Let's Play Civ 4

[schlaufuchs]

Round 3, to 2050 BC

Well guys, I'm temporarily on my secondary computer as the Motherboard on my primary computer is now fried, and just in time for E: TW too , so I'll be on this comp until I have enough money to build a new one.

So anyways, a pretty uneventful round, short too, everything went according to plan.

So first I decided to follow huerfinista's plan and whip out my third axeman:



one pop whip, I know, but worth it. I also started work on an Axeman afterwards. So I took my three axemen and set them out to find and capture London. Meanwhile, I noticed an English Warrior wandering around my border, ordinarily, not much call for concern, but I was about to declare war on the English, and I didn't want to leave anything to chance with an undefended frontier, so I recalled my two explorer units. The first one (My woodsman II) I put on my border to sit on hills and mirror his movements. The second I placed in Amsterdam to (attempt) to assuage the angry citizens. So basically it went like this for quite a few turns (travel times and all) So during this time I finished teching off AH and put research towards writing. My worker finished hooking up the pigs and then built a road to the elephants (whoops, I didn't realize 'till they finished that I hadn't researched hunting, I guess that's what I get for taking two weeks off ). So anyway, finally, after what seemed like ages, I reached ol' Winston's borders, I immediately sent a courier to deliver the dreadful news:



Sorry pal, but you're dead luggage to me at this point.

So my axes penetrated into English territory, and, while just missing out the chance to capture a worker, I found the city of London. What's that, it's defences, you say? I don't see no defences!


(Edit: I could have sworn I moused over the defenses when I took this picture, whatever, it was an archer and a warrior I think)

Pretty minimal, good call guys.
So not much strategy here, just throw axes at city until all are dead. My first axe attacked with, get this .7% odds, and he survived! The other guy went down without casualties to my forces. The result, well I think that was a forgone conclusion:



The continent is ours! I kept the city, what did it have in it?



A couple of specialist citizens, and that worker who tried to flee. Not great, but hey, I'm not even out of the third millenium yet! Also I have a religious center, it'll be nice when I can get the shrine in there. I set build strategy to axe for a defender, but in retrospect, it probably was not needed, as I have now 3 axes with nowhere to go over there. So anyway, after that I saved.

Alright let's talk twrci(sic):
First my plans for the next round
1. I think first I'll leave one Axe in London, send one back to Amsterdam, and send the third to our #1 city site (fish/stone, yeah?)
2. The next round will probably be a massive REX, I believe most suggested settling south first to block Ragnar (if you get the save you can just make out his borders south of my continent[Man, I had just realized that during play, you guys were all talking about Ragnar, and I had no idea, I need to learn to be a bit more observant]).

Now for some questions:
1. Firstly city sites: Anyone want to help me with dotmapping, and I mean more specific, not like "settle fish stone, but how would you settle specifically, this is the part of the game that dissuades me from playing a game to completion more than anything (aside from stupidly declaring war before I'm ready).
2. Tech path: What to research, I think unless Ragnar is going to be a problem, I can probably put off IW temporarily, meaning I should right now focus on economic tech to help support the upcoming REX, correct? Also I'll probably throw sailing in there somewhere for exploration purposes (although I could just as easily do that with a WB, right?)
3. Builds, so I know I'll porbably be doing settlers and workers in Amsterdam, but what about London, and any new cities I put down in the upcoming round?
4. Ragnar, I haven't met him yet, and I know he has a tendancy to be very aggressive and his financial trait allows him to do so freely, but how should I deal with him, should I be pacific and try to make him into a true friend, or perhaps be bellicose from the start and destroy him, what say you oh masters?

That's it for me, more to follow shortly.


Here's the save anyways

 

[schlaufuchs]

This post is reserved as my answers page, basically, when I get the answers to my above questions, I'll post them down here, and when I finalize this post I'll do the next round. Essentially this is a nice way for me to collect and organize my thoughts and plands, for you to see what I plan on doing in the future (making it easier for you to call me an idiot if I do something stupid), and for the prospective learning types like me, to find easily those questions that are always asked but never seem to be answered on a level fit for my inquisitive never satiated mind. (I hope )

Last post had four questions:

1. City sites: How many, and where
A:I like Huerfinista's first few suggestions, so I'll follow those.
a. 2S of stone (floodplains, corn, stone)
b. 4Sof Amsterdam (wheat, clams, coastal, riverside)
c. 1NW of the western dye (wheat, dye, floodpains, coastal, riverside)
After that, as Huerfinista said, just a matter of filling in and settling those wonderful FPs

2. Tech path, what should come after writing, hopefully it will also discuss general ideas of what types of archs one should pursue when (and why)
A

3. Builds: What th build where and why, what to be thinking during that first expansion period in regardes to your larger capital types, and with your newly founded cities
A

4. Ragnar, what to do with neighbors, especially ones that are generally aggressive (As I believe Ragnar is, yes?)
A

That's it for now, if I come up with other follow ups, I'll also put them here.

