MH's Strange Settings Series 3 - (Hopefully I can edit this title later)

[Mikehendi]

Such a nice cap! For your next whip in the cap, you might consider a fishing boat for that lovely fish.

Uhmm... yeah... If only I had the Fishing tech

Oracle>CoL and shrine and spread the religion. Far more effective than settling GP in the long run. In this situation where you seem to have a monopoly on religion on your landmass it's even better. Building missionaries is worse than building wealth, but still ok. Now you're building the ToA instead of missionairies (without marble the ToA is almost 6 missionaries). You could have CoL, a temple, 8 happiness, and running 4 priests in your cap, easily funding more cities. And if building a wonder the 'mids would've been far better.

It's still a nice challenge, though, good idea.

ps. I also recommend the spiral minaret.

I assume you don't mean I could have had all of that by NOW, 1800 BC. Where do the 4 priests come from? 2 from UB, 1 from temple, am I missing one?

I went for shorter-term gold, to fund expansion ASAP. The goal of the ToA is to keep generating Gprophets (+cash) to BALANCE expanding (-cash), while your plan seems to focus on staying at 1 city for a long time and hoarding GPP and gold. (correct me if I'm mistaken).

Your plan takes a long time to set up.
- Building missionaries requires Monotheism or a monastery.
- Building 'mids AND oracle (no SH?) requires masonry and no 2nd city (if you want the cap to become the holy city, which I assume). if you do want a 2nd city you need mysticism and obelisk to generate gold from priests, stiffling your production.
- need barb defense, so I'm guessing Archery then? Or do you have time for a 2nd city (and no holy cap).

So you're looking at
mysticism
AH
mining
BW
masonry
fishing??
hunting??
archery??
meditation
priesthood
writing


before oracling COL, that's quite hard to pull off in time when you have only 10-13 beakers (a bit more if you diverted to fishing and workboats).

But interesting idea... and I;m probably explaining your idea wrong... Do you feel like playing a shadow opening? I like to be proven wrong . I'd pm you the 4000BC save

Given the variant, I might have put more emphasis on long term city placement over short-term. Especially since this might be your holy city.

Did you consider placing your second city 1E, for the decreased maintenance and the health bonus?


I might have even settled for using warriors only for defense, placed it 1NE to get the gold and the other corn.

Yes, I considered both. Barbs made me decide for horses instead of corn (assigned capiatls corn to 2nd city). Chose insta-access to gold and horses over +2 health, since this city will not become big.

Given the variant, I don't think a bad holy city location hurts that much. I can't run the slider for gold, so tile improvements and trade don't matter, the only gold will be from shrine and specialists (and market etc). The 2nd corn could have helped in sustaining a few more specs, but as I said, I feel I need the horsies.

With all the wonder building and early-priest running going on, I haven't had much oppertunity to build warriors. Especially if they die at 0.9% odds

Also, theres a whole lot of land to spawnbust, if you go that way (costing more GPT in unit supply etc)


I played until 1000 BC, will try to update tomorrow.

 

[Um the Muse]

It looks like you've got this well planned out. Still, I hope if you ever fail that you simply go back to an earlier save instead of quitting

 

[JammerUno]

The extra priest slots come from the shrine, which also gives 1 GPP by the way.

And I wasn't implying you could've been there already, just that you seen to be heading down a path precluding this approach. SH is superfluous if you plan on spreading a religion, the ToA is a waste of hammers compared to spreading a religion.

 

[Mikehendi]

The extra priest slots come from the shrine, which also gives 1 GPP by the way.

Oh, right . I don't think skipping stonehenge is a great idea though, no SH seems to delay expansion for a very long time.

 

[JammerUno]

^you could have funded your first city with one priest on one monument in your cap. It would have delayed your first GP, but that's a tradeoff. The ToA will give you one extra gpt (it's a regular priest) and some more bpt from the TR, but gpt is the logical focus within the contraints.

SH is debatable, you got your first GP earlier, so that helps. ToA isn't going to do anything the oracle and CoL wouldn't be better at. With one settled GP, the extra happiness from temple/confu, and quite soon a shrine I think you would be better of. I think settling the first GP is indeed better than shrining (and will be until you get 6 gpt from the shrine) but the ToA isn't going to do anything here.

