- T0: Warrior moves 3, revealing nothing at all. I dislike the WB first approach without a forested plains hill in the small cross, though, and rice/clams could be a useful second city to overlap cottages (capital is rather mediocre for commerce either way, but FIN helps alleviate that). Thus I moved the settler 36.
- T1: Found London. WB, work forested plains hill (6t). (Always go max hammers for a starting workboat in capital.) Research BW first; need to speed up my settlers vigorously with such a capital. Founding London reveals flat plains stone (!) in BFC, 1/4/0 -- better than the whip. Pyramids + PHI? Yes please.
- T4: Met Montezuma's scout in the SW. Too close.
- T7: Work boat moves onto clams (consumes movement). Switch to 2-food tile to ensure fastest growth (5 * 4 + 2). Hammers into Warrior.
- T8: Work 4/0/3 FIN clams.
- T13: London size 2, start Worker (9t).
- T15: Finish BW; research Masonry (stone tile is good). Met Frederick's scout from the NW jungle belt (Iron Working will be a key economic tech).
- T19: Monty, who founded Buddhism on T18, converts.
- T22: Worker finished, moves 3 into forest. Still 3t to Masonry, but we can chop the forest. London starts a settler.
- T25: Masonry. We need Agri, AH, Wheel, Pottery and Sailing (lighthouses for 5-food tiles; there's at least 3 clams we will be working at that time; GLH would be nice as my dotmap is nearly all coastal)
- T26: Revolt to Slavery. Settler must go out asap.
- T27: London spots Sitting Bull's warrior on that "island" with the gems to the north-east, which must be a peninsula.
- T29: Swap to a FIN coast tile for a turn, which speeds up Agri by 1t and puts the settler at 70/100.
- T30: 1-pop whip Settler. Quarry finished. It hurts to whip off the quarry, especially since we regrow slowly, but I need settlers fast. Briefly consider that I should have chopped rather than improved the quarry, but that leaves too few forests for later settlers / Pyramids.
- T33: Found York 4777 of London (dry rice, clams). Worker 1 chops plains forest 41 of capital to sink 20h into a work boat 3t from now, which will improve the clams. Agri finished either on this turn or the previous one. AH next, since I'm worried about the lack of copper and horses seem likely; the plains cow at the capital helps as well. York languishes in mediocrity for a while, but can at least grow to size 2 and whip the third worker (food surplus is exactly 6). The placement of York means that I lose free trade routes (culture doesn't cover coast until London pops third-ring borders T50), but I gain a canal towards the third clams, preserve a forest, and can work a banana later. Hill might help if the jungle is poorly fogbusted by my AI "colleagues" (this will turn out not to be the case, barbs don't hurt me at all in this game).
- T37: WB finished. London size 2. Produce another worker there (7t). Wk1 chops forest 7 of cap.
- T40: York size 2, swap to Worker. Wk1 moves 4 into another forest.
- T42: London starts work on another Settler.
- T44: Animal Husbandry. Wk1 finished chop; moves onto plains cow and pastures. Research The Wheel next; lack of roads is getting noticeable and more than that, I want granaries / cottages. I figure we'll also need a useful military unit since the animal era is long past and Monty is close. We have horses alongside dry corn (can be irrigated later); that'll be city #3.
- T46: Squeezing in a scouting move with a warrior reveals plains copper S-SE of capital (haha), but any city to claim the tile would go foodless. No thanks. Workers finish pasture. I whip the settler at London, which probably bites me later as the capital whips off a good and just-improved tile (plains cow) once again, but I figure I'm in a race with Monty (which is true, but not in the way I expect at this point), as his second city has popped up south of my desired site some ten turns earlier. York's worker (that's #3) farms rice.
- T47: Workers 1,2 move 77, losing a turn, to finish the farm on the next turn. (Still no Wheel.)
- T48: Farm finished. The workers will jointly move onto the horse tile, losing two turns (!) -- but we can't get Wheel before T50, and everything is improved barring cottages, anyway. Could have foregone AH in hindsight, since the cow is whipped off and the plains horses don't matter so much (would've chosen that site regardless). Note my mistake. Not used to IMM tech costs yet. Founded Nottingham (dry corn, plains horse; plains/desert incense later; some grassland, 1 grass mine). That city can help with workers (later settlers); good production from tiles, but also good for whipping.
- T51: The Wheel; set research to Pottery (what else). York now connects to London via coastal trade route within own culture (doesn't need Sailing). Met Saladin, who founded Hinduism. Two workers road the horse 7 of Nottingham as the third one moves 31 onto corn and farms. Monty's second city is located 22221 of Notts, by the way.
- T52: Wk1 helps Wk3 farm corn, Wk2 pastures. London and York both grow back to size 2. York immediately starts another worker (will whip again), whereas London will grow to size 2 on a work boat (we'll need one for the third clams sooner or later), then start a settler at size 3. York's worker is slated to chop at London. None of the AIs have researched Writing yet.
