Is there any chance you might be able to elaborate a little more on your early build order (ie. settlers and workers) please
Turn 70: Revolt into Slavery
Turn 71 or 72 (whenever it was possible, probably Turn 71): Whip a Settler in our capital. That City got settled to the east, so that it could grow quickly using the Pig to Size 2 and then could pump Workers for me, initially sharing our second City's Stone square or Grassland Hills Mine.
One of either the capital or City 3 was always working the Grassland Pig.
One of either the second City or the third City was always working the Stone.
The first few turns: All Forest Chops that you probably put into The Pyramids were diverted into Workers and Settlers.
I also chopped out Workers and a Settler from City 3.
Our faithful Work Boat explorer pretty much meant that additional Cities kept getting Foreign Trade Routes... the "worst situation" that I saw early on was 2 Domestic Trade Routes (out of a total of 12 Trade Routes) when I only had 4 Cities and then maybe a few more Domestic Trade Routes when we had a couple of more Cities before meeting more AIs... I didn't pay very close attention other than remembering what I saw when I had 4 Cities. Essentially, expansion didn't have the normal "bite" that it does on your economy.
The southern City (the future Moai site) was pretty much constantly working a Plains Hills Mine, to help it pump out its needed infrastructure and so that it would be working an improved square.
I ask because I’m looking to understand how you managed to get Ankara and Bursa settled around you – and still found time to settle the two blocking cities on the west coast.
To be honest, I wanted Giglamesh to settle on our continent. I'm not sure what took him so long, but when he arrived, I had already given up on him and had sent a Settler to the NW part of our continent via Road. As you can see from my screenshots, I arrived in time to beat him, but had he settled there a bit earlier, I would have been fine with it, since that would have meant one less Settler to build.
I don't know if my actions (my settling order) affected Gilgamesh in any way or if he just chose to build different items (such as his early-game Courthouses, a Forge, etc) instead of building either a Galley or a Settler. Even if he builds a marginal City on our landmass, it would be useful for Espionage purposes--we've spent all of our Espionage Points on him (probably everyone has done so if they didn't adjust the Espionage Weighting in their games, since we were set to spend 100% of our Espionage Points on Gilgamesh at the start of the round). If we're going to collect these Espionage Points, we might as well spend them, and they are far easier to spend if the City that you are targeting is on the same landmass as your Palace City (aka capital) is located.
closing in on both The Colossus and HG
To be fair, that's as much an illusion as was the Round 1 saved game that we continued from which had "almost" finished The Pyramids. The Colossus just has a bit of overflow and a recent Forest Chop in it, while The Hanging Gardens only has overflow Hammers ABOUT to go into it (0 Hammers have been invested into The Hanging Gardens so far).
So, both Wonders are only just being started on. Every AI has Math, so I wouldn't delay The Hanging Gardens, but one could feasibly delay The Colossus for longer if they had a reason to do so. There aren't any other Wonders to build right now, though, and we've pretty much built all of the Settlers that we need for our continent, so the only good reason that I could think to delay The Colossus going forwards would be to pump out a quick army of Swords, Axemen, and Galleys, attacking an AI before Longbowmen come online.
One could justify building Settlers to resettle some of the poorly-placed AI Cities, but honestly, I think that you'd FIRST build an army and only THEN build Settlers to replace the razed Cities.
Did you simply stall the mids, build 4 settlers and then the accompanying workers for instance?
Pretty much. I don't remember the exact build order, but The Pyramids City built AT LEAST one Settler and one Worker, probably two Settlers or perhaps just more Workers since a Hammer-heavy City would have been good for building Workers. I tried to make sure that most Workers were built using a combination of whip overflow + Forest Chops + high-Hammer output squares, so which City got more Workers than Settlers and when they came out kept being adjusted. For example, I might have been building a Settler but then switched to a Worker in order to benefit from a Forest Chop, then back to the Settler on the following turn.
Did you use the whip to remove unhappiness in Istanbul, or just accept the grumbling from the malcontents?
Whipping, then regrowing as quickly as possible to the new Happiness cap while building a place-holder building (a Library for much of the time until we learned Metal Casting, after which it was a Forge), after which I'd pump out a Settler at or just under the Happiness cap.
