Lonely Hearths Club, BTS Edition, Chapter I : D. João II

[Ankh]

Checkpoint 1/EMP

1800BC. 3rd city built.

Spoiler :

Build: Work Boat, Work Boat, Grow 3, Worker, Settler with chop, Worker
Tech: Hunting - Agri - BW - AH - Arch - Wheel - Pottery

Had to research archery since I had no copper or horses for barbarian defense.

Ignored the stone, to bad location for my taste. Going to be useful for some midgame wonders though, University and Spiral comes into mind if I have a religion. Didn't build any early wonders either instead focusing on growth. Gunning for Great Lighthouse and to found Confucianism.

Placed Oporto at the flood plains with ivory for an early happiness resource and some early commerce.

Guimaraes placed close to Lisbon to share cows so I can work both furs and also get a 2nd happy resource so cities can grow abit larger atleast untill monarchy. Lisbon has enough food.

 

[illram]

Checkpoint 2/Monarch. Not so lonely anymore...

Spoiler :

Got the circumnavigation bonus. Beaten to Statue of Zeus, not really a big deal there, that was kind of just a "build it because I have nothing better" wonder. Got the GL, have an engineer stashed for my next wonder, and am lined up for liberalism.

Ragnar is fighting the Ethiopians, other than that not much to report. The AI isn't very advanced, none of them even have CS! All I did was backfill alphabet and Monotheism from the Ethiopians... nothing else was worth it and I am usually stingy with my techs. In BtS it makes a lot more sense to do this as the AI simply doesn't tech as fast in the early game. (But I definitely think the AI picks it up in the late game if you let them.)

Liberalism should be attainable... I just partially LB'd education and am churning out GS at around 70 GPP/turn in my capital. If I was really paying attention I would have built a palace in my second city to get the Bureaucracy bonus but... I play kind of fast and loose and haven't done that yet.

Oh and NO IRON OR COPPER!!!!! And Saladin beat me to the horses to my east. I have settled all the islands around my continent (erm... island) and am beginning to mass an invasion force (of elephants and cats... in 1300 AD... wow) to take out Augustus. He is the weakest and most backwards civ and I think he founded Taoism. Oh and did I mention I need more land?

 

[ungy]

Checkpoint 1 reached (emp game).

Spoiler :

tried to play as if I didn't know I was isolated. Settle in place, Research ag-ah-bw-wheel-mas-pot-writ. Build worker, wb, war. Build city2 by the stone and build pyramids 1080. Need to get a WB or 2 out to scout the coast to finalize city sites.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Checkpoint 3

Spoiler :

Now around 1300, have met all the AIs at last. Mansa is beating me! He took liberalism and has a strong economy. My great spy just arrived on his shores though - maybe I can steal liberalism. He took divine right as he free tech though - what a waste.

My economy is seriously unperforming. I am running zero % science and badly need Astronomy to get some good trade routes. Part of the reason it has crashed is I am trying to get the most of my UU. I have a war going in Ethiopia - mainly a phony war but I did land some elephants for pillaging. And another with Saladin - to claim a horse city and an iron city on islands he settled. I'm also about to invade his mainland - mainly to rack up GG points though - I can't see my economy surviving a serious push to take and hold mainland cities.

I plan to start a colony soon. And maybe more if I can. Its not so much that it will help me - more to deny land to the AIs later.

The only win that really looks on for me is Space. Diplomacy maybe too, although I have created a couple of strong enemies. Maybe I can vassalize Saladin - but I think I need a much bigger tech lead to do that. I am hoping to keep him and Zara somewhat beaten down because if they do get powerful later they are going to want to take some serious revenge.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

City placement comments

1. On some of the dotmaps posted here the four fur tiles are not inside BFCs. I don't get this. With a limited abiilty to trade until Astronomy, why wouldn't you want to work as many high-commerce tiles as possible?

2. Some dotmaps have had cities built on the stone tile for quick access. Building the city 2E or 2S of the stone gets you the resource and a city that can actually grow and produce stuff. I like the 2E location, grabbing two elephants and a floodplain or two IIRC.

