Land of Blood: Prince, Aggressive, No Tech Trading

[alcaras]

I'm considering starting an ALC-style game with the following settings:

Small Pangaea
High Sea Levels
Natural Coastlines

No Tech Trading
No Tech Brokering
Aggressive AI
Choose Religions (for flavor)

Myself and 9 other random civs

Prince Difficulty

Quick Speed

--

I've been playing these settings lately and have had a lot of difficulty, so I figure a groupthink game would be useful to myself (and others!) to solicit advice and learn what I could be doing better (and have other folk's benefit).

I do have a few questions:
1. Is this worth doing? Would people be interested?
2. Which civ should I go with? I'm of two minds:
2a. One could go with the strongest possible civ, which would be ... ?
2b. One could go with the weakest possible civ for this situation, which would be ... ?

I am leaning towards going with the weakest possible civ/leader for this situation, just to make things a bit harder instead of relying on excellent traits/UU/UBs. However, I'm not sure which civ/leader that would be. Your thoughts are appreciated

My general plan is as follows:
- Early rush against a neighbor (and there will be neighbors)
- Consolidation
- Either macemen or grenadiers against another neighbor
- Ignore religion until one of the powerful religious blocks spreads to me
- Continue the consolidation/conquest cycle until Domination

Think this is worth taking a shot at? Would folks be interested? I know the settings are a little unusual, but I find them a fair challenge to 'raise the level of my game' (and also no tech trading and aggressive AI vaguely mirror what one experiences in MP games, along with the proximity of neighbors on a small map).

 

[DaveMcW]

Inca. Build nothing but Quechua.

Attack their cities when you outnumber the defenders 3:1.

3 dead civs minimum, I would try to kill all 9.

 

[alcaras]

Inca. Build nothing but Quechua.

This why I'm leaning for option 2b above ('weakest civ' for the situation), since Inca would be 'playing to the map' and I would derive significant advantage from Quechua that wouldn't help me those times I don't play Inca

 

[xanadux]

Lincoln would be pretty strong. With that small of a map and that many Aggressive AIs, a SE is almost mandatory. You just can't be sure you can build enough military to prevent pillaging because you could face a war with 3 or 4 civs simultaneously. Philisophical means many early settled Great People to fund research, and Charismatic is more powerful than usual because you will be doing a lot of fighting.

Sitting Bull is even a viable option. Build stonehenge and Great Wall, oracle slingshot to feudalism, and let the AI slaughter themselves on your longbows while you rack up Great Generals. Eventually slaughter everyone with drill IV rifles.

 

[alcaras]

Thoughts on which civ+leader is least suited for this setup?

 

[xanadux]

How about Mansa? Financial is nerfed by the map because cottages will be a liability since you likely won't be able to prevent pillaging. Spiritual can be very handy for a specialist economy, but probably won't help you much early on in the most critical stages. The UB is one of the weakest in the game, and does almost nothing to help you here. The UU could save you if you lack any strategic resources, but otherwise is not particularly powerful. If you have a strategic resource you may never even build a skirmisher.

I don't remember all the leader trait combos, but Organized/Financial I would think to be pretty weak here. Organized helps if you get a big empire, but if you get a big empire, you are probably winning already on this map, so I don't see it helping much.

 

[kjnoren]

I don't remember all the leader trait combos, but Organized/Financial I would think to be pretty weak here. Organized helps if you get a big empire, but if you get a big empire, you are probably winning already on this map, so I don't see it helping much.

If George Washington still is Org/Fin in BtS, he'd make a mighty fine candidate. Two traits that are not of much use, and late-game UU and UB.

 

[alcaras]

Darius of Persia is Org/Fin. However, immortals are an amazing unit so I'd rather pass on them.

 

[alcaras]

I think I'll go with FDR (Org/Ind) with late game UU and UB. Building wonders is tantamount to suicide on this map (here, come kill me Mr. Aggressive AI), so Ind won't be of much use. And Org, as stated above, is far more late game.

