My ALC-Style Thing

[Gooblah]

Okay. After browsing and playing for close to a year now, I have decided to show off some of my lackluster skills, and to get some help while playing!

The Leader I have chosen is Louis XIV of France. His traits are Creative and Industrious. I am playing on Vanilla 1.74, so no stuff about Vassals and Espionage!
Okay, here are the settings:
Map Style: Fractal
Map Size: Standard
Map Speed: Normal
Difficulty: Prince
Lets Begin!

And the Start:

I'm thinking going 1N to Settle to grab the extra resource. North of the Cotton (is that cotton? don't know) is Coast. As for teching, a BW beeline followed by a can of axeman opened up on a neighbor is what I have in mind. Plus grabbing Masonry early to see if I can get the Pyramids as a tutorial (for myself and others) to an SE. We'll see.

The Save:

 

[AlessioCerci]

Screenie says normal speed, text says marathon.......... and you're still playing vanilla???

 

[Gooblah]

Ohoho. Crap.
Whatever, so now its on Normal speed. Edited original post.
And yes, I'm still playing Vanilla. No offense, but please post stuff that pertains to the game, not the "ur still playing Vanilla" type stuff.

 

[xanadux]

There is nothing wrong with vanilla. It's a fine game, and if it is still fun to play and someone doesn't want to buy an expansion, there is no reason to criticize.

 

[Quechua]

Seeing as you're industrious and have a lot of coast in the capital, you may want to prioritize the colossus instead, and run a commerce capital. With the fish you'll have a moderate amount of food for specialists, but your actual land is mostly plains, including the high commerce silk tile. So you could use the food to run land tiles and a couple scientists, rather than just a lot of specialists.

Just my thoughts. Good luck! It's refreshing to see someone else that still plays Vanilla.

 

[xanadux]

I can't tell from the screen shot if there might be hills to the south? This capital will be a fine GP farm if you move north, but seriously lacking in production. It will get better with Moai statues (easier because you are industrious), but anyway you go, the capital will probably need to be moved later. A low production capital can be ok, but unless it is also a great cottage capital, should probably be moved shortly after Bureaucracy.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

It will get better with Moai statues

Vanilla


Have you considered the possibility of moving the settler south, and settling on the peninsula later?

 

[Quechua]

^ No Maoi statues in vanilla. I'd suggest to just refrain from chopping the capital too much until you've got some better production cities set up.

 

[xanadux]

Vanilla


Have you considered the possibility of moving the settler south, and settling on the peninsula later?

Right, don't I feel silly.

 

[Gooblah]

What I might end up doing is going for Oracle, but instead of grabbing CoL, grabbing Metal Casting. Use the forest chops for a Settler or something, then build Cottages or Workshops over them. Something.

 

[Quechua]

What I might end up doing is going for Oracle, but instead of grabbing CoL, grabbing Metal Casting. Use the forest chops for a Settler or something, then build Cottages or Workshops over them. Something.

This sounds like a good idea to me.

 

[KMadCandy]

I'm thinking going 1N to Settle to grab the extra resource.

i'd definitely not move north. you'd be left with only 6 land tiles and none of them are hills. that's extremely limited production once you chop the forests, since you don't have the you-know-what-BtS-only national wonder . only one tile can be a watermill, the rest will have to be workshops or very low hammers.

if you settle where you are, you can't ever use the fish (unless there's an island up there somewhere). you're creative, so you'll get them for health benefit someday soon anyway. or, you can move one south so that you don't lose the crabs, and someday much later settle on the silk to use the fish, but you'd have mega-overlap with the capital, so i'd use that city simply as a fishing village myself if i went that option.

that move 1N would also lose your fresh water bonus.

 

[Gooblah]

I guess , KMad. But fresh water won't really matter due to the health bonuses that are coming in. I'll make Fishing a priority, then BW, and then Masonry.
Masonry enables the Pyramids. Also, if a mining resource shows up in Paris's fat cross, we should be fine.

I'll have the 1st round up by tomorrow night.

 

[erikthecelt]

Move 1N, tech BW, Fishing - build worker and chop the fishing boats, - grow quickly and explore. This is not going to be your capital forever, find a better AI one and take it You can run a few specialists here later or just use the whip from time to time to work the clams and fish. That's my 2 . With a little luck you will get copper or horses on the plains square for some production.

 

[Quechua]

He's probably played it already, but I think he should tech fishing first, and not build a worker for a bit. A worker has nothing to do besides chop, and those plains forests are decent source of production.

I'm also not crazy about masonry for pyramids. This start doesn't exactly scream pyramids to me.

 

[Gooblah]

Still haven;'t gotten round to the 1st round. Swamped with Biology and Calculus for the time being; will post first round tomorrow.

 

[Carabodes]

Still haven;'t gotten round to the 1st round. Swamped with Biology and Calculus for the time being; will post first round tomorrow.

Biology and Civ is a nice combination, the computers in the students lab agrees with Civ (that's where I learned to play it).
It does slow down the work on your Masters just a tad, though.

 

[Gooblah]

Round 1: 4000 BC to 2520 BC

Like most people suggested, I settled in place, and started Paris on a Warrior. Kudos to KMadCandy and the others who suggested I settle in place, as a Wheat Tile appeared right in Paris's fat cross! This is easily accessable due to our starting techs.

My first research target was Fishing. After the Warrior was done, I started a Work Boat to grab some of the Fish, followed by a Settler, since my teching and exploring had revealed some interesting things:

The first hut I popped gave me a map. Not great, but it revealed Crabs and Sheep to the South.

Being the noob I am, I grabbed a pic of a healing Warrior after he popped a hut for 43 Gold. Good, but again, not great. He had just been attacked by a Bear on the plains hill to the south.

Met Saladin and Mao. Elizabeth was seen as well, just before I popped the second hut, but I didn't get a shot of that.

A Bronze Working Beeline revealed some good news!

That's right, not one, but TWO sources of copper that are easily grabbable!

Now, I ended the round after grabbing Animal Husbandry (revealing Horses south of Paris's 100 culture mark) and finishing the Settler. The main question is: where to Settle? I'm thinking a city 1SE of the Copper to grab the Crabs for early growth..however, a Chariot Rush may take precedence due to the Horses to the south.

Here's the save!

 

[Jet]

I'd settle horse/sheep and build one chariot for exploring and a few more for fogbusting, then block the chokepoint (wheat/cows 1S of the wheat), then build the Pyramids. Creative is a fairly good complement to specialists (Creative does get cheap colosseums and theaters in Vanilla doesn't it?).

edit: I forgot that chariots aren't so hot in vanilla against barb axemen. So maybe you want to do the same thing, but with crab/copper.

Personally, on this map no other wonders grab my attention. Maybe you could give the great lighthouse a shot after the Pyramids.

Then research Metal Casting, Drama, and Construction, build the forges/colosseums/theaters, and break out with catapults plus whatever.

 

[KMadCandy]

there might be additional seafood SW by pony/sheepville. when you explored you didn't step on the tile right by the water, so you weren't able to see two out in the water. i seriously doubt there's seafood on the tile directly SW of the sheep, but if there was, that would be an argument for settling on the hill rather than the grassland. i'm paranoid about making "complete seafood checks" since i missed too many yummy tiles before i got into the habit .

you have a pretty good selection of health resources available. but only silk for happy on the mainland, and a wine on that other island/landmass/whatever? ouch! wine isn't even doubled with any building, it just gives more health instead of another . HR's gonna be important here i suppose.

from the "meeting qin" screenshot it looks like he was on or next to the wine. do you have a sense of where the other folks are yet?