Lonely Hannibal Shadow (Iso game)

[krikav]

I'm playing a shadowgame of a map Henrik has played and posted on youtube.
(Go check him out, if civ4 letsplays are good, civ4 letsplays with Aussie commentary is better!)

Spoiler Youtube link :

Here is the original worldbuilder save:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ollection-thread-henrik.672764/#post-16146427

I ran the standard NC games script on the worldbuilder file, and as far as I can see it seems to check out. Although I haven't checked too much as I don't want to spoil the game for myself yet.
But a zip-file with worldbuilder saves for all difficulties (Nobles -> Deity) is available.
Have also attached a Buffy5 save with barb techs added which is the one I'm playing from.

I can recommend the map to anyone who wants to practice isolation games.

Spoiler Starting screen :

We are playing with Hannibal which is Charismatic+Financial.
When it comes to isolation games, Charismatic is easily top tier and one could argue that the combo Cha/Fin is the best combo there is.
The UB is pretty well suited too, so expect a easier than average iso game here!

The start is pretty much mouth watering. There is an okay amount of food and some forests... But the key thing here is an abundance of green lush river tiles.

I have started the game myself and will post progress now then I'll go view @Henrik75 game.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T50 :

Some oddities in demographics. It seems there are no CHA Ais appart from me, neither Hammy nor Mansa is in the game and all AIs except one has mining. And most AIs seem to be almost landlocked while perhaps just a single one is coastal, and that one AI is the only one (or perhaps two?) who are creative.

I moved the warrior SW to check the coast, had it been seafood there I might have considered moving there.. or maybe not. Too much green lushness to miss out on for any fish in the world.
Warrior continued south-east and mapped that peninsula throughoutly.
I like to scout 100% in iso whenever I can, because making good long term dotmapping is extra important when you are in no rush at all to settle the land at an more relaxed and perhaps more optimal way.
The peninsula was horrible, no resource down there at all, so I won't even bother fogbusting it. If something spawns there it's no big deal, I won't have tile improvements vunerable from that direction for quite some time anyway.

I go wheel after agriculture only city thats able to auto connect is some city sharing wheat int he west, and that looks kind of brown and nasty.
Getting a city up around the piggies would be nice, but that requires wheel.
It's also possible that going pottery right away might be an option. Mining the sheep is a perfecly sensible choice, and early hammers won't be lacking.

BW is probably an okay choice too, but the production burst that you get from BW is less important in isolation where you are in no rush to city spots.

I mark this as city3, because it's likely that I'll want to settle it around the time that capital culture reaches the pig. Along the coast because I will probably want to whip a caravel there at optics.
In a normal game with AI contacts, I would probably have prefered to have the city 1 more tile south, for more overlap with capital. But in isolation where you want to stay at a relatively small amount of cities (to keep upkeep low and techpace high) it's important to get really good cities, and the marked spot will be a cottage behemoth with 6 green riverside cottages!
Clam looks nice, financial seafood is good!

This looks like a terrific city spot. Either that spot or something that can share the capitals wheat.
Worker is mining the sheep and will either make a farm or start to road after that.
Growing this capital will be abit tricky, the mined sheep is so good that you don't want to let it be unworked, but then it's just +4 food.

This is a nice trick to route as much of the hammers as possible towards settlers, while also growing. Next turn I'll catch that 6 hammer overflow with a settler.

Setting up the process again. One might wonder if it wouldn't be better to grow...?
But I can either work the sheep two turns, or work a forested grassland one turn and the forested grassland+sheep the other turn.
the sheep two times is worth approx 6 foodhammers while the grassland is worth 1 per turn, so the fast growth option looks lik it's worth 5 foodhammers.
But the key thing here is that I want to finish the warriors I want to have with as much overflow as possible, speeding up the settler.

I love barb warriors. They help to prevent archers spawning and pose no real threat. Never kill off barb warriors prematurely!

And ofcourse this already overpowered city has horses too!

