Matrix1 - Ziggurat Addiction

[Mikehendi]

I don't think we'll have too much production if we settle 1N. On top of the normal builds, we're gonna need boatloads of spies to convert those EP's into science. A capital who can produce about a spy / turn will come in handy at times. Also, as long as we're not size 14 or so, we can choose not to work them (but cottgaes instead) if we don;t need the production.

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Firstly, I get my computer on the 18th, so just add me in last. No way that six players can go through in five days, right?

Very well. I'll put you in before Kutzov because he specifically requested he go last.

Anyways, since everyone is okay with this plan, I'll be playing today.

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

I know I said 20 turns earlier, but I ended up playing until AH came in.

Turn 0:

Moved warrior NE (shown before)

Moved settler N

Turn 1:

Settled Uruk

Moved Warrior SE, found Fish in an inconvenient location...

Spoiler :

See that? We're south of the Jungle Belt..

Spoiler :

Turn 2-7:

Moving warrior around...

Turn 8:

Hunting -> Animal Husbandry (forgot to take screenshot )

Turn 9:

Mikehendi was right about AH and the Worker coming in together:

Spoiler :

Turn 10:

Met Qin Shi Huang of Ethiopia to our south

Turn 11-12: zzz

Turn 13:

Buddy fiddle

Turn 14-23: zzz

Turn 24:

AH -> Pottery

Spoiler :

Worker -> Warrior

The Worker is on the cows, ready to pasture.

The world as we know it:

Spoiler :

Qin has sheep N of Aksum, Deer nearby outside his borders.

Points of Interest:

Spoiler :

The Gold has nice grassland and a river nearby:

Plains Wheat and Grassland Cow:

The Save

Matrix - just went
happyturtle - up
Mikehendi - on deck
Beorn
kolokol
IO
Kutzov

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Nice clean exploration. I'd be in favor of looking around the wheat and cattle spot for a second city, that kind of food can hardly be ignored for fast development. With those tiles west, Chm and Ivory, I think we can delay hooking up gold a little.

Btw you look like you're using Buffy mod but when I try to load the game it forces me to go without mods, which is a pain. Any reason for this? Are you using small separate files for each feature or is it something on my side? I just did the "textbook" patch to 3.19 then Buffy 3.19.003 along with every fix they said I'd need for windows 7 on the HoF page - and that's as far as my modding knowledge goes. Hope I can get it working right, any help appreciated.

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

I'm using the BUG mod. Don't bother with BUFFY unless you're doing GOTM/SGOTM/HoF stuff.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

For future can you turn on the resource markers? Makes stuff easier to see in the screenies.

Nice exploring.

OT - Hi B. Nice to see you back.

OT2 - In the context of SGs, an "idiot" is not a derogatory term. Sort of an inside joke going back to civ3.

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Sort of an inside joke going back to civ3.

I never played that one.

For future can you turn on the resource markers?

Sure.

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

works like a charm.

I also changed my unit default naming command line to what I think yours is:

^ut^ ^cnt[n]^ (^ct^)

I suggest we all do the same so that we can harmonize and get a coherent naming string going.

And for the record, Civ 3 Conquests is the best civilization game ever

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Uhh I'm just using the default BUG mod unit naming thing so there was no need to change it..

 

[Mikehendi]

Good scouting. My first thought was you scouted too far away, but I'm used to normal speed. Also, we're going GW before settler, so we really have lots of time to scout, so scouting out that AI while it is still possible was a good choice. Anyway, with the cow (and ivories) we'll have 6 warriors or so in no time.

Small MM tip (really small ):

Spoiler :

The worker could have roaded the FP for 1 turn without losses. When moving from Cow to Ivory, it could again road that fp for 1 turn without losses. It's not very important or such, but since it costs absolutely nothing at all, we might as well do it.

I've changed my mind a bit on techpath, I'd go for

Pottery - MINING - masonry - BW

so masonry through mining instead of myst. This way, the worker can help chop out the last part of the GW. Also, we'll have BW earlier (I'd not yet revolt to slavery).


Worker and Worked Tiles Plan:

The worker could improve cow and 1 Ivory before pottery is in, then cottage 2 FP's for food (while working cow+ivory for a few turns to spit out some explorers/fogbusters), then finish up the second Ivory. While building the Great Wall, the worker can cottage up the other FP's and/or road towards the 2nd city and/or chop (the riverside hills) into the GW.


On a side note, I think it's OK to shorten or lengthen the turnset by a few turns to end at a convenient point (tech finished, wonder built, etc)

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Tech path change sounds good. Mysticism definitely can be saved until we're actually settling other cities.

It's also really sad that the only seafood I found was in such a place that we would have to settle on a desert tile and pop a border before aquiring it. I hope we find seafood in a better place so that we won't have to rely on that.

Also I hope we find Gems in the Jungle Belt to the north

 

[happyturtle]

Good scouting. My first thought was you scouted too far away, but I'm used to normal speed. Also, we're going GW before settler, so we really have lots of time to scout, so scouting out that AI while it is still possible was a good choice. Anyway, with the cow (and ivories) we'll have 6 warriors or so in no time.