The fur tiles don't support themselves in food, so although they are high commerce, they may not be a priority. I managed to get them in my BFC, but I rarely worked them until I reached my caps, preferring grassland cottages and wine instead.

I built 2S of the stone to get a reasonable hybrid city with some cottages and cows. Building on the stone is a horrible city location. The 2E location is good, but I build another city there that has four floodplains plus elephants (settled on an elephant IIRC). Its a second GP farm for me and easily runs four specialists.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Cheffster - thats an impressive win - perfect for an isolated start too since you can control the spread of religion. Loved the way you forced the religion past the Theocrats.

 

[cheffster]

thanks , great to see someone actually noticed my posts. I really didn't think I would be able to pull off a win so easily on Immortal, but having already build the Apolistic Palace and having complete control of my religion I figured I'd give it a shot.

 

[Ozbenno]

I built 2S of the stone to get a reasonable hybrid city with some cottages and cows. Building on the stone is a horrible city location. The 2E location is good, but I build another city there that has four floodplains plus elephants (settled on an elephant IIRC). Its a second GP farm for me and easily runs four specialists.

Agreed. I settled here as well and had a great city. Made the decision not to chase the stone early wonders as well.

 

[r_rolo1]

Checkpoint 2 ( a lazy man aproach... )

Spoiler :

Not much to say. REXED a little, made some moves and completely ignored the Lit/Drama branch and gone for the CS/CoL/Currency thing. Launched a lib race after getting the UU and circumnavigated the world. Will get Astro out of it and then will tech to economics for the UB.
For a small state of the world: Mansa seems to be teching decently, unlike Saladin and AC. The big continent has a hindu AP Gilgamesh, a warlike ZY ( already started with demands and vassalized Ragnar after I found them ) and a crippled Ragnar ( bad luck with the start and with the neighbour )
A map:

@Ozbenno

About your problem with connecting sheep, I have one word for you, Just one word:

Spoiler :

Forts!!!!!!

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, by now we have:

1 Immortal game (impressive AP victory by cheffster )

3 Emperor Games ( none finished )

7 Monarch Games ( none finished )

1 Prince Game ( not finished )

A lot of diferences in dotmapping and in objectives.... Good work, all of you .

First of all, I'm suprised by no one had picked the Noble save and posted yet. Last time someone asked in what level people played, more than half said Noble ( but it was still in vanilla days...).

Second, a small request: some suggestions for next installement: leaders, traits , UU, UB. The ones tested in Warlords were ( not wishing to repeat them unless suffering strong pressure ) :

-Huyana Capac of the Inca ( Fin/Ind ) , UU quecha , UB terrace , Monarch

-Shaka of the Zulu ( Agg/Exp ) , UU Impi , UB Ikhanda , Monarch

-Elizabeth of the English ( Phi/Fin ) , UU Redcoat , UB Stock Exchange , Monarch

-Roosevelt of the Americans ( Ind/Org ) UU Navy SEAL , UB Mall , Monarch

-Frederick of the German ( Phi/Org ) UU Panzer , UB Assembly Plant , Emperor

I would persornally like playing Willem ( the other civ leader with a naval UU and a ever growing favourite of the CFC community ... ), but I'm open to suggestions. ZY seems a good leader too ...

 

[Hackapell]

I'd play Noble if you would set up another warlords LHC for those suffering with macs
Looking at what Traits have not been chosen, you haven't used Pro, Spirt, Char, or Cre. Therefore, maybe Saladin, Gilgamesh, Churchill, Hatty, or Brennus.
Charlemange or Justianian could be nice too.

 

[Ozbenno]

Spoiler :

@Ozbenno

About your problem with connecting sheep, I have one word for you, Just one word: Forts!!!!!!

Aaah! You've been a veritable fount of knowledge recently r_rolo with the Apollo/laboratory info as well, thanks! You'd think after playing this game for over a year I'd have picked up these things though

 

[illram]

Game Over. Throwing in the towel...

Spoiler :

I was happily taking over the Romans when Ragnar threw a wrench in my plans.

