Noble Zara

[PeterWolf]

Figured it's time to post another game and get some more advice! Last game with Wang Kon I made lots of diplo mistakes (refuse demand, allowing peace vassals) and it turned out being a desperate unit spam towards Domination, without too much planning though.

This time I still wanna play according to the map, and if a Domination plan is possible, then I'll go for it. What I don't want is to get desperate again.

I got Zara Yaqob this time: CRE + ORG. CRE will save me a lot of time early on, and ORG just saves money in general
Mining also saves some time early on, but considering the start I'd prefer Agriculture to Hunting...

The starting position

Spoiler :

That jungle tile to the north indicates I'm slightly south of the equator, and there is coast to the northeast it seems.
I see no reason not to settle in place, the land to the south can't possibly be so bad to force a move...
By the way, map is Fractal, no huts, no events.
The Save:

 

[NetGear]

Settle on the sugar. You can do it in turn 0 so why not. Also south is mostly forest so you probably wont be missing anything.

 

[vranasm]

settle on sugar for sure.

for techs I would start with agri, then probably wheel+pottery and cottage that dye.

2x corns ~ 12T of improvement after the worker, so you have time to finish the pottery.
There is even that hill unforested for improving without BW.

Then BW.

should be really strong start ;-)

 

[Sian]

well ... 2s1e is bare so there might be something there (through since its plains it can't be a commence which would be the only thing i'd stay for, since you're Creative and if its metal/horses you have it engulfed with culture before/shortly after building second city)

Settle on Sugar (which is a very meh'ish tile to start with)

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Settle on the sugar. You can do it in turn 0 so why not. Also south is mostly forest so you probably wont be missing anything.

I'd be a little concerned with the coastline? to the north east. It looks to me as though settling on the sugar would block access to some potentially interesting tiles.

So maybe send the scout that way, expecting to settle on the sugar unless a clear problem appears.


But really, this is only because the move to the sugar is so clearly strong. I'm certainly not going to fault you if you settle in place and Get On With It [tm].

 

[PeterWolf]

The surroundings:

Spoiler :

Awesome land. And Shaka is the closest neighbour, to the south somewhere.

Tech tree:

Spoiler :

It went Ag -> TW -> Pottery. I'm in doubt about whether AH or BW after that... I think BW is best to chop out Settlers, there's so much to settle here.

City screen:

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What a spot eh? I'm thinking of getting maybe 2 Warriors then a Settler, at size 4 already...
The worker is currently farming the 2nd corn, then I think he'll mine the naked plains hill, cottage the riverside Dye, and farm the Rice. I could get some advice on that order though.
Best thing is I don't have to sacrifice any tiles to irrigate the Rice! Awesome food.
The Save:

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

It went Ag -> TW -> Pottery.

I'm not keen on that - you don't have anything to hook up yet with the wheel, and you have a lot of weeds to clear. I would have chosen Ag -> BW, and been startled to hear anyone suggest otherwise.

For improvements, given where you are, I would probably go corn corn hill rice dye? I haven't done any calculation, but it feels like with the surplus you are running (corn + corn + sugar = 11, you'll be at size 5 when that settler starts.

Lets see, sugar + corn + corn + hill + rice = (4+4+4+2+2) = 16? per turn when training a settler or worker. OK, I think you can spare a pop to work a cottage.

 

[vranasm]

I'm not keen on that - you don't have anything to hook up yet with the wheel, and you have a lot of weeds to clear. I would have chosen Ag -> BW, and been startled to hear anyone suggest otherwise.

For improvements, given where you are, I would probably go corn corn hill rice dye? I haven't done any calculation, but it feels like with the surplus you are running (corn + corn + sugar = 11, you'll be at size 5 when that settler starts.

Lets see, sugar + corn + corn + hill + rice = (4+4+4+2+2) = 16? per turn when training a settler or worker. OK, I think you can spare a pop to work a cottage.

I was the one who talked about tw+pottery before bw.

There is the dye to be cottaged (2f 3c tile), unforested hill and eventually 2 more unforested riverside grass tiles to work some good commerce early.

That forested PH is not bad production on itself.

There is a lot of forests around though.

It's not clear cut, but the good commerce can bring him quicker to bw or other techs and mostly allow more expansion

 

[PeterWolf]

Ok, played up until the Settler was finished. It was 2 Warriors -> Settler, and I remanaged some tiles to have it finish the same turn BW would.

I've explored the north a bit, and found Mansa Musa north of the jungle, and Sitting Bull close to me to the west, and there's copper right in the way to his capital... There's also Wang Kon somewhere.

Spoiler :

I think settling that copper would be a priority right now. The gold and FP city won't come much later though, I know Shaka is near that spot.