 

[Mikehendi]

1825BC - 1000 BC

We left the empire at

Building the much debated ToA (First time ever I built it!). The main reason why I built it, is to keep the GPs/GMs coming in timely, while not having to stagnate my capital (and expansion) as much by assigning priests manually. If functions a bit like the Great Library in that regard.

With some heavy chopping, the 14 turns are reduced to 5:

I bet that's a picture you don't see that often

It adds 5 GPP (2 merchant, 3 priest), and (before assigning specs) the next GP will now appear in 36 turns, instead of 130.

I am not sure if the hammer costs for this are warranted, but in reply to JammerUno, comparing it to building 8 missionaries is flawed. First, I wouldn't have homeland cities to spread it to, and to get to the AI's cities, they need to be protected from barbs. (and you can only have 3 missies at the same time)

The real costs are imo a delayed city (not so ouch) and working mines instead of running specs, delaying the 2nd GP (kinda ouch). Let's see how it turns out!

With these shiny wheeles we can finally start exploring a bit further away! Also, I have set research to mathematics, which turned out to be a mistake, as you'll see.

We're still going to try for Oracle, even though we won't get to keep the failgold if we miss. It USUALLY goes around 1000BC on Monarch, but sporadically I've seen it built around 1900BC!

I'm planning on 2 settlers after oracle, but I still lack

Fishing! So we interrupted math. The turn fishing completes,

Shiny shiny! 1550 is still a very safe date, but certainly no lock!

Unfortunately, by building a 2nd city, the capital city has <1% chance to become the holy city. So, the crappy short term city Memphis becomes the Holy City. It's not so bad though, as tile improvements will have no influence on gold output in this variant.

Both cities start a settler, so we can expand to 4 cities.

Confu comes with a free missionary:

Which we send of to one of tour religiousless AI's. Wherever they may be , I haven't actually found any borders yet!

Our old friend shows up again

I've grown so scared of him, that I immediately retreat one of my chariots, in case he breaks through ( I have no defenses roaming around in my borders).

.

But it turned out unnessesary, as the fortified warrior took him out. Revenge!

Preparing our next city spot (fish+corn):

.

The overflow will be enough for a 1-turn workboat, to get the new city productive ASAP.

My hero warrior, who just defeated that dreaded barb, confidently takes a look near the barb city

And is promptly slaughtered by one of the three defending archers

Helioplois is founded

Making our empire breakeven

And make me not 2pop whip the other settler.

And here's our second math-interruption... when will I learn to not ignore the basics!

We finally spot an AI

SB will soon convert!

Pottery completes

And we keep facing serious barb pressure. Good thing I went for the horsies! having a well-roaded empire with 2-move units also helps tremendously in defending.

I finally locate SB's Capital ( I like to spread to a big city if possible)

And cyrus is also spotted. He's moving a settler toward MY corn-stone site!!!

And I'm about to lose the race (his settler is with my war chariot)

But luckily, he's a complete

So Elephantine is settled in the desired loacation

Bringing us in the red

Judiasm is founded (quite late), but luckily not on my landmass.

Math comes in, and it looks like we'll soon have a shrined religion! Masonry is started for improving the stone

But the RNG screws up our plans

So he's settled in the cap.

 

[Mikehendi]

some 1000BC shots:

Our land

The world

explored land (3 WC's explore FAST!):

Cyrus:

The massive jungle:

SB:

The treasury:

A bummer to miss the shrine... I miss out on the autospreading speed-up, which will be felt hroughout the game. The merchant isn't bad, though.

 

[Um the Muse]

I think settling the GM in the cap was a mistake. Should've gone in the holy city, both because that city needs the food more and because that's where you want to focus the gold.

Edit: That's assuming that you settle him at all. He probably should've done a trade mission to buy you some time (no pun intended).

 

[Seraiel]

Btw, a Shrine gives 3 Priest slots unless I'm playing with a different version then you do.

 

[Akbarthegreat]

Is this alive?

Btw, a Shrine gives 3 Priest slots unless I'm playing with a different version then you do.

Yes, it does in BtS 3.19.

 

[ahcos]

Agree with Jammer that the ToA wasn't a good choice here, simple-and-straight oracle->CoL would've been better. Well, you still done that so what the heck, but still.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

There are ways to win, even after declaring war on everyone who has 20 nukes. Technically, you could even win diplomatically that way via timing abuse .

Shrines + merchants are definitely the way to go with these rules.