- T55: Notts size2. Start Chariot, 6t (plan is to whip worker at size 3, also 6t). But there's also a grass hill I want to mine, which is forested. I can put the chop into a worker, of course, but the catch is that I need two workers to improve the hill before Notts grows to 3 (it would be stuck working a useless tile for at least one turn otherwise). That'll slow down London in turn. Pottery due soon.
- T64: Just chopped another settler at London (40h overflow into Pyramids). It's late for what's only the fourth city, but the late pottery, slow-growing capital and riverless land are growing very apparent (still researching Writing) -- the way out, though, shall be PHI Representation Scientists. The fourth city shall claim pigs and has three forests (shared with Nottingham, currently being pre-chopped), i.e. 60h into library (don't need granary at all for a while) -- 1-pop whip the library, run two scientists, and we'll get the Academy alongside the Pyramids (ETA T85)
- T66: Monty founds his third city 2 of the projected site, next to ivory. The settler watches helplessly from 1 tile away. The Aztec city's name appropriately includes "lol". At this point I reroute the settler towards the only other site (clams west of York) and my economy tanks as London starts to work on a granary and the Pyramids, which will hopefully get me back into the game. I research Sailing as well; lighthouses will help tremendously (3 out of 4 cities benefit) and the gems peninsula looks like another useful site down the road.
I build the Pyramids on T84 or so, then promptly forget to switch to Rep for 15 turns, all the while wondering why I'm still taking 15t to Alphabet.
What puts me back in the game after such a howler, though, is the capital working two Scientists and popping an Engineer on T100 due to the Mids. I delayed the scientists for a while to increase my chances of that happening (GLH > early Academy). No questions asked, I burn him on the Great Lighthouse (which has still not fallen!), trade Alpha to Saladin for IW and filler, and now that I can remove jungle, it's FIN cottage + Representation Scientists + infinite happiness heaven. Within the next 15 turns, my GNP easily doubles as I generate a GSci for an Academy in London.
Techwise, on T115 (the 1AD benchmark), the computer opponents are only up Monarchy (Saladin/De Gaulle; Mids render it near-useless, I don't have wine either) and Code of Laws (De Gaulle monopoly; non-ORG courthouses are useless with all the FIN cottages I'd have to whip off), while I have Aesthetics (due next turn) and Currency on everybody else. 200bpt is decent enough at this point, and I'll only grow larger as the two northern gold mines and the gems at Canterbury will be claimed within the next dozen turns. Diplo-wise, everybody is at Cautious (maybe De Gaulle isn't, he just went Confu) because I revolted to Buddhism (Fred recently switched to Hinduism) -- Monty was at Annoyed due to border tension and I'd really rather not have that. I'm anticipating a tech path of Calendar -> Code of Laws -> Literature -> bulb Philosophy -> Music (burn artist on Golden Age, revolt to Caste/Pacifism) -> Civil Service (revolt to Bureaucracy during GA) -> bulb Education (at least partially). The problem is that the AI still cling to their precious Polytheism because nobody has built the Temple of Artemis yet (
) and the National Epic will be difficult to build without any of IND, forests or Marble at the ready.
A few further mistakes, by the way: Newcastle, founded last turn, should already be working improved rice (will get that next turn, but still); Coventry lost its plains mine to a Fred plant I should have foreseen, screwing up the Granary whip I had planned; Nottingham's cottage 21 will be replaced by a farm sooner or later, since Tlatelolco
stole the tile I had wanted to farm originally (for irrigation of the corn). Likewise, that plains riverside cottage at London should be a farm, and the GLH should perhaps be in York because the Merchant points are rather undesirable. It might also have been wise to gain Great Wall failgold earlier, but I'm satisfied with pouring all my Stone-boosted overflow (including a 29/60 lighthouse 2-pop whip; tasty!) into the Pyramids.
Screenshot, 1 AD (save attached):
We don't have OB or resource deals with Sitting Bull because he's Monty's worst enemy (for some reason) and he'd probably demand I cancel them. No idea where De Gaulle is, but he looks most likely to be the runaway. Not pictured: Newcastle (dry rice / desert gold; but see mini-map). Will build 1-2 settlers in the next 15t.
If you haven't played the map, you might be wondering why Saladin isn't expanding southward onto that stretch of land where I founded Newcastle. Turns out there's an
extremely opportune peak that blocks his access by land, and he lacks a city that could send galleys into the little inland sea.
Lizzy has weird traits, but once Rep/Hereditary Rule happiness comes in, you can actually use them both at the same time.
, is that a mod?
I think you shouldn't go for niche strategies like that while trying to learn the basics. If you just play a normal game, domination/conquest will come eventually.
), the economy will have a broken back in 3 places. Okay, would get Alpha before all that capture gold runs out, and maybe with luck work enough coast tiles to not have units disband. But it wouldn't be fun. Didn't exactly help that an annoying barb galley popped up and wiped both clams either. Without Sailing, there is nothing to do about it.