 

[huerfanista]

Good Job! Congratulations, this game is won. (seriously)

1. Cities:
a. 2S of stone (floodplains, corn, stone)
b. 4Sof Amsterdam (wheat, clams, coastal, riverside)
c. 1NW of the western dye (wheat, dye, floodpains, coastal, riverside)

These first 3 will block your continent from Ragnar (and anyone else down there). Don't open borders with Ragnar until you've finsished settling your continent.
After those first 3, I'd settle all of those floodplain sites to the W and NW of Amsterdam. You can get 3-4 great cities there. Cottage them all. Use the stone/corn city to work the cottaged FPs in Amsterdam's BFC while Amsterdam concentrates on .

2 and 3: Builds and tech path
Wonderspam! Start with the Oracle in London. You want to go up the religious line at first so you can get a GP to shrine London. Put a couple of chops into it and you'll get it easily (london has lots of trees and decent production - get that worker going building mines). Once you have priesthood, build a temple and monastery in London and hire a priest. Use the first GP to build the shrine, the second to bulb theo (build AP and Hagia), the third to bulb DR (Spiral Minaret). You can hire either priests or scientists in London depending on what you want at the time - it's an ideal gp farm, so build the NE there.

Take MC from Oracle, build a forge and colossus in the stone/corn city (4 from coastal tiles with Fin).

Build the 'mids in Amsterdam - with stone you'll get it easily. Use whip overflow from settlers into the mids so you can settle those coastal sites while you're building it.

Tech math and currency next (build HG in Amsterdam).

Aesthetics - lots of wonders! Build them all!

Lit - GLib.

Calendar - MoM.

CoL.

Once your first GPriest is underway (i.e., you're generating 5gpp per turn in London from Oracle and priest specialist), hire scientists in the wheat/clam city (GP farm), use your first GS to bulb Phil, build AW in London.

4. Keep borders closed so he can't settle on your continent. The AI sucks at galley invasions, so just keep a decent number of defenders in your coastal cities. You'll out-tech him by miles, so he'll never really be a threat. You have a large continent to settle, but it's some of the best land I've seen so just cottage everything in site and you'll run away with the tech lead. Amsterdam has huge production, so you'll be able to wonderspam your way to a huge lead in tech. Pick whatever victory condition you want. Set one city to build nothing but military - all of your coastal cities will have lots of and , so take your pick.

 

[Bleys]

Well done Owen! Now, carefully REX your island, watch your slider. You will want to especially REX the coast, so no other AI will try to land a settler on you.

 

[huerfanista]

Here's the save anyways

Owen - you didn't attach the save.

 

[Shurdus]

Nevermind.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Owen - you didn't attach the save.

doh! *facepalm*

Well, it's there now, for all to see.

 

[DMOC]

If you want to take a screenshot of mousing over something, you can't use the Ctrl-F thing (is that what it is?) to name the screenshot. Use Print Screen only.

 

[tycoonist]

i would have raised london - with nothing in it of particular value, 1S for pigs would have been superior in the longterm (you have time on your side here)

 

[schlaufuchs]

i would have raised london - with nothing in it of particular value, 1S for pigs would have been superior in the longterm (you have time on your side here)

plenty of food though, should be a decent GP farm.


@ DMOC: I hit either ctrl or shift+print screen, can't remember which, either way, that's probably the cause; I just enjoy being able to name screenshots, allows me to keep things very organized, which is how I operate so, yeah.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I really really screwed up an early war last night. My scouting warrior saw 2 of Brennus' scouts just directly insulting me with the fact they were going to scoop up all the goody huts on the land mass, and I'd just popped copper right outside my cap's BFC, so I thought oh what the hell, CHARGE!

Killed one scout and the other for whatever reason didn't run away, so killed that one too. I thought maybe I'd catch him with only a warrior in his cap, so I settled near the copper in a second city and spammed pillager warriors while waiting for the copper to get hooked up for axemen. Ended up with about 8 warriors in Bren's BFC, all improvements gone and his city besieged land-wise (although he had 2 unprotected clam pits that the barbs OF COURSE refused to go pillage! Barbs and AIs are quite obviously on the same team on Emp).

I built axemen and lined them up at the siege site until the slider was at 0, then massed all the forces. By this time Bren had whipped about 6 archers and his culture was at 50, but I had hope my axe/warrior force would get lucky. It didn't. Massive epic fail, down to only one surviving axeman in the woods tile, and 4 of the defending archers survived. Luckily only one promoted along the CG line, so I re-flooded with axemen and tried the whole process again. Brute force attack versus brute force defense. Slightly more successful and some archers were killed as they tried to attack my CR axemen in the woods, but still, this time only 2 axemen survived, and 3 of his archers. Not to see the writing on the wall, a bull-headed trait of mine, I persisted in the axe war, and the THIRD time my axe-stack finally succeeded.

But the success came so late in the game (well past 400 AD by this time) that I knew I'd be irreparably tech-backward, unable to trade when the caravels came by from overseas. And it was so. Joao hit Liberalism while I was still trying to REX the land mass at 0% slider, no big surprise there, but it was just hopeless otherwise by then. Too much energy wasted on the early war.