I'm somewhat lost on city placement here. There just seems to be so many good spots:

Spoiler :

For city 2, I'm quite confident on site 2a being the best commerce site for this time in the game.

For city 1, my first thought was 1b, but then I saw cow and rice, and thought 1a could make it for a good production site. 1c was just a thought of getting Ivory and some riverside, turning it into more of a hybrid thing.

It's all kinda messy on the screenshot, the save is below:

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

It's not clear cut, but the good commerce can bring him quicker to bw or other techs and mostly allow more expansion

Does it? How many extra commerce is he going to earn by working the cottage (assuming that he first puts citizens on stronger tiles)? Will it be enough to shave one turn of BW?

Off the top of my head, base research here is 10 (1 :commerce + 8 + 1 ), and the pre-req multiplier would take that to 12. Adding a cottage on the dyes takes the base from 10 to 13, so no extra round up, and the research total is 15.

So 4 turns working the cottage equals 5 turns not working the cottage? That's certainly nothing to sneeze at, but I wonder if it gets there fast enough for BW (assuming you farm both corns first - presumably farming the one closer to the dyes second).

Edit: Taking some guesses based on the map... worker out on T12, two farms is T23? So Pottery is done by the time you reach the dyes, the cottage is ready by T28, and BW finishe on T35? OK, that adds up to a saved turn, I think.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Sitting Bull close to me to the west, and there's copper right in the way to his capital...

Dogs and protective archers? it's gotta be quick or slow, trying to fight him in the middle ain't in your favor.

For city 1, my first thought was 1b, but then I saw cow and rice, and thought 1a could make it for a good production site. 1c was just a thought of getting Ivory and some riverside, turning it into more of a hybrid thing.

I'd probably try to resolve the congestion by putting either the corn or the copper into the first ring of city 1.

 

[vranasm]

@VoU

nice analysis .

What I "figured" out by empirical gameplay is that too soon BW can crash your economy too soon. So without natural commerce source (gold/gems nearby) I lately tend to bother for commerce/science much sooner.

Here you have plenty of forests and those at hills will be definitely chopped asap, but into what you will chop them? probably workers/settlers and that eats your maintenance eventually stalling you under 8bpt which is not enough to get anywhere.

So it's better to delay a bit BW for expansion in advance of little commerce to fuel that expansion.

@PeterWolf

I wouldn't irrigate the rice before making the cottage on dye, you have 2 wet corns which is more then you will get usually no reason to delay the cottage if you went with pottery first. Each turn will stack up, because the cottage will grow (that's btw reason for if you decide for cottages you should run them asap)

 

[PeterWolf]

Here are the sites I'm kinda decided on:

Spoiler :

I tried to keep at least 1 resource in the first ring. If I weren't Creative, then city 1 would go 1W to get the corn in the first ring.
The capital will probably go something like Warrior-Settler-Worker-Settler-Worker-*Axeman. Whipping can be done once in a while, but 2 mined plains hills plus some chops should do it.
City 1 can get an Axeman pretty fast on its own, without chopping or whipping.
City 2 will help raise the research, I can chop to get a Granary and a Library, but I think that will be it, I can't whip here either.
I can hook up the ivory for early happiness after city 1 gets the copper and corn.

Yeah, farming the rice before setting up the cottage was a mistake. Still, I don't think it would have mattered much in the end, because tech prices aren't too high on Noble...

Speaking of that, I think I'll switch research towards Writing, and then Alphabet or Math? I do have a lot of techs I need to trade for. And I think by the time Math comes in I want to have a number of Axes already so waiting for it to chop might slow me down a lot.

What do ya think?

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

nice analysis .

Sloppy, actually, because the comparison is wrong. What I should have been comparing is the dyes with an without a cottage.

That is, if this is a circumstance where you prefer commerce to hammers, you can work the dyes anyway. 1 + 8 + 2 + 1 = 12 + the bonus. So 15 turns of research becomes 14. So you could save a full turn, maybe, if you could instaprove the dyes as soon as pottery is done; alas, there's 4 turns of lag.

So I don't think it saves a full turn. It might save a turn because of rounding, but that would require more careful inspection.

It's a good reminder that when commerce is low, it doesn't take much to make an appreciable difference.

 

[michmbk]

Remember also with the creative trait that you can settle very aggressively towards neighbors, and use the cultural pressure to claim resource tiles.

When I'm CRE, and even more so when I'm Zara, I love to settle close to neighbors and backfill a bunch of cities between those sites and my capital. At COL, whip a bunch of 2 pop courthouses and bingo, a ton of land and a decent economy. Zara is an outstanding leader overall.

In looking at your city sites, I'd consider trying to settle closer to SB, like maybe going 1SW with city 1, trying to claim the cow near Cahokia and then backfilling a site or two that grabs the ivory and banana later on.