Ragnar sneak attacked me with Grenadiers. Not good, considering my best unit was a musketman. This made me consider giving up, but I had a great spy headed to Gilgamesh to steal Chemistry and MS so I figured worst case scenario I lose some of my Roman Conquests and have to wait a while to take them back. I was pleased with Zara and Saladin so I figured I could take my chances, but next turn the entire world declared war on me, and I gave up. Not a hole I feel like digging myself out of really.

I was waaaay behind in the power graph and my best unit was the musketman. The AI had frigates on me and Zara was a big supplier of resources for my empire. Without him my happiness tanked big time.

Overall I think I played pretty poorly, but for some reason I have been doing that a lot with BtS recently, I don't know why. My economy never really got going very well, although I managed to barely hang in the tech race:

State property was my savior, but Ragnar and co. declared war on me soon after I adopted it and I didn't really get a chance to get myself up to a decent economic pace. I think I didn't make the switch from SE to CE early enough and didn't aggressively expand my empire south quickly enough. I need to learn how to really maximize my cities, because throughout the entire game my largest science output was around 70 beakers out of my capital, most of that coming from specialists. Usually I have at least one 100 beaker city early but that didn't happen this time around. My total science output was hovering around 300 or so in the early 1800's, which is totally and completely pitiful.

(Notice the unhappiness and unhealthiness which I suffered after losing all my resources from Zara. Not good.)

If I am running around in 1812 with elephants, macemen and trebuchets, I have screwed up somewhere along the line. I really shouldn't have won this game anyway and it was a matter of time before I lost it somehow. Oh well, now everyone can see my miserable failure!

 

[jason77024]

thanks , great to see someone actually noticed my posts. I really didn't think I would be able to pull off a win so easily on Immortal, but having already build the Apolistic Palace and having complete control of my religion I figured I'd give it a shot.

I see a lot of great ideas and suggestions on this board. But the way you

Spoiler :

gifted a brand new city with your state religion to a 'heathen' theocracy

was just flat-out brilliant. Still chuckling at that one.

 

[bazola]

I'm planning on giving the game another shot soon, I felt I was off to a great start, got liberalism, built taj, spread christianity to the heathen continent...

Then gilgamesh declares and takes my sheep city. I sue for peace and build longbows and then saladin declares and takes the city in the northeast corner. I retake it and get to muskets, and I gave up when I saw a stack of galleons approaching. However I think I might be able to save it, or at least lose with dignity and post the results

When it comes to spreading religion to a Theocracy I had a strange thing happen in another game. I vassalized Saladin and wanted to spread my religions to him, but he was running Theocracy. I gifted him missionaries, and he spread the religion. Maybe this is a bug? But it definitely worked in that game.

When it comes to the stone city I agree that it is overkill in one sense to put the city on the stone. However it's not as if a city in that area would be able to work those hammers anyway. Any further west shares tiles with the capital, any further east or south and you cant have coastal cities that also have a few good tiles inland. I saved the ivory for a secondary production city. The stone city was size 7 and the secondary production size 8, but I was running 2 scientists in the stone city and getting a decent amount of hammers in the ivory city.

When it comes to working fur tiles, I've never found the commerce to be worth the lack of food. I suppose the same goes for silver in most cases, because these usually come with tundra. Gold is so powerful because you find it near land with decent food most of the time so you can quickly use it to boost research. Maybe if it was a very early city that commerce could be used for fast teching but otherwise an isolated start lends itself to careful city planning, and tundra is a pain to work with.

 

[r_rolo1]

@ illram

You had bad luck with that dogpiling ....You were victim of the way AI seems who is winning a war. AI thinks that you're winning the war when you're loosing less units than your foe. You were attacking the Romans ( loosing some cats, most surely ) and all the AI thinked : " Oh, illram is weak and he's loosing the war... Let's get our fair share" ( of course that maybe some bribing and AP diplo may be involved ). But you're free to try again

