PaulisKhan
Physicist
After running a few map tests and one full test game [for space race only]; a couple of things I noticed:
High probability of a civ directly to our east (I'll be running E-SE with my warrior to try and make contact), close enough for convenient worker steals (this is based on multiple map regens and comparing relative positions of civs).
This map type is grassland rich but only a moderate amount of food resources. It's definitely a cottage spam map. Almost every single city is grassland (with multiple long rivers).
Traditional (at least my version of traditional) production rich cities are few and far between. Definitely worth keeping a few heavily forested cities for mid/late-game lumbermills/national park.
The best early game production cities look to be multiple mined grassland hills cities with a couple of food resources. Very very few plains hills. The coolest thing I noticed about working grassland hills (rather than a few plains hills) is that you can work twice as many, which means twice as many random resource pops!!! fun stuff =D (clearly I'm new to this map type, so I'm easily amused).
My main production city was working 9 grassland hills, a few map regens shows that this should be pretty typical.
There is potential for a large variation in civ density across the map. Knowing our luck this will be one of the oddly generated maps with us jammed in between civs, while two rex happys civs on the far side have all the time and room in the world to expand >.<
The donut width allows for two well spaced inland cities, or three cities across with 2 of them being coastal on opposite sides.
Space race games will probably be entirely self researched. The AI just can't keep up.
Rexing will pay for itself pretty quickly if you get those cottages down early. There's usually plenty of room on this map and it's all good land. As long as you get pottery before your economy crashes you should be able to recover from anything >.> I think I was too cautious in my test game.
Something that worked well for me was to grab Confusionism from COL and spread it to the nearest neighbour without a religion and make him my BFF. It's a nice map to have a friend blocking off one entire border. Not because you're afraid of him, but because it saves hammers being "wasted" on defensive units. Latter on I just used him as a Hammer to solve my problems for me, If I saw him getting in trouble I'd gift a couple of military techs and some gold in order to help him keep the rabble in check. This leaves you free to focus on teching and saves your precious cottages from being pillaged. Just don't let him get out of control!!!!
I was able to pick up enough seafood resources to make Sids Sushi a better (ok, equal) alternative to State Property for working multiple workshops. If you regenerate a few maps you'll notice that everyone is on the coast which almost always means a high density of seafood around start locations. Grab a couple of capitals and you'll be set for later.
The mall is overpowered in late game >.< First time I've ever built one. Looked average on paper, I boggled at the uberness in practice. Every city got one.
The civil service (Bureau) slingshot proved to be well worth it. I'm now tempted to position my capital to get all 5 grassland hills, especially if I can find a food resource on the other side of that row of hills. I might spend a turn or two peeking over the other side to see, then again I might chicken out.
I ended up wonderspamming with my test game capital once I had my support cities established, it probably cost me quite a few more turns than if I'd built research instead, but wonders are soooo pretty.
Thank you for the welcome =)
Although I tend to shy away from non conquest/dom victory conditions I've still paid close attention to your advice and guides. And naturally Murky Waters is mandatory reading for me.
You've taught me a lot, so thank you!
I just observed exactly what you advised in my testgame. It would be pointless to workshop the capital. Definitely research limited.
And as I mentioned earlier, I found the CS sling to be well worth it, even if I then wasted much of the hammer production on silly wonders, I got distracted by splicing a religious economy onto my cottage economy which was what got me started on the wonders in the first place
My finish date was a 1936 Space victory (avoided an accidental diplo victory along the way) but the land is so good for research I'm expecting to see people knock 150 years off that without breaking much of a sweat.
I can't remember the last time I did a space race either, so my experience with getting the proper tech path is essentially zero.
Then again, as far as I could tell it's just a case of "research everything nub".
-edit- I almost forgot, given the relative paucity of hammers I found the AP to be invaluable. A guaranteed +4 base hammers in every city (and then of course you just have to go and get the SC, SM and US >.< to complete the set)
High probability of a civ directly to our east (I'll be running E-SE with my warrior to try and make contact), close enough for convenient worker steals (this is based on multiple map regens and comparing relative positions of civs).
