NCSG1-Suryavarman II!

[schwartz]

Here's my early thoughts, probably can't get both pink and green dots. yellow dot is for later, and cyan is a decent commerce site.
Solid pink is probably stronger, but the open pink (narrow lines) is a decent site as well since otherwise we'll have NO use for that wheat.

What do you guys think?? We can backfill the empty areas later. I'm really having some trouble finding good locations on this map

 

[Groogaroo]

Looks good to me, both cyan and green will make good city spots, green has the advantage of blocking off julius and hopefully making him settle to the west rather than towards us. If we want to rush willie then pink should be our priority (I think solid pink is the stronger spot).

Like you say yellow can till later, its a shame the dear isn't one tile higher, moving one south gains deer and keeps the other resources but will probably also gain more tundra/snow tiles.

Dot maps fine by me.

 

[Krick19]

I think the thicker pink is better, we don't want all that desert. And groogaroo, nice playing, your report was indepth too. If we can't get the pink, we have to go for the yellow. Willem will probably expand a lot. Last, we could also consider the lakeside plains hill that gets the pink copper with second pop. Oh and it's Qin, not Kublai. They mixed up the leaderheads in Vanilla, and switched them back.

 

[Bleys]

I suggest we pursue at least one early Wonder (Oracle for CoL, we need the courthouses to REX and the religion for happiness til Monarchy), and certainly a few more as we go on, like the GLib. Being Noble, we can REX out a few cities especially with an early CoL for courthouses.

I would prioritize 3 spots, the Copper for sure, and then the Sugar up to the NW, theres a nice tile that will give us 3 sugars, a cow and a corn, and the dye to the east of the sugars.

Maps like this take time to develop, but you would be shocked at how good that jungle is going to be. Even without a single resource, a full city of grassland with a couple river/lake tiles for early farms can be real commerce juggernauts. I actually think we should crank out 3 settlers and a few workers ASAP, we can still pump out some Axes all the while with good whip/chop overflow management. There are a few forests, not a ton, but I loaded the save and checked the jungle, and there are actually a bunch of forests running through it. Being EXP, we have a nice cushion for jungle city unhealthiness, and we should jump all over those 2 spots before Julius and Qin move into them, especially if our first city is going to be the western Copper. If they get the drop on us, we will be forced south into less than optimal land, and thats just death.

Rushing Willem is ok though, I think we can get at least 1 of those jungle sites settled while we do it. Its pretty important to get a couple early cities. With CRE, we can squeeze the non-CRE AIs out pretty quickly. If we secure enough land now, we can take a big tech lead and be sending in Cats and Maces against Archers and Spears. We already know we will have our UU available the minute we hit Construction, and Math is even more important now, since there are very few forests in our own little area, and the extra food from our UB will come in handy.

Also, another workboat could be useful to explore the islands and that coastal area to the NE, Groo is right, we may have some decent land up there as well.

 

[Groogaroo]

And groogaroo, nice playing, your report was indepth too.

Just following orders, Boss!

Oh and it's Qin, not Kublai. They mixed up the leaderheads in Vanilla, and switched them back.

opps!

 

[Krick19]

To summarize, we should probably build the worker>settler? and tech AH to get those cows hooked up fast, of course we need the wheel too. Good luck schwartz.

 

[Groogaroo]

AH is already started only two turns left, I suppose once we get the hammers online in the capital we could build the oracle pretty quickly, Bleys is right (I keep forgetting were expansive) settling in the jungle pre-ironwoking won't be too painful.

I'm hopin we have horses near by for chariots, at the moment we only have one warrior, fear the military might of the great Khmer empire! So we have no escorts for settlers just yet, aside from our scout.

Good luck Schwartz

 

[Krick19]

Put links to the chapters in the beginning (hate having to find them)

So AH is nearly done, great! we should do the wheel, sailing, and pottery/agriculture.

 

[schwartz]

Okay, I'm going to play now

 

[grandad1982]

Dot map is basically the same as mine. I prefer Schwartz's site to my site C.

I'm with Bleys that we should get at least a couple of cities up before rushing. That way we can support our illgotten gains!

My preferd settling order is A B C - obvious eh?

If we get the Oracle I'd deffinatly go CoL. Also the sooner we get HBR and construction the sooner we get our UU. So maybe this should be a high on our list of things to do?

If we settle the jungle cities we should hold off on war till they are more viable as we'll need hammers in workers. Also we should think about getting those calender resourses on line quikley as I count 4 that are easilly ours!

 

[S.ilver]

I like grandad1982's dotmap, and I'd agree with Cyan over C as well, it nets the entire river for more commerce goodness.

My only concern is overextension in the north. With those cities lacking hammers early on, we're going to need to whip out garrisons and units to defend them, in the likely event of war. Site B is also pretty far away, but then again this is noble so we will not bleed maintenance as badly.