Actually, I whipped all Forges everywhere about as soon as they could be whipped (in our first 3 Cities), giving me Forge-enhanced Hammers for the last Settler or two that I built.
I got Gold in trade early for Copper. After finding out how absolutely AWESOME a Woodsman III Axeman in a large Forest/Jungle is, I felt that I didn't need our Copper. Two Barb Archers came at us within the first couple of turns, at which point I decided "awww, why not?" and just upgraded our Warrior when he was still at 9 experience points.
He won the first fight, partially healed by getting the Woodsman III Promotion, then healed himself fully within 1 turn in time to defend from the second Archer. I was shocked at how fast Woodsman III lets your unit recover (having already forgotten about the Woodsman III units from our Monte game as I assumed at that time that I'd only ever build such units when playing as Monte and that their usefulness was not something worth remembering--I was wrong--it is worth remembering). Anyway, the point is that I felt that I had no immediate use for our Copper (expanding took precedence over building The Colossus, in my mind).
However, I was later asked to either lose the Gold Resource for Copper Resource deal or to sweeten it, being forced to throw in our Clam Resource or lose the deal. I might have been able to renegotiate the deal fully, but I didn't want to risk the possibility that the American Leader had found his own source of Copper being the reason why he was asking to renegotiate. I think that we have 1 turn left to go on that relatively lop-sided deal, but the plus side is that the American Leader actually likes us a bit for having traded Resources with him and went from being unwilling to trade his Ivory to willing to trade his Ivory to us... but that fact could also be due to a shifting Scoreboard and him giving us +1 for both of us being in the bottom half of the Scoreboard... I didn't really pay attention to WHY he liked us enough to offer up his Ivory... I just went with it.
BTW, can you recall when you built a WB for Istanbul...was it during that early stage...or did you leave it until after you’d gone into representation to boost happiness?
Now that you mention it, I built it right after whipping the first Settler. I remember toying with the idea of whipping it or not and I think that whipping it won out... the extra Food would help me to regrow the whipped population point ASAP, while my goal was to grow to the Happiness cap and then start on another Settler, so to me, it didn't matter what that Happiness cap really ended up being.
Two last points if you don’t mind. Firstly, what made you comfortable delaying The Colossus and Hanging Gardens (and the mids for that matter) for so long?
The Colossus = After I got Alphabet, only Gilgamesh had Metal Casting. He's close enough for us to attack easily, so if he built the Wonder, no real loss. It would essentially "be ours" if he built it.
The Hanging Gardens = Gilgamesh was the first to research Math. It was a long while before the other AIs learned that tech. I think that I actually got Math in trade from Gilgamesh. It is still a risk to build the Wonder at this point, but I forced myself to build a few Work Boats from our second City before starting on our Hamman (spelling?)--our Unique Building version of the Aqueduct. So, it is quite possible that we will miss this Wonder, but we have a reasonable shot at getting it since most of the AIs did not get Math for a while. Fortunately, we are set to build it in a production-heavy City, meaning that the total time that the AIs have to build Aqueducts + the Wonder is going to be pretty tight for them. If we miss it, we miss it.
The Pyramids = Well, I took a bit of a gamble, but it my experience that the AIs take a long time to build this Wonder. Either they delay starting it or else it is just very expensive or perhaps they start to build it in marginal Cities and the fact that it is so expensive takes them so long. I don't really know the reasons why, but in my opinion, there was no need to complete this Wonder in the first round and there was no real rush to complete it in the second round. At worst, I wouldn't finish it and then I'd have a differentiating factor with me game: you'd have to choose between a REX game and a game that likely built The Pyramids first and thus likely didn't REX as much.
It's a fun and useful Wonder--I really love Police State, for example--but with The Great Lighthouse under our belt, we'd already have been in a good enough position.
I ask because I actually managed two other playthroughs after submitting my save, trying to get The Colossus and HG. On one occasion, I managed to get them both in Istanbul; on the other the AI beat me to The Colossus.
Did you trade away Metal Casting? I did not. Gilgamesh is tight-fisted and for most techs (a tech like Monarchy would be an exception), he won't trade until several other players (at least 2 other players) know the tech. So, he won't be trading it around until someone else manually researches it or until we trade it away ourselves.
