News: GOTM 10 Pre-game Discussion

[godotnut]

I'm definitely not settling in place. Having a capital without the health bonus of fresh water is, from my experience, a bad proposition. You'll be surprised at how quickly health becomes an issue, and at the very least, you'll waste time on buildings you otherwise wouldn't need to build. Settling one SE lets you chop while still coming out better health-wise than those who settle in place.

I'm not worried about losing the fish. Chances are one fish and a cow are more than enough for an excellent capital, and the fish is better off used by a settlement to the west. I agree that it looks like that western landmass is connected. Probably we are on a bay.

Yes, this devalues some of the Northern land, but that's OK. It allows you to not worry about it until much later, since the AI won't settle it either. The capital will cut off that peninsula, and I'll save the marginal land for one of my later cities (I plan to found or conquer nine cities).

Personally, I'll probably move my settler to the hill two squares to the southeast to get a nice view. I'm willing to risk losing my first turn of growth if it means I can have a great resource, like stone, gold, or gems, in my capital's radius.

As for whipping, in the practice games I played, I whipped only a little--one workboat and two axemen. I prefer a middle approach, using the whip when really needed, but also not ignoring cottages.

 

[Mad Professor]

This was debated in GOTM9 Pre-game discussion. One of the claim was:

"The level of the barbarians is based on the lowest level of common tech among all playing civs."
You can read this from there :
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4346607&postcount=128

According to my own experience, I 'd say it is not quite that simple, but not so far from true ...
What seems certain is that probability of axeman appearing grows with civs acquiring (especially player civ ?) BW.

I have DEFINITELY seen barb axemen before I have researched BW if I deliberately leave it late. The last comment from EEO above is probably more like it.

 

[godotnut]

I don't know if Ainwood is reading this, but, if it's not inconvenient, it would be awesome to get the save file after midnight tonight. I don't have to work tomorrow, so I have a rare night that I can stay up late and play Civ.

No big thing.

 

[Ozbenno]

I have DEFINITELY seen barb axemen before I have researched BW if I deliberately leave it late. The last comment from EEO above is probably more like it.

My understanding is...

If all civs have a tech, then the barbarians have that tech.

If the barbarians found a city, they begin researching themselves, so can discover a tech before you do.

In RB18, a SG where we were teamed with the raging barbarians, the barbarians actually founded Islam .

 

[Shillen]

I'm still extremely undecided on whether to go bronzeworking early or not. I just did 3 more very quick test games all going bronze working early. In two of them there was no copper nearby (nor was there any in the other two games I played previously) and in the third the only copper was in the tundra and even though I rushed out a settler and chopped an obelisk the barbs attacked and overtook the city before I got the copper hooked up.

So from my test games I come to the conclusion that early bronzeworking is a very bad idea and early archery is much wiser. But the dilemma comes in because I can't imagine Ainwood not giving us any copper really close by on immortal difficulty. And if it's really close by (especially if it's in workable range by the capital) then delaying bronze working would be a grave mistake.

 

[Ribannah]

I am inclined to move the settler se,se and then perhaps found 1 north or even further 1 south of there, depending on what I see. Two fish is really not necessary, and I'd like to work that hill on the river instead of settling on it. But the main reason is that I'm worried to spoil a good location for the second town if I settle in place, either 1 north of the starting poisition or 2 northeast. Also keep in mind that we are on the northern hemisphere and settling a bit further south may make the capital more central and may help reduce the possibilities for a rival. After moving the Warrior we'll know more.

I may go for Hinduism, by the way.

 

[Vynd]

I can't resist making a few more comments on the "whip or not" debate before I drop the issue, go and actually play the game, and discover there's marble, three gold, and, um, 6 elephants to the east, and no one in their right mind would settle in place.

DaviddesJ has done a good job of showing how you can use Slavery to get maximum hammers, at the cost of a considerable amount of commerce. Actually I wonder if he may have exagerated the benefits a bit. It might be difficult to align things so that you can whip two pop at once and get a full 88 hammers at a cost of one unhappiness for 15 turns.

