NCSG IV - The Return of the Mummy!

[Krick19]

My set:

Turn 0:
Nothing to do.

Turn 1-2
Nothing.

Turn 3
Worker-Warrior

Turn 4
Start pasture-izing the pigs.

Turn 5
Christianity FIDL
We meet opponent 2:

Spoiler :

Turn 6-7
Nothing.

Turn 8
Mining is in, I switch to masonry.

Turn 9-11
Nothing.

Turn 12
Thebes grows to size 2, warrior in in 4.

Turn 13-15
Nothing.

Turn 16
Warrior is in, I start to explore.

Turn 17
Nothing

Turn 18
Cyrus converts to slavery.

Turn 19-20
Nothing

So masonry's in next turn. Some more pics:

Spoiler :

 

[S.ilver]

No save, but I can see that a Chariot rush might not be the greatest idea, with other ancient age civs around. Pericles is going to be impossible to crack once he gets metal.

 

[Krick19]

Sorry bout that, put it up.

 

[S.ilver]

Right. I got it, and can possibly play it in about 24 hours.

Do we have any consensus on the tech path? Both Myst and BW are fairly critical for our game plan. Getting Myst first means we can get the Obs online for faster priests.

Then again, we have a massive abundance of food in the capital, and not much else until we get BW to whip our capital and clear out some of the trees for production (although not too many due to health problems).

 

[schwartz]

Well Obelisks won't be a priority until after we can pop that great spy.

Although we should discuss how we want to do things espionage-wise.
Pericles is an excellent techer in my experience, so we'll likely want to focus on him.
This makes Cyrus a more attractive target for a construction era war, so we may want to head up math-currency-construction after we get our religion.

 

[Groogaroo]

Just to let you know I'm back

 

[grandad1982]

I agree that a GP isn't critical till after a GSpy so we can probably hold off on Myst till BW is in.

If we don't find horses or bronze soon we might need to detour via archery. Slow but could be important.

If we start to focus on Pericles and find another strong techer nearby then we can always switch over our focus.

After we have the worker techs and Myst we can get the religious techs whilst working up to construction. As long as we have them by the time the GP is born thats fine.

We might want to target Alpha before Maths so we can get our spys on the march.

What do people reckon to the Mids as well as the GW? Might be a bit hammer expensive if stone doesn't show up soon and would slow are early expansion but would boost our priests loads.

 

[GatlingGun]

FYI for all in case you haven't seen it: VirusMonster gave a really good overview of how to effectively operate an espionage economy here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=260902#EEvsManualResearch

As far as our Wonder and Tech path... I'd like to try to dotmap our cities and see what we get... I wouldn't mind shooting for a (probably hopeless) pyramids gambit if we have two good production sites early on...

I'll take a look at the land and see if I can come up with a dotmap for our position so far... this would drive a lot of my thoughts on how we proceed. If we all agree a chariot rush isn't feasible, I think blocking land with our first 4 cities should be the highest priority.

UPDATE:
Not much dotmapping to do yet... we need more exploration before we can dotmap.

 

[Bleys]

What is our play order and how many do we have? No worries, I am happy to play just about anything with you guys, having a blast playing these.

 

[Groogaroo]

Here's the play order... there are seven of us

Groogaroo
schwartz
Krick19
S.ilver
grandad1982
GatlingGun
Bleys

S.ilver is currently playing his set

I'd love for us to have a go at getting the pyramids, seems fitting. Hard to discuss overall strats untill we explore a bit more but I think the sooner we get bronzeworking the better. If we do go for the pyramids we'll need to hold on to those forests.

 

[S.ilver]

3000BC (40):

Preflight check. More exploration is sorely needed. The death of our initial warrior didn't help our bid much, because we need to find the other AIs...

We lack data on our immediate surroundings even. We know there is coast to the north and the west (at least I hope that should be evident), but we don't know what kind of seafood is off in that direction, making any city planning there difficult. Granted, fishing is not a priority tech for us at the moment, so that might not hurt too much. We primarily need to find the enemy and find some stone...

We have far too much food in Thebes so we'll need some mines up fast to suck up excess food since we can't run specs yet.

