Lizzy, monarch, help me along from T0!

[plutarchian]

I've been playing on my own for a month or two. I posted a game earlier but decided to scratch it and play a game from the start to really improve my game play. This post should include T0 screenshot and save game. I won't play any turns until I get some feedback, hopefully this will be fun and thanks for the help!

Settings:
Elizabeth (Fin/Phil) and fishing/mining
Temperate, solid shoreline Pangaea
Monarch
Normal speed
Standard Settings, tech trading and brokering ON
NH/NE

Mods:
Better BAT AI

Here I think I'll move my warrior SE to see what those tiles to the south hold, should be some food resources in the second ring of BFC, maybe a plains cow by the looks of it. If no food resources, would the best option be to found on the wine tile, and research Agriculture, farm a floodplain while researching BW to chop out settlers?

 

[SittinDown]

Yep - scout SE. See what that gives you. But BW is a must with this start. I dunno about Agri - you're financial, I'd head for pottery after BW, depending on scouting.

 

[sampsa]

Your food is probably SSW or SSE of settler, but I guess it doesn't hurt to check it with the warrior. Riverside wine is a great tile to settle on for a FIN leader (insta +2), but here you can't really do that probably, as it would lose the food. Too bad about BAT, not many have that installed...

 

[plutarchian]

Your food is probably SSW or SSE of settler, but I guess it doesn't hurt to check it with the warrior. Riverside wine is a great tile to settle on for a FIN leader (insta +2), but here you can't really do that probably, as it would lose the food. Too bad about BAT, not many have that installed...

Thank for letting me know about BAT, I'm make sure about removing mods when posting in the future. So, here it is, I moved the warrior SE and found deer, worse than plains cow? Two food sources with two separate techs. The capital will only have two hills, one plains hill and one grassland hill. If I move my settler one W I have four hills, more production, I'll keep both floodplains for cottages but the wheat will be out of reach.

Yep - scout SE. See what that gives you. But BW is a must with this start. I dunno about Agri - you're financial, I'd head for pottery after BW, depending on scouting.

Also, I'm thinking of moving W because there's coast to the E, might ruin a fish by SIP? If I move one W I'll just go BW>Wheel>Pottery, instead of slaving the settler I can chop the settler out while working on early floodplains cottages. Here's one of those capitals where I'm not sure slavery is the right move.
Looking forward to your suggestions!

 

[SittinDown]

I wouldn't worry about hill count in the capital. If you SIP, you'll have a very strong capital, and you can go from there. Hunting is cheap, or juts go AG -> BW -> Hunting -> TW -> Pottery. You can chop or whip settler 2. 1 W loses the wheat, and you don't know what's over there - plus it's usually better to try to settle your second city INLAND if possible, to grab land.

If you do sip, you can just have your borders scout nearby, and send the warrior west or north.

 

[sampsa]

You should try to grab with your first city. Mines are mediocre tiles and play no part in this choice. With enough , you can whip. SIP is the best here. Oh and both deer and wheat are 4, compared to plains cow which is 3.

 

[lymond]

Yep...totally agree with sampsa....food is the most important thing here. Moving away from food just does not make sense with this game. I understand the point on possible seafood orphaning, and if you had more visible food in play to have an alternate location that might be a choice. But these are the cards you are dealt and SIP is the best choice here given the information.

 

[plutarchian]

Had some free time, here's where I got to so far.

T11--Met Cyrus by the Dyes tile, looks like there's jungle further north so decided to not enter, don't want my warrior to die to panthers, etc.

Got Agri>BW, working the improved wheat tile and flood plain. I have the worker now chopping the hill one S of London in anticipation of growing to size 3 to work on the first settler. I moved my warrior to survey the land up north, I also mapped out cities.

Here's where the questions start: I keep reading that you should have a winning condition in mind from the start, but I'm not experienced enough to say, "oh this is a good map for a culture victory or x type victory" How do you read a map to know that? Please let me know not only the victory type but also the thought process behind why a certain victory is obvious here or not, that would really help my early game. I know that an early rush is out of the question, no close neighbor so best to expand peacefully here. My thought process behind city placement is as follows, usually I like to settle early cities around my capital to work improved tiles, less worker labor and I can do much with one worker at the start.