On the flip side, if you're not whipping two pop at once then you don't need as much of a food surplus. So you can work hills or cottages more and the fish less, for better production or commerce. A hybrid of DaviddesJ's approach and Ribannah's, in other words. People seem to be discussing slavery and cottages as if they are incompatible, but grassland cottages are at least as good for a slaver as mines are, since they'll help your city grow and mines won't. To be sure, cottages will be started a bit later and grow a bit slower for someone focusing on slavery, but they'll still be productive.

I think Ribannah has made a good case that slavery isn't necessarily the way to go. But at times I think he's overstated things a bit. For instance, leaving Bronze Working out of the early research will let you get to Writing somewhat earlier than a Slaver would get to Pottery, thanks to more commerce from cottages. But not way earlier. Bronze Working and Writing cost the same to research, I believe, so if the Slaver makes Pottery his next priority after BW he'll get there long before a Library could be built by the second player. That doesn't mean that going for the early Library is worse than concentrating on BW and slavery. Just that it isn't clearly superior, either.


Really, if there's one thing that all of this discussion has convinced me of it is that regardless of your strategy, workboating both fish early on is unnecessary. Even if you're whipping like crazy, you'll get all the food you need from one fish. And if you don't need the food you're probably better off working cottages or mines than you are either fish. So if I build a second workboat early he's going scouting.

 

[volfan37132]

Warrior moves se. Even if the warrior sees nothing settler moves se and
settles on the riverbank. I would really like to move se and e, but I would
rather settle on turn 1. This saves the forest. I'll be anxious to hear stories
about settling in place for the 2 fish and whip to see how that turns out.
Religion is out of the question. I'll research fishing first and begin building a
warrior so the city can grow to size 2 working the cow tile. Build #2 = worker.
Build #3 = workboat hopefully I can grow the city to size 3 and finish the
workboat at the same time. Build #4 = settler.

I don't think many other people will do this, but I'm considering going for
hunting followed by archery next. It's a nasty dead end but it just
isn't very expensive and those archers are nice to have when you are
waiting for an obelisk border expansion for your copper or your copper gets
pillaged. I do think copper will be nearby.

I'm probably guilty of overvaluing roads, but I'll go for the wheel next.
Besides, its needed for pottery anyway.

By no means do I plan to waste the second fish, one of my settlers will
settle 4 squares west and maybe s of where the settler is in the
screenshot. This will be given a high priority as well as locations
with horses / copper or to a lesser extent other resources I mentioned in
a previous post. Besises the one settler we begin with I'll probably build
two more, then I'll start giving the horses a workout and / or sharpening
the axes.

I'll come back and re read this after I start playing. The save is now
available. Good luck people!

 

[jesusin]

In this game Archery is not a dead end. It is a prerequisite to Cho-Ko-Nus.
I would rather trade for it later than to research it myself, though.

 

[Baldrek]

This will be an intresting game, hopefully I will not be decimated before 1AD.

 

[Jorunkun]

I
This is the best I can do so far. Any other comments or recommendations welcome. Thanks for Jorunkum and others for their ideas.

The big questions I will have will be what to research after Animal Husbandry and whether to build a third workboat for scouting or build warriors. I am thinking sailing for the instant connection between the first 3 cities, potentially speeding connection to copper or horses. If copper is close I may risk it and skimp on building units until I have it up then hope I can get a couple of axemen up in time to save myself from barbarians.

Congrats, you hacked it I think - the ideal start for maximising captial yield and production. Unless there is an urgent need to get a settler out earlier or even more promising tiles nearby, your sequence will be what I will play. Good work!

After AH, I would go for writing - early open borders make life with the AI a lot easier, give you libraries (capital can support 2 scientists for early gs) and a headstart on alphabet in case you have neighbours to trade with.

Unless barbs are a problem, I would strongly suggest a third wb for exploration; they can go really far on archipelago and open up distant AIs for trade, which is a huge advantage.

Also with you on skipping archery, if at all possible. If you make nice with a neighbour, you can often ask for it as a free gift on immortal.