2975BC (41):

The warrior gets attacked by the lion and wins. Witnessing our victory is this guy's archer.

Ok, great that makes 3 AIs with classical age UUs... Fun.

Masonry comes in, so dial bronze in 17 turns.

Warrior has to heal for 4 turns. Dang.

I start mining the hill that our worker is on.

2950BC (42):

Zzz...

2925BC (43):

Thebes pops the Warrior, so dial another one, as we have nothing else to build. Warrior in 6. I notice the new warrior fulfills the "We demand military protection" angry face. Well, we need intel, so you'll have to wait another 6 turns for your military protection. Send the warrior south.

2900BC (44):

Zzz...

2875BC (45):

Thebes grows to size 4 hitting the happy cap. Warrior now in 2 due to worked forest plains hill.

The other warrior is also healed, and we move NE, discovering some silver in the tundra hills 3 tiles north of the gold.

2850BC (46):

Zzz...

2825BC (47):

Gilga adopts slavery, so guess who has BW, and easy access to his UU?

The warrior is done in Thebes. He fortifies, and we dial yet another, before we start on a settler.

2800BC (48):

We finish mining the hill and move to the other one to mine. Actually, we finished the mine last turn, but I goofed and forgot to switch it. Sorry guys, lost 1 food and 1 commerce there...

I also goof and land our eastern warrior next to a lion on flat land. >.<

2775BC (49):

We live through the attack, and get a promotion. I get Woody 1 and fortify for 4 turns to heal. Again.

To the south, we find water... That doesn't bode well for our expansion plans...

2750BC (50):

A lion swoops out of the fog going at our southern warrior. I put him in the woods.

2725BC (51):

We live, the lion dies.

We are middle of the road in wealth.

Not at all relevant at this stage in the game really...

The warrior is done, and I dial a settler in 12 turns. Warrior headed west to explore our coast and pick up slack for the south warrior.

2700BC (52):

Zzz...

2675BC (53):

Ok, exciting turn. Pericles adopted Slavery. And TWO lions appeared next to our warriors. Sheesh. Did we turn on raging barbs?

Look what I found with the eastern warrior though

It's a bit far off... but not impossible, especially for something expensive like the Mids. Although it IS in the middle of the desert with nothing going for it.

2650BC (54):

Both warriors survive, taking some heavy hits, so now all our warriors are healing instead of exploring! Don't you just love that? Oh, and another lion appeared to the south of our westbound warrior...

Well, with Thebes fully improved at the moment, we'll dig some roads from the mine we made, in case metal is there.

2625BC (55):

Zzz...

2600BC (56):

Zzz... Wait, BW next turn! And we finished the road!

2575BC (57):

BW is in and I revolt to slavery immediately. No copper in sight anywhere.

I dial for Mysticism in 8 turns. Oh, and I land our freshly healed south warrior next to a lion!

2550BC (58):

Amazingly, the lion does not attack. I gleefully retreat to a hill tile.

2525BC (59):

Of course, now that we are on the hill, I get attacked. We still win, and we get a promotion. Nice. Buyout combat this time and fortify again.

Westbound warrior finally discovers the coast, and sees it's for a small bay. Which makes sense because this is pangea right?

2500BC (60):

And that's it. The worker has not moved, because I don't know what to do with him. I don't want to build another farm just yet, as we drown in food, but me building roads is not useful either.

Here's the known world with the known resources.

Final Score
S.ilver 6, Lions ZERO


ROSTER
Groogaroo
schwartz
Krick19
S.ilver <-- Just Played --
grandad1982 >> Up Now <<
GatlingGun <-- On Deck --
Bleys

 

[schwartz]

War chariots kick the crap out of Gilgamesh's UU. Unfortunately you can't rush him anyway because he has protective archers with quick cultural defense bonuses.

 

[Groogaroo]

Final Score
S.ilver 6, Lions ZERO

Well done fending of the pesky lions!

At first glance our land looks a bit pants and resource sparse, but its actually not that bad partly thanks to river system running through of lands. We have 4 happy resources close to the capital (2 of them, Gold/Silver, early happy resources) and another 2 a bit further a field. Health resources could be a bit of a problem particularly with all the floodplains were inevitably going to have to settle.