 

[grandad1982]

Trouble is that desert ruins our near by settlind oppertunitie.

B should be ok. After all we're likely to send our army that way pretty soon so its secure and as you say maitinence shoul be not so bad.

Oh yer I'm colour blind so this talk of cyan is tricky. Can we number or letter these things? Or make them bold very different colours? Please?

 

[schwartz]

Round 3: 3000 BC - 2500 BC (20 Turns)

Turn 0:

Just check where our scout is and familiarize myself with the map.
Okay, let's begin!

Turn 1-3:
Just moving the scout around behind Willem. AH comes in and research is set to The Wheel. Here's where Horses popped.

Turn 4:

We meet these 2 guys to the west of Willem, that rounds off the opponents for this map:

Ugh.. Toku...
I don't know much about Suleiman, someone shed some light on his attitude/tech rate and so on?

Overall this is a decent set of AIs, Ragnar and Toku are unlikely to ever soften up enough to trade, we'll see how things go I guess.

Turn 5:
Worker finished, he heads over to pasture the cows, capital starts Settler. I think he should go for the sugars/corn/cow site near Julius which may need to be modified for horses.

Turn 6-10:
Uneventful, scout continues west to check out Suleiman's land. I move the warrior out of the capital to check the far south, then return to escort settler #1.

Turn 11:
We're right in the middle in terms of pop:

And Wheel is in. Tech set to masonry (possibly to pursue GW or the mids, this was probably ) -> agriculture, we'll be needing some farms soon. Our pasture is finished at last.

Turn 12-15:
Warrior didn't get a chance to reveal much, he's headed back to escort the settler at this point.

Turn 15-20:
More scouting, the worker finished putting a camp on the ivory on the last turn, scout has been moved. Settler will be in in 2, masonry in 1, the warrior is back and ready to escort the settler

A few screens of the known world:

And the capital:

Silver, make sure you change the tile from the 2f1h forest to the camp, I forgot to do that (it just got finished.)

ROSTER:
Krick19
Groogaroo
Schwartz - Just played
S.ilver - Up now!
Rex rgis of Ter - On deck
Grandad
Bleys

And finally, the save:

 

[schwartz]

Couple more things:
Willem just adopted slavery, so he can see that copper at this point. That site may be higher priority now. Especially since its the only (viable) source of copper that we can see at this point (horses are also only visible where they are in my screenshot.)

 

[Rub'Rum]

Hey I hadn't checked back on this. I'm not sure I'd call this a nice set of AIs, smells like war. And on a map like this I'd be tempted to aggressively settle, but you guys seem to be on it. I'm not sure which copper I'd go for first though. You decided on the further one I think. Probably a good idea, to deny it to your victim... Plus the other one is in tundra.

 

[grandad1982]

Nice round there schwartz.
The horses make the sugar site extra sweet!

I'd still consider settling site B first over copper as its a more powerfull long term site IMO.

I want to know whats east of us!

edit. Scrap site B first we need copper or war! I wonder where the Iron is?

 

[schwartz]

My guess is just the island chain, but we should get some more military out to check the south too.
Feel free to disregard any or all of the "CITY" signs I put up. I was just labeling what we'd discussed.

 

[Groogaroo]

Good round schwartz, you did a better job with the scout than me.

Did anyone else check out toku's land... lookit all those floodplains why couldn't we get a start like that. I'm glad Toku and Rangnar are far away out in the west I just hope they don't have too much space and nice land.

It's an even call on whether to go for copper city or suger city.

Sure sugar city is a better spot, but I don't think it will get grabbed by the AI just yet, Julius will go for the Gems first. Copper city on the other hand I think willem will go for.

I don't know a huge amount about suli, only played against him in one of my games. In that game he was 2nd from top on the leaderboard, teched reasonably well but he did have alot of land. He also backstabbed me at pleased!

 

[Bleys]

Hmm, islands . . . I gotta say, I am addicted to the Colossus these days, heh, I always look for an excuse to build it. Those lakes would be 3F3C with a lighthouse and Colossus, strong tiles that dont require an improvement and cant be pillaged. Of course, they fade later in the game, but on this map, we should have some good cities later.

In the meantime, we should get a workboat out there exploring. When we eventually pop borders for the other clam, it can work it for trade bait, maybe get one of those gems off Julius for it. We want to avoid trading too many health resources, not because we need them, but its the main city-restricting factor of many AIs, and seafood on Pangaea is worth Gold or Gems.

 

[S.ilver]

Got it. Won't play it until tomorrow night, for discussion purposes, and because I don't have time till then.

I personally think we should go for the copper site first, as it's a shorter route from the capital, and then we won't be pressed to build a road through the desert immediately. It's also closer to Willem, who we want to be killing first, as he could potentially compete for us for city sites.

EDIT: How many turns am I playing?