My first game on Prince (Louis XIV, Standard Pangaea, Normal speed)

[rfcfanatic]

OK, here's my save at 1AD. I started by settling on the elephant, which improves my capital and also frees up room for another city to work the clams. Best thing to do is look at my tech order. By getting Writing early as well as Masonry, I was able to get up an early Academy, and a couple scientists to bulb techs to trade, and I still completed the Oracle in time for the CS slingshot. Also notice my warrior placement up north, which is keeping barbs from spawning. I didn't place them that precisely, but I've only had a couple barb warriors wander down, and they are easy to pick off. I'm way behind on workers, partly because of building boats, but I'm only working two unimproved tiles, so it isn't a big deal. Other misstep was letting Gandhi beat me to a city spot. But I'm more worried about walling off the other AI, so he is just building more cities for me to take later. I'm about to pop another GS and get Lit, which will get me the NE in Paris. I have the option to do a Cataphant (Catapaults and Elephants) rush, which I would use on Gandhi, Toku or Lincoln, basically whoever doesn't have longbows yet. However, I can also just fill in four more cities and work on improving them. With a big tech lead I can grab Education, build Oxford and work towards Libbing steel, and use France's UB to pound the map, or just wait and grab Rifles. Either way, I'm in excellent position to steamroll the map.

Wow, Code of Laws in 900 BC and Oracle in 875 BC... that's what I'd call a good timing! It would have been difficult for me to take such risk, because I often see AI building the Oracle between 1600 BC - 1200 BC.

The scientist that was born in 925 BC - what did he research? Code of Laws?

Approximately when did you get your academy done in Paris?

So the techs you researched were basically: Fishing - Mining - Bronze Working - Masonry - Pottery - Writing - Animal Husbandry - Mathematics - Mysticism - Meditation - Priesthood - Code of Laws - Civil Service - Currency? After that I lose the trail, because tech trade messes everything up.

I see that you founded Confucianism and the religion has spread to Toku and Lincoln. Are you in Conf because of diplomacy bonuses? As long as your religion didn't make you the pariah of the world, it would make sense to me I'm bumping this point because I played a Bismarck game on Noble recently and became the punch bag of the world for being the founder of Conf and the only one in it Monty and other nasty things were at my throat in that game

Then I'm trying to understand a few city specialization issues. I can't figure out what's Lyons' speciality. I see everything there - farms, mines and cottages. Then Orleans - wouldn't the gold resource make it a natural commerce city? It has banana so it definitely wouldn't need any farms to support cottages, would it?

Question about Cataphant strategy - is it still effective in AD-s?

Btw how did you add these labels to the map (3rd City, Next City etc.)?

 

[thbrown81]

Wow, Code of Laws in 900 BC and Oracle in 875 BC... that's what I'd call a good timing! It would have been difficult for me to take such risk, because I often see AI building the Oracle between 1600 BC - 1200 BC.

That's what they call the CS (Civil Service) Slingshot. Basically, you start building the Oracle a little before you research Code of Laws. Once you finish COL, whip the Oracle at your earliest opportunity, and you have instant CS and Bureaucracy. Keep an eye on when Stonehenge gets built. In my case, it went late, so I knew I had time to get the Oracle done. It's always a gambit though, and sometimes you are going to miss out on it, but the failure gold lets you run 100% science to make up for missing the free tech.

The scientist that was born in 925 BC - what did he research? Code of Laws?

Approximately when did you get your academy done in Paris?

I used the first scientist (925) to build the Academy, thus no corresponding tech.

So the techs you researched were basically: Fishing - Mining - Bronze Working - Masonry - Pottery - Writing - Animal Husbandry - Mathematics - Mysticism - Meditation - Priesthood - Code of Laws - Civil Service - Currency? After that I lose the trail, because tech trade messes everything up.

Yup. Once I finished Currency (which I teched for the Trade Route boost to prep for a potential rush), I started working on Alphabet to back fill my tech tree. As it turned out, Darius hit Alphabet one turn before me, so I grabbed Sailing, Hunting and Poly from him, then grabbed IW, Monotheism and Archery from other AI once I got Alpha. I teched Construction (for Cats) and traded for Monarchy, then grabbed Calendar since I finally had IW to chop the Calendar tiles.

I see that you founded Confucianism and the religion has spread to Toku and Lincoln. Are you in Conf because of diplomacy bonuses? As long as your religion didn't make you the pariah of the world, it would make sense to me I'm bumping this point because I played a Bismarck game on Noble recently and became the punch bag of the world for being the founder of Conf and the only one in it Monty and other nasty things were at my throat in that game

Then I'm trying to understand a few city specialization issues. I can't figure out what's Lyons' speciality. I see everything there - farms, mines and cottages. Then Orleans - wouldn't the gold resource make it a natural commerce city? It has banana so it definitely wouldn't need any farms to support cottages, would it?

Question about Cataphant strategy - is it still effective in AD-s?

Btw how did you add these labels to the map (3rd City, Next City etc.)?

The Confucianism switch was diplomatic. I actually hadn't picked a religion yet (had plenty of happiness w/out it), you are correct that you want to wait and see who else is running it. Once I founded Confucianism, I sent the missionary to Lincoln. Lincoln switched to it, then asked me to switch to it, so I got a diplo bonus for converting to the religion that I founded!

I'm not really a city specialization expert, all though I can tell you that the idea is less popular than it used to be. Before picking a "specialization", you want to make sure your city can grow. I used to build a lot more cottages than I do now. Now I normally build one farm for every brown tile or hill in my BFC. In Lyons' case, I was working on a little Bureau trick. When you have a city that shares tiles with your Cap, you can have the second city work cottages while your Cap is growing/ building GPs. Once you get to Bureau, you can switch the cottages over to the Cap.

Also, the leader affects how I'm building. Since Louis is Creative, I'm building a library in every city because they are cheaper. This means I have more incentive to build farms so I can run scientists. In the case of Orleans, I built farms early, but now that I have Bananas up and sugar soon, I will probably put Cottages in the remaining green tiles.

Re: Cataphants, it's not about the year, it's about whether or not your opponent has Feudalism. Once he gets Feudalism, you are going to need at least Maces and Trebs, but at the point it is usually better to wait for Cannons, unless you only need to grab one or two cities.

Hitting Alt-S brings up the icon to put labels on the map.