Settling a city for the stone wouldn't actually be that bad, but probably our priorities should be settling a gold river city as pre-GreatSpy we won't be able to run any specialists and then AI blocking cities (when we finally find out where they are!).

With the lack of horses/copper we should probably go Hunting > Archery next, although I'd rather not, I don't think we have much of a choice until we find something better.

 

[GatlingGun]

OK, I need to run to work soon, but this is my first cut at a dotmap... I am prioritizing settling on hills, so city C is giving up the gold commerce in favor of defensive bonuses (as our border city).

It would be pretty important IMHO to settle in A, B, C order and all first builds should be an Oblisk for the early land grab.

Thoughts?

AFTERTHOUGHT EDIT:
With Gilgamesh as a potential neighbor, I'm in favor of pumping the first 3 settlers out as quickly as possible and possibly giving up the Great Wall.

 

[grandad1982]

Got it. Nice lion bashing!

I agree with Groogaroo on hunting> archery even down to my distaste for it (other techs I want to purse).

Oh man why is this so resourse poor?

Quite like A and B. A is along way off but if we want to grab mids its probably a must.

Not so sure about settling on the gold (C). I can see your reasonong but even if we work the hill that city has almost no production.

Don't think we need to give up the GW as it can be built using whip overflow.

Will prosuce my own dot map soon.

Lets hope some more health resourses show up in the fog.

 

[Groogaroo]

I agree, A & B are fine but I think we definatley need to settle c so it can work the gold (probably 1 South West once the fog is revealed a bit). Once the wall is up we have about 75 turns before we get a great spy and thats 75 turns without running any other specialists, so we need all the early commerce we can get.

We have a bucket of food so whipping Workers/Settlers into the wall sounds good to me. Gilgamesh is probably fairly far away, we met him on turn 40ish, until we know any better I say we stick to the plan.

 

[GatlingGun]

We will know more about our settling priorities as soon as we find the neighboring AI borders... I still maintain that if Gilgamesh is anywhere close that we box him in ASAP.

I put C there because that's a pretty strategic point to get short borders and keep AIs from expanding into our space from the southwest... it's more of a land/gold grab exercise than actually finding utility in the site. I was just trying to keep our AI settling battles to one side of the map (east... towards site A)...

Anyway those are just my thoughts...

 

[grandad1982]

Ok I played the first 4 turns of my set and the settler is ready to roll.

I won't settle till we reach a broad agreement on where he should go.

PFT

I move the healing warrior 1SW into the forest to see some more land and as it gives a better defensive bonus.

Clams! Another health resourse. Good.

I move the worker to the riverside forested grassland hill.

1

Start a chop


2

A barb warrior appears to the SW of our capital (in fact right on GatlinGuns site B)

I whip the settler and for some reason put the GW at the front of the queue this leads to some strangeness.


3

Settler isn't done!! I quikley put it back to the top. I really didn't expect this to happen.

We suffer a research set back and lose 8 from Myst.


4

We meet this guy (possibly from the SW?).

Aaaarrggghhh he's another fast expanding leader. Still could be far off as we only just met him.

Settler done.

Ok heres my initial attempt at a dot map.

Heres the un-edited screen if you want a crack

Spoiler :

OK.
Numbers are mainly there to help id the sites as I'm colour blind so saying yellow or green doesn't really help as I can't really tell them apart.

IMO sequence could be; 1 for the stone, 3 for the gold and land blocking, 2/4 - depends on how close the AIs are in the SW - 2 gives cows (health) and completes the SW land block, whilst 4 is a good production site and would be good if we're hitting the mids by this point, then 5/6 again not that important (I know 5 has a coast tile and no sea acces but it grabs food, production and 3 resourses [bloody mountain]).

Didn't dot more as wanted to see whats in the fog to the N and S (come on sea food!) first.

OK discuss!

 

[Krick19]

2 is my favorite, stone really cuts down the mids.

 

[Groogaroo]

I say settle either of the southwest blockers, 2 or 3.

3, is my prefered, even though we can't build workboats yet the gold will really help and weve got a fair bit of tech to get through.

2, is probably the more sensible option tho.