Small MM tip (really small ):

Spoiler :

The worker could have roaded the FP for 1 turn without losses. When moving from Cow to Ivory, it could again road that fp for 1 turn without losses. It's not very important or such, but since it costs absolutely nothing at all, we might as well do it.

I've changed my mind a bit on techpath, I'd go for

Pottery - MINING - masonry - BW

so masonry through mining instead of myst. This way, the worker can help chop out the last part of the GW. Also, we'll have BW earlier (I'd not yet revolt to slavery).


Worker and Worked Tiles Plan:

The worker could improve cow and 1 Ivory before pottery is in, then cottage 2 FP's for food (while working cow+ivory for a few turns to spit out some explorers/fogbusters), then finish up the second Ivory. While building the Great Wall, the worker can cottage up the other FP's and/or road towards the 2nd city and/or chop (the riverside hills) into the GW.


On a side note, I think it's OK to shorten or lengthen the turnset by a few turns to end at a convenient point (tech finished, wonder built, etc)

I'm going to follow this plan, and scout to the west as I don't like having black stuff so close.

 

[happyturtle]

t25 - Hinduism FIADL. started pasture.

t26 - coast to the west.

t30 - We meet Frederick of India

Spoiler :

t33 - omgponies to the north. warrior completed. start another warrior.

t37 - We meet Washington of Egypt.

Spoiler :

t38 - pottery in. start on mining.

t44 - city has grown to size 3, so I switched from warrior to settler, with the intent of blocking off our isthmus with a wheat/cow city. But I haven't actually put anything towards the settler yet, so want to see what people think, since there was also talk of GW before settler.

Potential isthmus blocking city:

Spoiler :

Red dot gets Wheat and Cows in the first border, Yellow dot gets a flood plain and more river tiles.

To the north:

Spoiler :

To the south:

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Yellow dot seems natural to me, we have pottery and it'll give us a few tiles to cottage early on before getting around to the hill and wheat.

Assuming there is any copper in sight, I'd be more tempted to grab the gold, wines and spices than to get a deep jungle expedition for remote ponies.

Settler first sounds good to me.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Yellow dot

 

[happyturtle]

Yeah, that jungle looks like a pretty formidable northern border. Better to outsource all that chopping to our nearest neighbor and then relieve them of their excess cities.

Matrix
happyturtle
Mikehendi << up
Beorn << on deck
kolokol
IO
Kutzov

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Yeah, the yellow dot seems best - it gets an FP in the BFC, and more forests if we need to choprush something, and more river tiles. It could either be a commerce city or a GPFarm - though, we'd only be wanting GSpies, so it would take a while for it to get up to speed.

 

[Mikehendi]

If we get GW we won't need to settle a crappy city for strat recourses so early, so an economic one would be fine.

Do we want to get a settler out before GW? I'd rather wait until after (we'll have GW earlier = free Gspy oxford earlier. Also, chances of missing it to some early building AI increase. Less capital development, if we build warriors-gw now and explore while growing the cap to size 5/6/7, we can get 3 settlers out after gw, the capital can easily handle that economically by then.)

Will look into save tomorrow, going to bed now!

EDIT got it

 

[Beorn-eL-Feared]

Tbh I'm not entirely familiar with how city maintenance and economic sustainability are best dealt with in Bts, I'm looking forward to learning things like that by digesting your settling/BO decisions on that subject in here. It looks like a much deeper issue than just the production the settlers require, so let me put my "settler sounds good" comment on ice and I'll retract to the lurker corner while this is debated.

Also I realize I have rudely forgotten proper manners for the admiral: good to see you as well old chum

 

[MatrixTheKitty]

Tbh I'm not entirely familiar with how city maintenance and economic sustainability are best dealt with in Bts

Well, in the early game you just shouldn't make more cities than you can adequately pay for. Once you can build Courthouses, you can do so to reduce maintenance, increasing the amount of cities you can pay for. We get Ziggurats instead of them, which come in at Priesthood instead of CoL, so we can reduce maintenance earlier, meaning we can build more cities earlier, meaning we can have more spy specialists earlier, meaning we can have more EPs earlier, and you get the picture. The Holy Roman Empire has the Rathaus, which also replaces the Courthouse. It reduces maintenance by 75% instead of the normal 50%. Zulu's Barracks replacement, the Ikhanda, along with giving more XP to new units than normal Barracks, reduces maintenance by 25%. Aside from those, other ways to reduce mantenance costs are Versailles and the Forbidden Palace, which turn the cities they are built in into centres of government, meaning they act as secondary capitals with regard to maintenance. The only other way I can think of is the State Property civic which eliminates distance-from-capital as a maintenance cost. It's best for large empires, especially those covering more than one continent.

General economic sustainability involves the above, cottages, improved high-commerce resources like gems, and gold multipliers like banks. And good gems cities will usually also come with good cottaging land, so yeah. The Financial trait makes these things even better. Coastal areas carry commerce, although they're not that great unless you're Financial and/or have the Colossus. Rivers add commerce to adjacent tiles, unless they're forested.