 

[alcaras]

oops -- this was a mis-start b/c I accidentally set the game on Marathon

 

[alcaras]

I'm going to try to take this game pretty slowly, soliciting advice and proceeding very carefully. I find I have the bad habit of rushing ahead and then finding out that oops -- those rushed choices meant a missed opportunity, a wrong tech path and now the game is in trouble.

That said, I think I will post rounds, then post my thoughts on how to proceed, requesting critique and suggestions.

Regarding our start
Two crabs is nice, considering we start with Fishing. Stone would be nice, if we were interested in wonders, which we're not, since we'll probably start meeting our aggressive neighbors soon. Floodplains and hills, forests, overall a very nice start.

I would settle in place, since we're on a plains tile. Our warrior can't really inform us about a potentially better settlement, so I think he should move NW to scout. (Or would W be better? My thoughts are NW will reveal more tiles? Not sure on the 'optimal scouting pattern' save that I want to perform a circle around my capital to find the best 2nd city city and to claim bronze).

Tech
I would immediately go Mining->Bronze Working, to find out where Bronze is for our all important axes.

Build
I would build a warrior first, to allow the city to grow, to provide a bit of initial protection and to perhaps scout a bit to the east. Next I would build worker, worker, settler, chopping heavily.

Slavery?
Should I switch to slavery as soon as I research BW? It will mean a turn of anarchy.

 

[DaveMcW]

Build on the stone hill for a 2 3 city center.

 

[xanadux]

Actually, stone is absolutely huge here. You are industrious with stone, know you will probably be fighting a many front war. The pyramids will be crucial. You will want a SE to prevent pillaging, and the pyramids doubles the effectiveness of scientists plus allows great vertical expansion through the +3 happy. Having stone made this game much easier.

 

[alcaras]

Actually, stone is absolutely huge here. You are industrious with stone, know you will probably be fighting a many front war. The pyramids will be crucial. You will want a SE to prevent pillaging, and the pyramids doubles the effectiveness of scientists plus allows great vertical expansion through the +3 happy. Having stone made this game much easier.

I purposefully want to avoid building wonders to prevent taking advantage of Industrious Basically I'm trying for a 'baseline' game where what I learn will be easily replicable to other situations and not merely taking advantage of a particular trait and luck (e.g. Ind w/ Stone).

 

[xanadux]

Then don't play an industrious leader. If it's me, I'm building the pyramids regardless of stone or industrious.

 

[v8_mark]

I purposefully want to avoid building wonders to prevent taking advantage of Industrious Basically I'm trying for a 'baseline' game where what I learn will be easily replicable to other situations and not merely taking advantage of a particular trait and luck (e.g. Ind w/ Stone).

You'd be taking advantage of your start rather than Industrious, IMO.

In any case, having decided that your strengths will be the weakest for the map-type, the least you can do is take advantage of whatever small advantage they give you. Playing to your strengths (as far as traits and resources are concerned) is crucial to success in Civ4 whatever the situation. I would also build the 200 Pyramids.

 

[alcaras]

Playing to your strengths (as far as traits and resources are concerned) is crucial to success in Civ4 whatever the situation. I would also build the 200 Pyramids.

Very well, point taken.

There shall be Pyramids!

 

[oyzar]

settle on the stone hill and quecha rush the nearest neighbour. Do ai have archers at prince here? On anotehr note you can prolly do a wonder capital while expanding thanks to your traits. 48 hammers(one and a half monument!) for stonhenge for example. No reason to not compleetly wonder spam your capital as long as you don't neglect expanding.

 

[alcaras]

settle on the stone hill and quecha rush the nearest neighbour. Do ai have archers at prince here? On anotehr note you can prolly do a wonder capital while expanding thanks to your traits. 48 hammers(one and a half monument!) for stonhenge for example. No reason to not compleetly wonder spam your capital as long as you don't neglect expanding.

We're American, so we can't Quecha rush :-/

 

[mice]

It'll be interesting to see if you get a metal or horse. with these settings it's possible that you wont, especially if you build the mids rather than spit out settlers.

"groupthink commentary game." BTW this is a good way to describle the thread, which differentiates it from open games where everyone gets to try the opening save and post their game.