Not entierly sure about how good the worker micro was here, couldn't really get horses roaded and still be in time to improve the piggies, so I roaded toward city4 instead.
City2 is nice, but it's kind of far away and pottery is needed to get research going.
I also need a monument there desperatly and BW to get a burst of production once economy is taken care off. Pot->BW->Myst seems sensible to me.
C3 at around T50 and hopefully AH will be in around that time. Some time around then c2 will be drowning in food and I'll have to settle c4 to utilize it properly.
Not sure if c5 is worth it, but there is alot of green down there. Getting it up and running and paying back it'self prior to optics will require alot of worker turns to get a quick granary and many farms though.
c5 should be on that plains tile and not where I marked it, because financial riverside windmills are good and the forest should be preserved.

T41 and pottery is in. Starting with those 3 tiles because then the worker also fogbusts the east.
City is pulling the 7 hammer trick on a warrior again, working unimproved riverside to get 7 hammers and not 8 as it gets from working grassland forest.
Utica is building a barracks since it will have quite a few hammers, and getting C1 chariots helps alot with barbs.

Inching in on bronzeworking. I think I pay 2-3 gpt in unit upkeep here but really thats the price you have to pay to avoid archery. Iirc Utica also has a pre-built warrior and chariot ready to finish here if things get dicey and I can't wait for the Barracks.
Most workers are ready to support city3 here, I want a fast granary and improved piggies.

 

[krikav]

Some saves if someone wants to study or critique.

 

[krikav]

@Henrik75 Watching through your playthrough now. I like most of your reasoning. Early pottery was a nice idea!

Gameplay spoilery things:

Spoiler :

At T19 when you saw the western clam/pig spot, you where 1 turn into Pottery. I think I would have pivoted to AH there and gotten the plains-hill piggies.
However... your clam city was pretty darn nice with it's early commerce too, and what a production beast that city is!

At T40 or so, you realize you forgot to swap the whip-overflow-worker out of queue and gotten over 30/60H, unable to 2pop whip it.
You say that you don't grow fast enough and that it might not be a big deal.
I think you are totally spot on here. This capital is rather production heavy and somewhat low on food. Whipping (especially before granary) loses alot of it's luster here.

At T50 or so it's interesting how much further ahead in tech you are. I'm lacking 4 turns on BW, and I'm also lacking Myst which you had.
Early cottages and a clam as primary food in second city did play a big role in that.

Copper location is interesting. With map knowledge BW first might be really really good here. Getting a super fast second city and sharing capitals wheat and getting a pair of axes out early would make barbs that much easier to handle, that in itself is worth 2-3 gpt just because you save on the upkeep for the mass warriors you need to stay safe.
A sorry city that goes west of capital though... Would probably have to farm both the green riverside there, with the eventual fate of working two-three riverside plains cottages in preparation for capital burocracy.

 

[konata_LS]

Never played Iso before. So maybe play some turns to try it, although not sure if I'll survive to the end . But Hanni's traits are really good. And I haven't watched Henrik's Hanni video, so there is no spoilers for me .

Monarch from T0 to T50.

Spoiler :

If I understand correctly, we should also add Archery to barbs, as we usually do in NC games ?...Anyway, that was what I did with this game.

Settings


SIP. Initially I wanted to skip AH, since the starting screen showed only a single plain hill sheep. But after setting the capital, there was a grassland pig on the NE! I'll research AH before I settle that pig city.

Tech Agri-TW-Pottery-BW-Sailing-Myst. Worker farmed the wheat and mined the sheep, then built cottages and road to my second city.

3680 BC Buddhism. It seems at least one AI starts with Myst.


BC3360 hindu. Maybe from an AI who starts without Myst


T46, someone built SH.


T48, a barb archer appeared in the small south corner . Whaaaaaat? Only 2 tiles of fog and a barb archer is born ?!


T49, the barb archer attacked across the river my warrior who fortified in the forest hill. The warrior won.


That barb archer deeply angered me . So I decided to spam fog busting warriors through the whole area around my capital .


Eh...As a result of the anger, already 9 warriors .


On Monarch, the free units are much more abundant than on IMM+. So I only pay 1 per turn for these warriors.


Capital on T50:


Second city on T50:


The plan of settling on T50. Not sure if I'll settle the riverside pig (spot 3) or the wheat-piggy (spot 2) first . The riverside pig has forests to chop and can work some riverside cottages while the wheat-pig city can grow faster with 2 resources. Since I already had Sailing, setting either spot wouldn't need work turns to build road.


In terms of tech, I started to research Writing. But maybe AH before Writing is better? because I'll soon settle a city near pigs.