This map type is grassland rich but only a moderate amount of food resources. It's definitely a cottage spam map. Almost every single city is grassland (with multiple long rivers).
Traditional (at least my version of traditional) production rich cities are few and far between. Definitely worth keeping a few heavily forested cities for mid/late-game lumbermills/national park.
The best early game production cities look to be multiple mined grassland hills cities with a couple of food resources. Very very few plains hills. The coolest thing I noticed about working grassland hills (rather than a few plains hills) is that you can work twice as many, which means twice as many random resource pops!!! fun stuff =D (clearly I'm new to this map type, so I'm easily amused).
My main production city was working 9 grassland hills, a few map regens shows that this should be pretty typical.
There is potential for a large variation in civ density across the map. Knowing our luck this will be one of the oddly generated maps with us jammed in between civs, while two rex happys civs on the far side have all the time and room in the world to expand >.<
The donut width allows for two well spaced inland cities, or three cities across with 2 of them being coastal on opposite sides.
Space race games will probably be entirely self researched. The AI just can't keep up.
Rexing will pay for itself pretty quickly if you get those cottages down early. There's usually plenty of room on this map and it's all good land. As long as you get pottery before your economy crashes you should be able to recover from anything >.> I think I was too cautious in my test game.
Something that worked well for me was to grab Confusionism from COL and spread it to the nearest neighbour without a religion and make him my BFF. It's a nice map to have a friend blocking off one entire border. Not because you're afraid of him, but because it saves hammers being "wasted" on defensive units. Latter on I just used him as a Hammer to solve my problems for me, If I saw him getting in trouble I'd gift a couple of military techs and some gold in order to help him keep the rabble in check. This leaves you free to focus on teching and saves your precious cottages from being pillaged. Just don't let him get out of control!!!!
I was able to pick up enough seafood resources to make Sids Sushi a better (ok, equal) alternative to State Property for working multiple workshops. If you regenerate a few maps you'll notice that everyone is on the coast which almost always means a high density of seafood around start locations. Grab a couple of capitals and you'll be set for later.
The mall is overpowered in late game >.< First time I've ever built one. Looked average on paper, I boggled at the uberness in practice. Every city got one.
The civil service (Bureau) slingshot proved to be well worth it. I'm now tempted to position my capital to get all 5 grassland hills, especially if I can find a food resource on the other side of that row of hills. I might spend a turn or two peeking over the other side to see, then again I might chicken out.
I ended up wonderspamming with my test game capital once I had my support cities established, it probably cost me quite a few more turns than if I'd built research instead, but wonders are soooo pretty.
Welcome PaulisKhan!
Your strategy is very soundand it is what I would do if going for space. Only a minor detail: I'd never workshop my capital's cottages, at least not until after I've finished researching.
The space race is research limited, not hammer limited. While you research the last techs, mainly from the capital, other cities slowly build the available parts. Building the last parts takes just a few turns.
As for CS sling, I wonder myself. Maybe test games are needed.
Thank you for the welcome =)
Although I tend to shy away from non conquest/dom victory conditions I've still paid close attention to your advice and guides. And naturally Murky Waters is mandatory reading for me.
You've taught me a lot, so thank you!
I just observed exactly what you advised in my testgame. It would be pointless to workshop the capital. Definitely research limited.
And as I mentioned earlier, I found the CS sling to be well worth it, even if I then wasted much of the hammer production on silly wonders, I got distracted by splicing a religious economy onto my cottage economy which was what got me started on the wonders in the first place
My finish date was a 1936 Space victory (avoided an accidental diplo victory along the way) but the land is so good for research I'm expecting to see people knock 150 years off that without breaking much of a sweat.
I can't remember the last time I did a space race either, so my experience with getting the proper tech path is essentially zero.
Then again, as far as I could tell it's just a case of "research everything nub".
-edit- I almost forgot, given the relative paucity of hammers I found the AP to be invaluable. A guaranteed +4 base hammers in every city (and then of course you just have to go and get the SC, SM and US >.< to complete the set)
. Rest assured that it will not be there when the game is released. I'll try and update the screenshot in the next day or so. Thanks azzaman333 for spotting it 