@ bazola

When playing in isolation there is always the risk of someone acting as Hernan Cortez ( normally you have to sacrifice almost all to tech research ). On that regard you're normally safe until someone gets Astro ( unless you're playing against the Portuguese ), but a good countermeasure is to have a sizable collateral delivering unit ( cats, trebs,... ). Collateral is the only way you can tackle superior units : suicide cats to weaken and use your better units to clean up the mess. Even maces can clean easily a damaged gren stack ( some sacrifice is needed ..)
Other measure you can take is beeline astro yourself. Normally a frigate-era naval invasion has 4 frigates + 4 galleons, so a stack of 12/14 galleons can destroy it ( with some luck, of course ). And with privateers you can cripple the oponents economy and pin up the naval forces of your enemies elsewhere ( I'm planning to do that in my game )

@ Ozbenno

Thanks for the compliments , but believe me, I learned more with your SGs, and with the DM and RB forums ( I'm a happy lurker of them ) than you learned from me so far.... And is easy to overlook certain details, like the new things of BTS.
The labs bonus to Apollo is another thing... It is easy to overlook it if you never had to do a barebone beeline to Internet as the only ( sligthy ) viable way to win. Then you have to go to Computers far before you start Apollo ( no time to research Rocketry )....

@ cheffster

Congrats on your impressive win ( nice tricks to go around the Theo guys BTW ). Hope that you'll be interested in playing next instalement ( a good player is always welcome ). Interested in a deity save ?

 

[hvevo]

Just build some archers while they pillage around before they finally suicide against your capital no need to quit. I had the same event occuring but for me 5 SWORDS spawned right outside my capital. it was defended by a single archer, i had 3 archers when they finally attacked about 5 turns later (or more) and i'm sure 2 archers whould have fended them of since they attacked one and one at a time.

I think ppl should defend their capital instead of just quiting the game when they spawn That barbarian uprising event looks much more horrifying than it actually is.

You mean the axes don't attack immediately nor simultaneously, but rampage around pillaging? I've never experienced this event before, so I definitely thought the game was over at that point, since I had only one archer defending each city.

 

[Ozbenno]

Spoiler :

A recap, we've discovered the other AI and have a good tech advantage. Space seems the easiest victory but need more production cities, hoping for some in the unexplored areas close to home. This checkpoint will be short as I've just got to see if there is

Pop a GE, no real good wonders for now so leave him.

Find some virgin land. Well barbarian controlled virgin land. One city with iron the other with copper. I control these two, I'm space all the way.

Build University of Sankore.

Capture the barb city but raze it to re-settle to capture the iron.



I use one of my GEs on Taj Mahal.

We have copper as well. Maintenance is going to be trouble here though.



I call milestone 3 achieved here. I'm not going to chase any other victory than space from here.

Picture of the capital in my Taj Mahal inspired Golden Age. As you can see I need more happiness.



In a strong position. Will try for Democracy from Liberalism and then straight to space. I'll switch to Free Religion as well, which should bump all the AI up to Pleased, avoiding any unnecessary bloodshed.

Research: Philosophy, Gunpowder, Feudalism (trade), Engineering (trade), Liberalism (exept last turn), Horseback Riding (trade), Theology (trade), Nationalism, Guilds (trade), Banking, Printing Press

 

[cheffster]

@ illram

You had bad luck with that dogpiling ....You were victim of the way AI seems who is winning a war. AI thinks that you're winning the war when you're loosing less units than your foe. You were attacking the Romans ( loosing some cats, most surely ) and all the AI thinked : " Oh, illram is weak and he's loosing the war... Let's get our fair share" ( of course that maybe some bribing and AP diplo may be involved ). But you're free to try again

@ bazola

When playing in isolation there is always the risk of someone acting as Hernan Cortez ( normally you have to sacrifice almost all to tech research ). On that regard you're normally safe until someone gets Astro ( unless you're playing against the Portuguese ), but a good countermeasure is to have a sizable collateral delivering unit ( cats, trebs,... ). Collateral is the only way you can tackle superior units : suicide cats to weaken and use your better units to clean up the mess. Even maces can clean easily a damaged gren stack ( some sacrifice is needed ..)
Other measure you can take is beeline astro yourself. Normally a frigate-era naval invasion has 4 frigates + 4 galleons, so a stack of 12/14 galleons can destroy it ( with some luck, of course ). And with privateers you can cripple the oponents economy and pin up the naval forces of your enemies elsewhere ( I'm planning to do that in my game )