1st city: Grab copper for early barb defense since close to tundra and other AIs seem to be far away, when I get a border pop I'll be able to go for the marble. Thinking this city will be my unit pump with the copper, marble, and settling on plains hill.
2nd city: Cottages! Lot's off them especially on the green river tiles and will help them grow for London to switch in and out.
3rd city: Will use the corn to grow and work cottages that can be switched with 4th city settled on the dyes tile.
4th City may be too far away for early game? Maybe I should settle near the rice to have a more compact empire for the early game? Thoughts?

Thanks for the feedback, really enjoying this!

 

[Zavior]

I'd go for cows before the copper city, don't think you are in a big hurry to get that hooked up here.

 

[sampsa]

I have to say that I never look for some special winning condition, I just develop my empire normally and take it from there. There is no real need to think about winning culture for example, though I might be biased since I have never done it (I have never tried to win space in BtS either). Most games can be won via military, if not, you can look for other options like diplo. I don't think dwelling over winning conditions does you any good at this point.

I think going BW before hunting is a bit strange. Food first! Revealing copper for barb defence is not urgent at all particularly on this level. You have at least 50T time for that. BW allows chopping and whipping, which are very useful mechanics, but not as important as food.

Cow-spot is quite a lot better 2nd city for a couple of reasons, most important being the cow-tile (42) which is significantly better than what the copper spot can offer. It also claims more grassland river and is instantly connected via river, while the copper spot is not (river is one tile too short).

Your marked 3rd city I would place differently. Food to the first ring! I'd go 1N of oasis. The oasis tile itself is also pretty good for FIN leaders.

 

[SittinDown]

Agree with Sampsa.

City placement:

• Settle food sites first.
• Have at least one food in the 1st ring.
  • I like to grab 2 food resources in the BFC when I can, or at least 1 + some 3 food tiles, like oasis / flood plains.
• City overlap is not a bad thing, but it looks like you might be overlapping a little bit too much here, though getting a bunch of cities on a green river with a financial leader is completely reasonable.
• Grabbing the "good" green land up North is better than grabbing the coastal tundra.

Workers:

• Try to have the right tech to improve the food tile when you found the city. You'll need hunting, then AH. Then probably get to pottery.
  
• Try to get a worker in place to improve the food the same turn the city is founded
• Start chopping at the capital.
  • Those green flat river tiles should be cleared - converted into workers and settlers, and then cottaged.
    
  • Try to choose your chop locations so your worker can improve those deer without having to spend too many turns 1-moving through forest.
  • Early on, using your workers wisely is a really big improvement.
  • ....when I was moving up in levels, it took me a long time to learn to chop more. The axe is your best friend early on.
  • General advice for worker priorities is [Improve Food Tile], [Improve good special tiles like Gold, Metals], [Chop], [Improve other resources], [Cottage], [Mine]

Scouting:

• Consider fog-busting with the 1st warrior along that beautiful river, though you have several turns on Monarch before that's an issue, but the east doesn't look too good right now.
• Scout more to the West with your 2nd warrior.

 

[lymond]

I would not think in terms of "is this map good for this type of win". You can make most things work regardless of the map and layout. At this point your focus should be on early expansion, empire building and worker micro. Most victory conditions are quite achievable on having a successful early game and making good decisions. I will say that culture victory is indeed a special type though. Not that you can't achieve culture victories at any point or make that decision later in the game, but for optimal culture wins it is the one VC one usually has in mind from the start of the game, as there are specific differences in how one expands and techs and handles AIs. I would not consider culture VC for your games until you have some other wins under your belt. Otherwise, decisions on other victory conditions can come later once your early empire is in place, and as for Space that is often the result of almost pursuing domination goals.

Cow spot is fine. Post saves with your reports.

 

[dankok8]

Food is really important. I'm not the best player so don't take my advice over others but I would settle 1E of Rice which also gets Cows in the first ring. That's a very strong city. You'll research AH soon to improve the Cows so you'll be able to see where Horses are as well.

 

[sampsa]

I would settle 1E of Corn which also gets Cows in the first ring.

I presume you mean 1E of rice. Yes, that's a good location, too.

 

[dankok8]

I presume you mean 1E of rice. Yes, that's a good location, too.

Yep I meant Rice. I edited my post.

 

[plutarchian]

Bad news
My hd crashed and I had to reinstall Civ 4 BTS and the Better BAT AI. Now I can't play my old saved games, I can play new games just fine but all my old saves crash the game when I try to open them. No error message or reason for it, the game just crashes when I try to open this save, even the save that I posted on this thread. I'll have to start with a new game.