AI research choices can be affected by random values, so it is possible that an AI in your game manually researched that tech, but my GUESS is that you traded it away to at least one AI, which may have allowed Gilgamesh to trade it away or else may have been traded to a loose-fisted AI who had no trouble in turning around and trading it away. That, or else the AI that you traded it to built the Wonder.
As an aside, do you happen to know if there’s a guide somewhere listing at roughly what time the AI will build various wonders at this level? I’ve looked but can’t see anything on cfc.
No idea. I play a lot of Game of the Month games where the difficulty level is always alternating, while I have a good bucketload of other players' games against which to compare dates. So honestly, reading the historical (i.e. past months' games) First Spoiler threads in
the Game of the Month Forum would be a good a spot to start as any.
What sucks is that often within the same game, you'll go for The Oracle and will have an AI beat you to it at 1400 BC, for example, while another player that didn't go for it had no AI build it until 800 BC. If you're smart about it, you start to see some correlations between these kinds of events... consider the following throught that I have had: "Hmmm, if I research Priesthood early, maybe some of the AIs are doing the same, and thus they have the chance to start building the Wonder a bit earlier... maybe I shouldn't research Priesthood and then research 5 more techs before starting on The Oracle... perhaps I should research most of those other techs first [you can't do so with all techs, such as Confucianism, if you are going for a Civil Service beeline in Vanilla, but you get the picture] and only then research Priesthood, and I might gain more game-years in which to complete The Oracle..."
Lastly, is it possible for you to expand a little on the tech path and tech trades you made please? I see from the log that you managed to secure a number of techs after first researching what looks like alphabet. If this is right, what was it that inspired you to tech alphabet before metal casting?
I actually play this trick a lot: I almost research a tech but then don't complete it.
Doing so prevents an AI from piggybacking off of your research.
For example, if I know that I want to research both Pottery and Animal Husbandry to get the pre-requisite bonus on Writing, but I don't need either of those techs' benefits immediately (Sheep are in my 3rd City and I only have 1 or 2 Cities, I am building a Settler and don't need a Granary, I am building Mines so I don't need Cottages, etc), then I might:
1. Research all of one of those two techs, say, Pottery, minus 1 turn of research
2. Research Animal Husbandry fully
3. Complete the last turn of research on Pottery
4. Start on Writing 2 turns after having learned two of its pre-requisites, thereby giving the AIs the least amount of piggybacking time on researching the first of Pottery/Animal Husbandry that I chose to research
I didn't actually tech Alphabet until we almost knew Metal Casting, not for the pre-requisite part of the above discussion, but for the avoidance of piggybacking part of the above discussion.
I suppose that just like getting Animal Husbandry earlier, where you can reveal your Horse Resources sooner, which may alter your settling locations, you might also be able to build a Forge sooner, but my Cities were being whipped and then kept small from building Settlers and Workers, so it would have taken a long time before they would have been ready to build Forges anyway, so I don't think that I lost out in the end.
Was it to avoid persuading the AI to research metal casting (because you have it and since they’ve met you, they’d get a discount)
That and not needing the tech myself immediately combined into one point.
From your discussion, it looks like you’ve done the same thing with teching aesthetics.
It seemed to have worked out that way, although since it is a tech that you can potentially get in trade if multiple AIs go for it around the same time, it may have been a mistake. I actually had different reasoning at the time... I thought that I was going to complete the tech. But after putting some research into it, I realized that I had no Cities in which to build the Wonders, so I aborted research on it.
While it does set us up to be able to research the tech quickly if an AI gets it, allowing us to "race" them for the Wonders, if I had to do it again, I'd have put that research towards getting Civil Service faster.
After all, I mentioned settling another city to work Istanbul’s pigs in my earlier post...and then ignored my own advice to block off Giggles, d’oh!
As I said, I was hoping to see Gilgamesh settle our area so I was frustrated when he appeared not to be doing so (and only appeared to be doing it once it was "too late," since I'd already built the Settler).
Therefore, I had no such dilemma to worry about and definitely wanted to settle in a way to overlap the Resource squares that I wouldn't be using in our two existing Cities thanks to whipping them and/or slowing their growth by building Settlers and Workers.
I’m looking to learn how you managed to settle the two good sites near Istanbul and still managed to get those blocking cities up before Giggles tried to settle them.)