Good luck!

J,

 

[Jorunkun]

My understanding is...

If all civs have a tech, then the barbarians have that tech.

If the barbarians found a city, they begin researching themselves, so can discover a tech before you do.

In RB18, a SG where we were teamed with the raging barbarians, the barbarians actually founded Islam .

Barbwatchers, take note - this is probably the answer to longstanding debate on brab axemen. If this is correct, it follows that delaying bw is not guaranteed to avaoid barb axemen, as the barbs will research it by themselves eventually. However, if you research bw very early barb axes will likely appear earlier as well, as the immortal AIs with their techbonus will all get it very soon.

 

[jayeffaar]

Now that the saves are out, I am facing an interesting dilemma. I don't expect to be good enough to stand a chance of winning at this level, no matter what. I'd do better with the Adventurer save, but even that probably won't allow me to win. But after following this thread all week, it doesn't feel right to me to use the adventurer game, with all the extra stuff that makes most of the things discussed in here irrelevant.

I think I'll play the regular save, even though it's completely out of my league. I'll consider it a moral victory if I can make it alive to the end of the game, and not be in last place in points.

 

[oopsy poopsy]

I was playing my own test game, not a match for the map but similar and I have a couple questions/observations. A 3food bonus city and the whip are very powerful regardless of the happiness cap. In this case if you don't worry about the unhappy faces for the citizens, you can think of them as hammers invested in a project and as soon as ready whip an expensive building for 3 citizens with only 1 unhappy and keep on cruising. I think this is how you keep capital working as a size 3 or 4 and still make ample use of the whip, when it's high enough food to run multiple unhappy guys and still grow. I also found that 1 worker per city is a lot because of the happiness. Sure there's roads and chopping and maybe if you're in a heavily forested area that's a good number, but I didn't run nearly that many and had tiles improved long before I needed them. Also, I don't think barbs are gonna be a problem on a map like this. Snaky continents are pretty thin and kinda chunky by my experience so it usually only takes 2 (maybe 3) units to fogbust around your capital and create a bottleneck with defense to destroy the spawning barbs. In my test I'm at 300AD with a slight edge in tech (this suprised the crap out of me) although I've only met half the civs. So I'm curious about a couple things: for seasoned immortal players, what's usually a decent ratio of worker:city for a map like this? Also, someone mentioned they were gonna head for 9 captured/settled cities. That sounded like all you were planning on getting and I'm curious what's the victory condition for this? I'm asking 'cause although I feel good about how my game has gone I just can't see how I'm gonna beat them and with only 9 cities diplo seems like the only thing, but getting that many votes sounds daunting. I'm happy with how the test game has gone, but looking at the size of the 3 civs near me, I'm really worried that I'm on the edge of watching them rapidly blow by me as they've pretty much finished their expansion and are about to see their development spike to huge levels.

 

[Thrallia]

if they are only planning on 9 cities, they are probably going for a cultural victory

 

[Snetsinger]

Having 9 cities allows you to build enough temples so that you are able to build the 3rd tier religious building(s) in your three culture cities.

 

[oopsy poopsy]

Thanks. I shoulda figured that one out on my own. Personally, I can't imagine a cultural victory with religions being almost impossible to come by early and an arch map where it'll be hard to spread, but if the goal is 9 cities that has to be the intended victory. I'm gonna enjoy reading cultural victory reports later.

 

[csarmi]

Hi all! Since moving the warrior first, and to move it to south-east is completely obvious (everyone will do so... or who din't consider it, will sure do it after looking at this topic), can we talk like we know what it will reveal?

I'm asking it cause that might reveal like 3-6 more tiles (not sure) and we could possibly have a better conversation here... or is that against the spirit of these opening threads?

If I'm already stupid asking this, my apologies -- I'm new to GoTM games.

 

[Lexad]

No, it ain't allowed.

 

[Airny]

Do you know the feeling, if you loaded the game and you wanna move your units, but you know it will be a choice without return so you don't and quit the game again?
)