SB is such an easy neighbor to deal with diplomatically, and Shaka is bound to target him due to peaceweights, so I'd probably just try to settle as much land as you can, and blow him away later with production and superior units. He'll occasionally be a nuisance with espionage, but other than that, he's a great neighbor to have in terms of not worrying about war declarations.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Speaking of that, I think I'll switch research towards Writing, and then Alphabet or Math? I do have a lot of techs I need to trade for. And I think by the time Math comes in I want to have a number of Axes already so waiting for it to chop might slow me down a lot.

I'm not too keen on it. If you want Writing, I think AH->Writing is the correct play. If you want Alphabet, I think it's less clear

The capital will probably go something like Warrior-Settler-Worker-Settler-Worker-*Axeman.

This hints that your first Library is a ways out, which is the main benefit to the tech. Maybe your scout can take advantage of open borders to explore your neighbors, but you only have the one. You're a ways out from establishing trade routes with the neighbors, I think.

But Alphabet itself requires no additional investment, you just need someone to discover something interesting to trade for. I'm not a big fan of trading Ancient era techs except as a convenient way to make change, but then I'm not a big fan of tech trading.

One question I think you should ask is: do you want the early tech pace to be fast or slow? If you are going to be killing someone early, I think you want it to be slow, whereas if you already like your position, and think you can hold things together diplomatically, then I think you want it to be fast.

 

[PeterWolf]

Comparing this situation to the Wang game I posted a while ago, and my games in general, I'd say it's a damn strong position. No neighbours threatening to lock me on some corner, copper nearby without having to settle in the middle of the jungle too early.

The two sites I've picked so far seem to be good for production and commerce, respectively. City 1 can get any units I need for defence, and City 2 will help the research and maintenance along with the capital itself. And there's still a "fair share" of land I can grab before going for SB or whoever has a decent share themselves. Also I don't think facing protective Archers on a hill will be a pleasant experience.

I'll take the (peaceful) expansion route this time. Will be good to see how much ORG actually helps in terms of maintenance.

 

[Ataxerxes]

You also have pretty nice neighbors (no psychos or even aggressive ones). SB is a jerk, but not a particularly dangerous one. Minor point in favor of Alphabet - you have Mansa nearby. Admittedly I like to make my games easy by trading techs early.

 

[Choeimok]

I far away from being an expert so take this with a grain of salt, but how about settling the Plainscow+Rice site first to discourage SB from settling in your direction and then immediately building (chopping or whipping would probably be important here). Then you could theoretically use these two production sites for workers and fogbusters (I see no need to rush, there seems to be a lot of land and the only moderately close AI, SB, is the toughest nut to crack there is) and then settle the commerce sites south of Aksum, which can then pay for more expansion. Looks like a really good situation for heavy rexing, even if the most desirable spot will have to wait until the two prod cities near SB are up.

 

[PeterWolf]

Up to 1AD, 6 cities, pretty standard, probably can get 2 more south near Shaka, who's already plotting war and is annoyed towards SB and Mansa even though we all share Confucianism. Wang and Hannibal are somewhat far away. And there's a leader I haven't met yet.

Tech went: AH -> Writing -> Alphabet -> Mysticism,Fishing,IW (trades) -> Code of Laws -> Currency -> Sailing (trade) -> Mathematics -> Calendar -> Civil Service -> Metal Casting (current)

I traded Writing for Mysticism and Fishing from Mansa so I could get IW for Alphabet after it... and later I just bought Sailing from someone, I think Hannibal or Mansa again.

I'm teching Metal Casting for Forges (which also mean +2 happy in this case). Then I'm thinking Machinery -> Literature (trade for Aesthetics) -> Paper -> Philosophy -> Education -> Lib ?
I don't think I need Monarchy with so many resources...

What do you think about that? I could go Construction -> HBR and Elepult someone out of the game.
A general view of all cities:

Spoiler :

And city by city:

Spoiler :

Just growing to the cap in most of them. Many happiness resources.

I really only set those 2 scientists on the capital a couple turns ago... kinda bad mistake there to delay them.

I didn't switch to Caste System as you can see. But I'm not making a lot of use out of Slavery, though I still can use it on the 3 lower pop cities. But on the first 3 cities I used it probably once in the capital only. Should I switch? The capital could probably benefit from it.

AIs and techs:

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And diplo situation:

Spoiler :

I'm getting some defence up just in case Shaka tries to be funny. But I guess he's going to declare on Wang.

For some reason Wang seems to be the most hated AI whenever he is in a game, and always gets crushed to like 2 cities. He always founds a religion that barely gets spread and ends up locked in some tiny corner.

The Save: