Lo5 01 - The Puppetmaster

[Anar]

Will you find a place for me in the roster? Although it's my first post on cfc forums I have been lurking around for about 2 months and I am no more a novice
I live in GMT +1 zone, moreover I have 24/7 access to the internet.

What about allowing conquest and domination victory and disallowing giving cities to our puppet?

 

[LawOfFives]

OK, roster expanded to
Lo5
Frrosch
TheLoneMan
TimBentley
Pneuma
Anar

If nothing else, this gives us a reserve if people drop out! (Not that I'm indifferent if people drop out, but poop happens.)

Welcome aboard, Anar!

Lo5

 

[LawOfFives]

4000 BC

Our starting position is on a river with no hints of a reason to move, and gaining information for the worker's use by founding a city seems like a better move than gaining information for the settler by moving the worker. I found Giuseppe, popping a hut in the process. We get Ceremonial Burial. Not too useful except as trading fodder.

The lack of BGs in the fat cross is a bit of a bummer. The forests may be hiding some BGs, but I'd prefer to first arrange for having any shields at all.

Since the Philosophy gambit is probably out of the question without Alphabet, I go for the non-river grassland first so that the river grassland can then be reached without losing a turn. 50-turn science (20% slider rate) on Iron Working. Hopefully will still have some trade value left by that point. Hopefully.

Build set to Warrior.


3950: Start work on a mine.


3900-3850: Zzz. (Nothing of note.)


3800: Citizen moved over to tile where worker will be finishing mine next turn, as finishing of improvements happens before shields are counted.


3750: Start work on road. Oooh!


3700: Zzz.


3650: Warrior finished, goes north since that makes use of the road and since the north may be hilly, giving us a bit more vision per move. This uncovers a Wine grasslands. Nice. Worker crosses river to grasslands tile #2 and last.


3600: Start work on mine #2.


3500: Luxes raised to 10% to cover discontent. Science lowered to 10% to avoid accidentally spending more than 1 gold/turn later on. Our still-unnamed band of warriors hits a mountain just in time for the end of the turnset. Hmm. Looks like we won't lack for land, although we'll end up... appreciating... the Industrious trait!

There may be a bottleneck in the terrain in the north, although bottling off any northern neighbor will be a mixed blessing if that's who our puppet will be.

A warrior is due in two turns with an overflow of one shield due to the mine coming online next turn. A switch to a spearman will give us a more barb-resistant explorer built with no overflow, at the cost of three more turns spent on the task. Frrosch's call!


Dotmap below is absolutely advisory-only! Yes, the spacing suggested is quite tight.

Lo5

 

[Anar]

Actually I like the tight spacing since it makes hospitals later on pretty useless, which is nice. Have we considered building the Great Library? It might help to keep the parity in techs in the early game and later on once we get all contacts trading techs will be much easier. So what say you?

 

[Bucephalus]

I found Giuseppe, popping a hut in the process. We get Ceremonial Burial. Not too useful except as trading fodder.

lurker's comment: If you had set your research temporarily to CB, you would have got something more valuable.

 

[LawOfFives]

Actually I like the tight spacing since it makes hospitals later on pretty useless, which is nice. Have we considered building the Great Library? It might help to keep the parity in techs in the early game and later on once we get all contacts trading techs will be much easier. So what say you?

Actually, not being able to get use from hospitals later on isn't really an advantage; it's a loss of flexibility, albeit not a very valuable option is beng lost.

It's all the benefits earlier on -- more squares worked faster, more time spent online for the squares we improve due to tile sharing, slightly easier defense, etc. -- that drive me to do it.

I was an OCP maniac back in Civ II, but it just doesn't work in this game. (In Civ II, early "hospitals" and pop booms from "We love" days made filling up the whole 21 squares by the midgame a snap.)


All wonders are a gamble. The Great Library at least has a decent window for being built, and comes late enough to not cut into REXing. It's a nice thing. Still, it ties us to a particular path (reduces our flexibility) and we could probably do just fine without it. What do other people think?

e.

 

[LawOfFives]

lurker's comment: If you had set your research temporarily to CB you would have got something more valuable

Learn something every day! Well, that trick probably won't come into play again in this game, but I'll keep it in mind for normal games.

Lo5

 

[frrosch]

got it, I will play right now. The dotmap looks nice, but spot #2 is too close to our capital imho.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

lurker's comment: With this terrain, think food boni. Think serttling #1 on the river and irrigating the wines ASAP. Think chopping a granary out of those trees for some more food. You need every loaf you can scrape out of this map, since it won't give in readily.
Also, knowing where you are geographically shouold give pointers as the likely optimal direction to find friends: aka towards the center of the map.

 

[Allanc]

This sounds quality. Emperor or Monarch would be best as I could see this becoming quite difficult.

Im on "standard time", GMT that is

The best bets for this would be just a standrad start with major sucking up to the first met civ. Space Race or points are probably the main way for them to win.

 

[Allanc]

lol. I guess ill read the second page next time instead of just asuming discussion is still taking place.

 

[LawOfFives]

No granary without Pottery, not Pottery without either losing the benefit of 10 turns of studying Iron Working.

Fortunately, Pottery is pretty easy to trade for.

It took me a moment to understand the import of settling on the river, but now I think I get it -- you're referring to the city's irrigation-"transporting" ability, right, and a #1 positioned on the river's NE bank? That's sort of radically "food-first," but the stuff *is* pretty important. Anybody up for a new dotmap that develops onwards from that move?

We're already in the center of the map. (Thought it was too early for a snip of the minimap to be a loss, now I see I was wrong.) We only have two directions we can go, so to speak, and a second explorer probably coming soon. I think that that particular aspect of things will be unusually simple this game.

Re spot #2: You'd be amazed how close you can get the closest placements while still finding 12 squares for each city. However, this will mean a quite wide spacing somewhere else close by. I'm still in favor of settling one of the three spots that will get the fish, though, though Beorn's right, getting the wines irrigated is the most important priority.

Lo5

 

[frrosch]

OK, here we go:

3500 B.C. (preturn): MM is ok, so I just press enter

3450 B.C.:
Move warrior north, uncovers banana jungle.

IBT: Guiseppe finishes warrior => settler
Worker finishes mine

3400 B.C.:
Worker starts road
Warriors explore

3350 B.C.:
exploring

IBT: worker finishes road

3300 B.C.:
Warriors explore
Worker moves north.

IBT:
In the south we see a Spanish warrior. Seems like we found our puppet.

3250 B.C.:
They are already annoyed.

They got alphabet but I could only buy it for masonry, 46 gold and our worker and I don't want to sell our worker.
So I sell them masonry for 60 gold, because they are our puppet.
The northern scout uncovers a hut in the mountains in the north.

3200 B.C.:
worker starts road in the hill N-NW of Guiseppe.
Warriors explore.

3150 B.C.:
Warrior pops hut => gets attacked
The Spanish now are Alphabet, Warrior Code and Pottery ahead. I'm not sure anymore if it was a good idea to sell them masonry

IBT:
Warrior kills attacking barb warrior, no HP lost.

3100 B.C.:
Warrior attacks barb warrior, wins (1 HP left).
Southern warrior uncovers diamonds on a mountain.

3050 B.C.:
Northern warrior fortifys.
Southern warrior moves towards diamond mountain

IBT:
worker finishes road, Guiseppe grows to 3. Settler done in 2.

3000 B.C.:
raise lux to 30% (+3 gpt)
move worker on wines.

The next player could either let the mm as it is (growth in 10, settler in 2, +3 gpt) or switch the grasslands N of Guiseppe and the grasslands E-NE of Guiseppe both to forests with rivers (no growth, settler in 1, +4 gpt). I'd prefer the second one.
The city imho should be built on one of the red dot, giving us the wines.
The one on the hill would leave us more space to settle on the coast.
The one West of the worker looks not too good, but we don't know about the tiles North and west of it.
The third one looks quite nice, 'cos we could immediately start irrigating the wines, but than we could not settle on the second spot Lo5 proposed.

It's all on the lone man

The save

 

[TimBentley]

Settling on the tobacco would be nice, but settling one NE to get the wines immediately would be preferable at this time. I'm pretty sure Spain (or another neighbor) will go for iron working after she finishes the wheel, before the min run completes.

 

[TheLoneMan]

Got it. Will play now.

 

[TheLoneMan]

Turn 0: Press Enter.

IBT: Zzz.

Turn 1: Build settler, set production to Warrior. Move settler along road to BS 1. Build road on Wines. Move warriors.

IBT: Zzz.

Turn 2: Found Edrine. Move Warriors. See Spanish border.

IBT: Zzz.

Turn 3: Finish road (Hooray!). Move worker SW to irrigate. Move warriors.

IBT: Zzz.

Turn 4: Move warriors. Irrigate square 2SW of Edrine.

IBT: Get cornered by Barb warrior.

Turn 5: Fortify northern warrior. Move southern warrior.

IBT: Barb warrior attacks. We win, full health.

Turn 6: Move warriors.

IBT: Zzz.

Turn 7: Finish irrgation. Complete warrior in Edrine, set production to worker. Move warriors.

IBT: Zzz.

Turn 8: Spanish will give up Pottery for everything we have, decide not to. They are Annoyed with us (Gasp!). Set worker to irrigating Wines. Move warriors.

IBT: Zzz.

Turn 9: See Barbarian encampment, move northern warrior east to a mountain (now on Barb's NW/SE axis). There's no way to get around them, so fortifying on the mountain is the only option.

IBT: Encampment moves one Barb SE towards our warrior's mountain.

Turn 10: Fortify Northern warrior. The Barb will attack our "Man on the Mountain" IBT. Guiseppe grows next turn, Edrine in two. Worker finishes irrigation next turn, so I change a citizen to there. I'm not so sure on what our overall strategy's going to be, we should have some discussion about that.

Also, I think we should stick with Lo5's settling plan.

The game's current situation.

 

[TimBentley]

Got it. I'll also consider city placement more.

 

[frrosch]

I think we can turn down lux to 0%, saving 2 gpt.

I would try to expand to the north, though there are no really good city spots. But if we expand to the south, the Spanish had less space to settle.

 

[Anar]

IMO we should either get more contacts ASAP or build the GL, otherwise we'll be facing hostile cavalry with our pikes or even spears. So I would say that's our main problem at the moment. Any ideas concerning techs?

 

[LawOfFives]

I only wish TLM had followed Beorn's placement advice instead of mine.

Oh well, the damage done was minor, and at least we'll be able to head out fishing.

Tim's suggestion for a placement on the tobacco is interesting; my understanding is that it won't affect the City Square yield and will thus be "lost", but then, it does make the whole settlement pattern a lot less awkward.

The 2 (count 'em, *2*) bonus grassland squares within our easy reach should probably play a large role in deciding what spots get settled the earliest.

Speaking of which, we need more workers, and this earlier than usual. Those forests and jungles aren't going to chop themselves.

I agree that we'll probably be beaten out to Iron Working. 50-turns on Emperor are rarely about being first to something anyway, though, more about not being last. I *hope* we're not last, and that we can get something decent from it.

Contacts are coming rather slow! If only pottery weren't so important (it definitely IS worth everything we have IMO), I'd push for a purchase of Alphabet, as we need to get a curragh out there.

* * * * * *

Grand strategy: Hmm. I can think of about 25 civs that I would rather have had as a puppet than Spain. Not cultured enough for an easy culture win, not aggressive enough for an easy aggression-based win, not awesome enough to easily set up the infrastructure for a spaceship.

On the other hand, they might be a bit less incompetent than usual at sea. I still wouldn't trust them to conquer enough overseas for a military victory in this game, and the only direction for them to conquer on their own continent will probably be over our dead bodies. Nothing against that per se, as a win for us isn't the point, but with hardly any cities left we'll have hardly any ability to pull strings.

So -- cultural, spaceship, diplomatic, or histogram? Would y'all agree that they probably won't make it to a cultural win? Of the remainder, Histogram is probably easiest and uncoolest, and spaceship definitely the opposite. What do you say to Spaceship with Diplo as a backup plan?

Lo5