choke Zara too, send a Chariot straight to Copper and the other to horses.

Cottage economy?
It's probably not a bad idea, as long as we don't only have cottages. Some farms are going to be necessary here as we're not exactly swimming in food. Carthage probably won't get many cottages but a few on riverside grass can help bay the bills early on.

Probably a mix of commerce cities to pay the bills and production cities to build units... we need to stay up there in power.

 

[timmy827]

Yes, choke Zara.

E as first city is fine. F should be next to complete the block even though D is a great site (as I mentioned before, that looks like the logical GP farm, besides the bonus food the oasis is great for pre-CS irrigation).

B is poor, no food of its own. 1W of the western ivory is much better for that resource, getting the wheat plus a pig just off Tatran's screenshot. A and C are both illegal due to the "new zara city" I marked above, which is at the midpoint of A-C. @kossin - city? is zaras as well.

Why wouldn't Carthage get cottages? It has exactly one hill. Surely you don't want to work a bunch of plains farms? Normally that much plains sucks, but we have enough surplus food to cottage most of them.

Agree with no oracle - it just does not seem feasible to slingshot after investing in a double choke. I am not quite sure what is best tech after Myst though. Monarchy is great but it feels like a waste to self tech because any AI will trade it at monopoly.

 

[kossin]

Carthage is going to be pumping settlers and workers for a while... also it's the best GP farm we have early on if we want the first GS not to take forever (we'll be getting GP points too from Oracle). Cottages will help pay the bills yes but I don't see it as a Bureaucracy Capital very well (9 plains tiles). And yes I'd rather have plain farms than plains cottages and be stuck at size 12 In this case it'd be a fantastic military pump.

I suggested Monarchy as Oracle payoff as it will allow to grow Carthage pretty large early on. We can take the usual MC though or Alphabet/CoL, whatever is available and we need.

 

[babybluepants]

Hi guys, I've been away for a week and just catching up. Edit: I'll take the next round, sure.
Looks like everything is going pretty good.

• Zara's resource location is a bit awkward, but if we go in soon we can probably stop him from ever hooking up that copper. Forget worker stealing, IMHO. We should have one chariot beeline the horse and unhook it (now I can't remember if we can pillage on the first turn of DOW - should go in before the border pop there). At this point, he shouldn't have more than the standard city defence archers minus 1.
• I'm not too crazy about copper site first. Generally, I prefer getting good cities early, and if we control Zara+Nap copper tiles, there's no need for better units yet. Since we're investing in chariots and, by the sound of it, Oracle, I think we can use the faster growth and return on investment in city F or D (workers and potentially settlers from secondary cities would be nice eventually, for the second phase of expansion).
• What's a reasonable Oracle date on Emp/Epic, with no IND leaders? I would typically go Writing here, before PH... Carthage has a lot on its plate though, with some more chariots, monument, settler(s)? and Oracle, so probably no room for an early library? With a monument it can be size 7 right away, and we don't have great production tiles to work beyond the one hill currently being mined. Also, I'd much rather have a GS first, rather than GP.
• I don't see why we would be cottaging Carthage, btw, as it seems like a pretty weak bureau capital to me, but a pretty excellent early-to-mid-game GP farm and good for production once WS get good.

Edit: I really think we should slow this game down a bit. Things like tech path, settling pattern, Carthage use are a bit unclear.