Well, I leveraged the early settling for extra Commerce and production (particularly by way of making use of the Grassland Pig and the Stone whenever the other 2 Cities weren't needing them or could just as easily work a Flood Plains Cottage as the Pig, essentially "working" the Flood Plains Cottage in City 3 because the "Hammers" from the Grassland Pig would go to a Settler or Worker in one of City 1 or City 3, while the replacement square would be a Flood Plains Cottage instead of say, City 3 working a Grassland Forest).
As for Gilgamesh, it could be that he simply had a different build order.
Another very real possibility, and it is not to be discounted, is that the constant stream of Barbs that came from the north-west area held him at bay. In our last Succession Game of the Month game, Zara stayed with 1 City in our game for the longest of time, while in other games he'd settled 2, 3, or even 4 Cities. The reason? A single Barb Warrior was trapped by his Culture (there weren't enough Barbs to enter borders at that time) and it was wandering back and forth over the square or squares that Zara settled his second City on in other games.
I kept the north-west un-fog-busted but not as much on purpose as due to having only 1 Military Unit to do the task. Our Axeman couldn't get more experience (so less Barb units would have been better in my mind) and I kept being afraid that he'd lose a battle and thus would even let Barb units "walk by me" several times so that I'd either attack them on low-defensive terrain or would "catch up" to them using our 2-movement points and "let them" get "more chances" to randomly attack us when we had the defensive bonus--essentially he was our first, last, and only line of defence. Therefore, it was by necessity of the Axeman only being able to cover so much territory at a time that there was a near-constant flow of Barbs coming from the north-west.
Interesting, huh? You think that you're doing a good thing by spawn-busting the Barbs, but all that you really end up accomplishing is convincing the AIs to settle the area that much faster than normal.

It is odd how life works sometimes.
In addition, I have to confess that I’m rueing my decision to tech aesthetics and literature after currency, to build the epics (without marble).
Well, Grashopa seems to have capitalized on getting Marble from Greece. I'm not sure what Resource or Resources he traded to get it, but it was a good idea.
If we play forwards from my game, we should be done with our Stone in time for learning Aesthetics, so trading Stone for Marble would be a good trade (but only AFTER building The Hanging Gardens or getting Failure Gold from it, not before then!). We just have to hope that in the meantime, Greece doesn't trade away the Marble to a different AI. It is a possibility, but since I have made so many Resource trades in my game, it is a lower possibility than normal for you to see a lot of AI-AI trades.
The risk, of course, is that Greece will use Stone to build City Walls in all of its Cities. But, given that they are already being Wonder-lovers, their Cities' Cultural defences will probably already be 40% or 60% anyway, so 50% from Walls won't help them that much (other than making Bombardment of the City defences take longer).
Anyway, I guess the point is that either:
- You unfortunately missed out on the trade for Marble, perhaps because another AI beat you to it or perhaps you angered Greece
- Greece didn't offer up the trade (perhaps a different AI beat them to the second source of Marble in your game or perhaps Barbs have been pillaging Greece's Marble, or whatever)
- Greece took a long time to connect its second source of Marble (or even its third source for all that I know, if it traded away its second source), taking longer than you needed
So, it sucks that you missed out on Marble and I was thinking that we would have to take such a Resource via war, but sure enough, Marble is now being offered on the trading table (I have no idea when it became available, though--I didn't see it in my game. I only noticed that it is available for trade after I'd read about Grashopa getting it and went to check in my game to find out that we do indeed have access to trade for it now).
I actually feel kind of silly that I missed seeing that trading opportunity (although it is still available, so "missed" might not be the right word to use here), especially since I was on that Resource Trading screen so much in order to watch for the deals that I did manage to broker.
Looking back, the much more obvious choice was to finish CoL and civil service...and then tech to literature powered by bureaucracy.
Not so obvious. I did the opposite, but then stopped myself when I realized that I didn't have the production power to finish off those Wonders. Getting The Great Library before Civil Service is a very valid option in gameplay terms.
this path makes available courthouses at CoL should you need to control maintenance costs.
Oddly enough, I haven't found any time in our build orders to fit in Courthouses. They're just going to have to wait. So, going for Code of Laws purely for Courthouses (I'd already missed Confucianism) would have been a mistake, since we're not building them (well, we haven't been in my game, anyway). Fortunately, my reason for resarching Code of Laws was because it is a pre-requisite for Civil Service, not for the tech itself.