Some doubts about Slavery: I didn't adopt Slavery yet, mainly because there is no happy resource as far as I can see, and with so many forests and Copper, is not a problem, - is an issue. In such case, maybe switching into Slavery together with HR, after Monarchy?

 

[krikav]

@konata_LS
Good job spamming warriors. Thats how you survive iso. I would do the same on deity if I could afford it, upkeep is so much higher so have to be very conservative about number of units.

A minor thing I don't like the location of your copper city is that you settled it on a rare grassland tile. That area is really brown and any city there would struggle for food. In such areas patches of green grass like that are precious.
settlement 1 north would have settled on a plains, and it would also have claimed more land tiles while having the same number of coastal tiles.

Hard to comment alot on the progress of the game since most screenshots are from T45-T50.

 

[konata_LS]

@krikav

Spoiler :

Yes, you're right. That Copper city would have been much better 1N . Thanks for pointing that out

Deity's limited number of free units makes fog busting difficult in Iso. I've read your game of T50, it seems you went for early AH instead of BW, and AH played a major factor in your choice of second city. Your Horse city would be really strong with high and high .

In terms of barbs, I think it's a map in which Archery can be skipped - even Hunting is not necessary (unless there is some undiscovered fur or ivory in the fog up north), because there is Copper and Horse nearby. Fog busting + some Axes or Chariots would solve all the barb threat in land. But at some point, barb galleys may become annoying.

 

[konata_LS]

Some oddities in demographics. It seems there are no CHA Ais appart from me, neither Hammy nor Mansa is in the game and all AIs except one has mining.

How can you tell that if other leaders are CHA or have Mining?

 

[krikav]

How can you tell that if other leaders are CHA or have Mining?

You check demographics.
If both lowest and highest approval rating is the same, you can conclude that none (or all) are Cha/Non-cha.
Similar with mining, if everyone is at 26000 soldiers they all have mining, if everyone is at 24000 none have it.
If it's 30 000 soldiers, thats Mansa Musa (due to skrimishers), if it's 28000 it's Hammurabi (Bowmen) numbers for deity but the same principle applies on all difficulty levels.

It's not that useful, but abit fun.

Studying how land area changes between T3 and T4 allows you to conclude stuff about creative AIs. It can also help alot to guess if AI capitals are coastal or not, in case you have a start that might tilt you toward GLH and you want to gauge your chances of landing it.

 

[konata_LS]

Played some more, until Optics.

Spoiler From T 50 to Optics :

On T65, someone found Judaism.


Some barb archers appeared up north and killed my fog busting warrior. Angrily built some Axes and cleaned up the whole island


But building Axes delayed building workers. And I stayed with 4 cities 3 workers for a long time .

In 50AD, first GG. Very nice. Hope to see more GGs in a far away land .


My tech pace was slow, maybe because my worker management was terrible as always. Building Axes to fight against barbs also slowed down my expansion. With 5 cities, finally got Optics in 125 AD .
Not sure if I made the right choice of research: I skipped Monarchy, Currency, and CoL; instead, I went for Alphabet and built .

Capital in 150 AD was really small. Maybe skipping Monarchy was a mistake. I should have researched Monarchy so that my capital could work more cottages . But at this point of the game, self-tech Monarchy was already too late; it's quicker to build caravels, meet AIs and get Monarchy through trade .


After Optics, the border pop revealed a suspicious Ocean Fish in the west side of the map. Maybe there is some people on the west?


The island was really poor in happy resource. The only happy resource on the island is Sugar up north .

Still confused about the tech: after Optics, I thought my GScientist would bulb Astro - but the game showed that he could only bulb Maths - whaaaaat?! why cant't I bulb Astro?...

 

[konata_LS]

@krikav

Oh I didn't know that. Thanks for sharing these tricks!

Knowing which AI will be in the game is quite useful in Iso or Continents map, because it prepares people to the future diplomacy and tech situation. "Mansa in the game or not" can affect the whole tech pace. A continent with Mansa usually tech like crazy, while many AIs tech much slower in a game without Mansa.
TBH, in a Continents/Fractal map, I'd rather have AIs like Mansa or Darius on my continent than on the other continent. It's easier to stop a runaway neighbour than to attack a runaway AI on the other side of the world.