@ Ozbenno

Thanks for the compliments , but believe me, I learned more with your SGs, and with the DM and RB forums ( I'm a happy lurker of them ) than you learned from me so far.... And is easy to overlook certain details, like the new things of BTS.
The labs bonus to Apollo is another thing... It is easy to overlook it if you never had to do a barebone beeline to Internet as the only ( sligthy ) viable way to win. Then you have to go to Computers far before you start Apollo ( no time to research Rocketry )....

@ cheffster

Congrats on your impressive win ( nice tricks to go around the Theo guys BTW ). Hope that you'll be interested in playing next instalement ( a good player is always welcome ). Interested in a deity save ?

I would be interested in a deity save for sure. I'm trying out a game on deity right now and its pretty ridiculous how fast the AI expands and techs, like I mean the ai is founding its 5-6th city right next to my capital before I can build my first settler.

 

[Ankh]

I finished my game last night (Emperor). Long writeup with screens are in the spoiler, enjoy!!

Spoiler :

My empire 1800 BC from my first post (see my first post for the build)

My plan was to settle the continent, found Confucianism and build the Great lighthouse. Build some carracks to explore the world and meet my rivals and decide how to proceed from there. I also wanted the Apostolic Palace for the production bonuses it yields since I can build my infrastructure peacefully when isolated.

Didn't have much trouble with random barbarians, a scout (from a hut) and an archer was enough for fogbusting, I never got a barbarian city to spawn on my continent.

875 BC. Founded Coimbra (4th City by fur on the east coast)
800 BC. Built the Great lighthouse.
500 BC. Founded Evora (5th City on the islands west of Lisbon)
450 BC. Founded Confucianism. Guimaraes holy city)
175 BC. Founded Lagos (6th City on the south coast)
125 AD. Founded Braga (7th City on the south coast as well)
200 AD. Got a barbarian uprising close to Lisbon

That's 6 swords spawned against a single archer in Lisbon. But as you can see they wander around instead heading straight for my capital, so I have plenty of time to build enough archers to fend them off. They pillage my grown cottages my mines and the rice before they finally suicide against Lisbon.

475 AD. Got my first great person a merchant who i settle to help pay for my cities
475 AD. Finshed settling my continent settled my last city on the continent on the small island east by the fish.

Here's a look at my city placements in 475 AD.

Eight cities and generating +89 science with 60%. Could be better but i have some cities to grow so it should improve soon.

My carracks each carried one explorer and one missionary and sailed south, west and east from my contient to explore. Then we met our rivals:

Note: Augustus has created a colony and put Justinian I in charge.

Two continents were without religion so i decided to pursue a diplomatic victory with my palace. Spreading the religion around the world was easy only Saladin and Mansa Musa gave me trouble.

I wanted a shrine in Guimaraes but had trouble generating a Prophet but with the stone i decided to aim for Ankor Wat to run 4 priests to be able to generate one needed for the shrine.

1150 AD. Completed Ankor Wat
1240 AD. Proves that the world is round.
1300 AD. Completed University of Sankore
1605 AD. Completed The Kong Miao, Finally (Confucianism Shrine)
1605 AD. Completed The Spiral Minaret

Now i could almost run my sience at 100% and still earn money the game was in my hand now but i decided to try to end it a little earlier with the Palace.

First we bribe Saladin

So we can get open borders to gift him a missionary

The result

Then we did the same thing with the troublesome Mansa but he didn't run theocracy so i could spread my religion without gifting to him.

Then finally in 1675 i have enough votes to be elected religious leader, I missed two votes before this one with only 5 votes so with abit more planning and luck i could have gotten an earlier win. But hey they all count

My score:

37200 thought it should be abit higher but good enough. Enjoyed this game went easier then i thought though, never felt the game was in danger at all but it was fun. One of my few diplomatic wins using the palace. Hope you all liked the writeup and all spelling errors are belong to me!!