 

[krikav]

Yeah, if Mansa is in the game or not is the most important piece of information, because his pressence can alter the game quite abit.
But other than that, there isn't really that much practical and useful information to be had from demographics early on. Well... that "are they coastal" trick is somewhat useful if GLH might come into play.

 

[Fish Man]

Played some more, until Optics.

Spoiler From T 50 to Optics :

On T65, someone found Judaism.


Some barb archers appeared up north and killed my fog busting warrior. Angrily built some Axes and cleaned up the whole island


But building Axes delayed building workers. And I stayed with 4 cities 3 workers for a long time .

In 50AD, first GG. Very nice. Hope to see more GGs in a far away land .


My tech pace was slow, maybe because my worker management was terrible as always. Building Axes to fight against barbs also slowed down my expansion. With 5 cities, finally got Optics in 125 AD .
Not sure if I made the right choice of research: I skipped Monarchy, Currency, and CoL; instead, I went for Alphabet and built .

Capital in 150 AD was really small. Maybe skipping Monarchy was a mistake. I should have researched Monarchy so that my capital could work more cottages . But at this point of the game, self-tech Monarchy was already too late; it's quicker to build caravels, meet AIs and get Monarchy through trade .


After Optics, the border pop revealed a suspicious Ocean Fish in the west side of the map. Maybe there is some people on the west?


The island was really poor in happy resource. The only happy resource on the island is Sugar up north .

Still confused about the tech: after Optics, I thought my GScientist would bulb Astro - but the game showed that he could only bulb Maths - whaaaaat?! why cant't I bulb Astro?...

You need calendar for astro, which in turn requires math. Also alphabet is higher on the GS bulb list, so you need that too, see here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140952.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T97 :

Worker micro could probably have been better prior, the 3 workers won't have time to both shop out the settler, and then both improve the pig and chop 3 forests to finish the granary in city#3 before the city reaches half-full from the pig.

The sheep is 1 turn away from being pastured, Both Utica and Carthage will be able to finish their monuments from the overflow.

City#3 will have to 1pop either granary or monument.
T60 judaism is late, not many religious nuts out there it seems.
Note the nice wall of warriors up in the north! They block all possible paths and then the barbs will not invade as it screws up their pathfinding. ^_^

Library in capital is done, sprinting toward monarchy now.
Utica will whip a settler for the clam and overflow into library. A worker is chopping one riverside grassland to get the library a 2pop instead of a 3pop whip. Hadrumtum and Carthage will be highly pressured to both grow in size and mature cottages, while at the same time running scientists to get a respectable astro-bulb-date. I likely want Carthage to get the 100GPP scientist and Hadrum the 200GPP one. Utica won't have much to do and can certainly run 2 scientists forever without any trouble so that city will have to wait until the other two catches up.

Had a forest growth in utica so I could chop the grassland there and still keep the forest health. Health cap is kind of annoying here. Not a catastrophe but not comfortable either.
Carthage will reach health cap of pop10 next turn and will then just run scientists and cottage. Thats why I want to settle a city now, to utilize the food that would otherwise go to waste.

Hadrum is up at health-cap and is working all cottages it can. I don't think it matters much if this city spawns GSci #3 instead of GSci #2, would likely just run scientists anyway.
Utica is before in the queue, so the only way to let Hadrum spawn first is to let Utica spawn Gsci#3 at T142 instead.
It's possible that the right way to play this map is to ignore academy and instead aim for a very early astro instead!

 

[SillyGoat]

Immortal to 1 AD

Spoiler :

Went Ag-->Bronze-->wheel-->pottery-->AH-->Writing-->Sailing-->Myst-->Meditation-->start Priesthood, realize I can tech Math in 5t and I still have a bunch of forest and swap to math-->finish priesthood-->Monarchy--Alphabet-->IW--(Masonry after noticing the GLH was still unbuilt)-->MC--Compass (1t left at 1 AD)

1st GS went to capital for Academy, #2 due in 15t, #3 due 16t later. Should line up well with finishing Machinery, Optics and Calendar.

Chopped out a granary in the capital before growing to 6 on cottages and whipping out the next 2 settlers with 3 pop whips.

2nd expansion city settled late on t61 to work pigs and 4 captial cottages (and GS #3)

I settled the 1 tile island up north the same turn I settled the copper filler. Worth it for the +1 commerce in all mainland cities.

I could be building the GLH faster by working a pair of mines instead of the scientists but then I'd be risking a Great Merchant pop instead of my 200 GPP scientist for 1/2 of Astronomy. GLH is very weak until Astro. If I get it, cool. If I don't, then failgod is fine too.

I'll need to take some cities off Research soon to start getting some settlers for the north and some triremes to upgrade to caravels.

Edit: Attached 1 AD save

 

[konata_LS]

@Fish Man
Oh I forgot Calendar is required for Astro ... Thanks for reminding me of that!
The link you provided is very useful

@krikav

Spoiler :

Your large cities look really nice. I realised my skipping Monarchy is a mistake .

@SillyGoat

Spoiler :

Why do you generate more than 3 GScientists? I think 2 GS would be enough to bulb Astro . Maybe you're planning a GAge or Lib something?
It's the first time I play Isolation, so there may be strategy or tech choice that I didn't know about great people in Iso.

 

[krikav]

@SillyGoat

Spoiler :

I kind of like your settlement of the pig city, that it's able to share 4 cottages (instead of mine 2) would have been quite nice during a period.

I'm not sure I agree on math, by the time I'm up at monarchy or thereabout I really don't need any more production at all. The few chops that I do are mainly to get granaries/libraries up.
I can recall one game where I did stay quite small and didn't go for monarchy but instead went for math, but I think that was mainly because I was so harassed by barbs that after city#2 or city#3 I was stuck defending. Math provided a very nice way to catch up in production and get city #4 and #5 up to speed.
Hard to say without a overview screenshot or save from the situation you where in, when you decided to detour for math.

Whats ETA for GSci #3? I thought it was problematic to get them out as fast as I wanted. Commerce comes to easy (oh no! ) so it's hard to sync up optics with astro.

Not a fan of the island city. It's so far away and while the traderoutes perhaps make it neutral, it doesn't provide that much benefit of it's own.

@konata_LS

Spoiler :

Monarchy is almost always worth it in iso games.
When you do have a pair of happy-resources it can be skipped though.
Here with CHA that can give +2 happines with monuments one could argue that skipping monarchy could be a thing, but there is sooo much nice green riverside that really tilts the scales toward big cities working alot of cottages.

Without the rivers, it would be less obvious.

 

[krikav]

Spoiler T118 :

Went MC before academy to start triremes. Building an axe in capital now to defend from the north, pulled back units from fogbusting up there to save upkeep.

The "Sentry chariot in galley"-trick reveals fish! At optics I'll see one tile further still.

Whipping this guy now for overflow @ optics.
Thinking that I should let this city spawn it's GSci first as Utica can carry the burden of specialists easier.

Two chops finish the caravel.

Looks like a empty island in the west, but the fish is nice, makes the Cothons more valuable.
Now I'll save up cash to upgrade the two triremes, they have both seen action against barb galleys and have flank1+navigation for +1 movement! Will whip a explorer in Utica to tag along west.

 

[Qactus]

...
The "Sentry chariot in galley"-trick ...

Awesome

 

[SillyGoat]

@konata_LS

Spoiler :

I was aiming for 3 GS, 2 for the astro bulb and 1 either for the Optics bulb or for a capital academy. Went with the academy, but in retrospect this delayed astro by 10 turns or so (teching CoL before the bulb didn't help....had to self tech Philo). But it also gave me enough teching power to win Music and reach a slight tech edge over the AIs by 1000AD so on balance I'm ok with the academy in this case.

@krikav

Spoiler :

I'm not sure math before finishing up monarchy was the best play, but it did help with chopping out libraries and in setting up the copper filler very quickly. It was only a 5 turn diversion and getting those libraries down faster meant I could start on GS production a bit sooner.

The island city was absolutely worth it. From +38 gpt at max tax to +45 gpt after settling. And it's not like there were any really good sites left at that point. The northlands will eventually be good but they take a lot of worker labour to get there so they can wait until Astro is on the horizon before getting settled.

Eta on the 3rd gs was ~30 turns after 1 AD. Could have had Astro sooner by delaying the Academy (and by reviewing bulb paths ahead of time to avoid having to tech Philo).