Nobles' Club 197 - Gilgamesh of Sumeria

[Snowbird]

W
You have at least convinced me that hunting will have to wait until after AH, Mining, BW. But I still think AH first is best.
And there is nothing I love more being proved wrong.

You can farm the cow... Is 2 hammers per turn from the pasture worth extra tech? (probably it is best to farm riverside 3F tile but is not like the site lacks food and you not skimping on food by ignoring riverside grass pigs/sheep).

 

[sampsa]

You can farm the cow... Is 2 hammers per turn from the pasture worth extra tech?

It's actually pretty insane that AH and BW cost the same. Let's compare: both reveal an important strategic resource. Former allows you to improve two types of 6 yield-tiles (cow,pig) (edit: oh, forgot sheep), but if these tiles are riverside or hill, you already have the ability to improve them to 4 or 5-yield tiles. Latter allows you to turn forests into 20 at the cost of 4 worker turns and the ability to run a very strong civic, slavery. I think BW is just a much stronger tech.

 

[krikav]

You can farm the cow... Is 2 hammers per turn from the pasture worth extra tech? (probably it is best to farm riverside 3F tile but is not like the site lacks food and you not skimping on food by ignoring riverside grass pigs/sheep).

Not at all sure! I have not yet analyzed Min->BW->Pottery for example. All variations I look at include both AH and BW.
Are you playing this w/o AH?
It's not just the cow, it's also the pig.

 

[krikav]

It's actually pretty insane that AH and BW cost the same. Let's compare: both reveal an important strategic resource. Former allows you to improve two types of 6 yield-tiles (cow,pig) (edit: oh, forgot sheep), but if these tiles are riverside or hill, you already have the ability to improve them to 4 or 5-yield tiles. Latter allows you to turn forests into 20 at the cost of 4 worker turns and the ability to run a very strong civic, slavery. I think BW is just a much stronger tech.

I completly agree that BW is an insanly cheap tech for what you it unlocks.
It's not the same cost though, BW cost 20% more beakers than AH.
AH can also be cheaper because of two prereq discount.

 

[sampsa]

I completly agree that BW is an insanly cheap tech for what you it unlocks.
It's not the same cost though, BW cost 20% more beakers than AH.
AH can also be cheaper because of two prereq discount.

Hmm true, guess I mixed it up with writing. Fair point on the discounts.

 

[Wrathful]

Immortal NHNE to Turn 50. Sorry for the poor image quality; I am playing on my laptop at the moment.

Spoiler :

A great leader with what looks to be a generous start. The wet corn is extremely tempting. I moved my warrior NW to see what I would lose from moving. He revealed ivory. Definitely not worth it to stay for that. I decided to move my settler SE to settle by the corn. This way I keep the dye and that suspicious unforested tile to the west. When I moved I found a plains hill to settle on. Good, that should make up for the delay caused by moving the settler.

Settling revealed this:

Good lord, that is a ton of food! Way too much for one city. Might settle a helper city to share the food.

Started on worker, will almost certainly go mining > bronze working.

Took me nine turns to find the first guy.

No need to get angry, Wang. I'm sure we'll be friends forever. Set espionage points on my new friend.

Next turn I make another discovery:

Not the best neighbor in the world. Pretty aggressive.

My capital finished a warrior then went straight for a settler at size 3. Could also have grown to size 4 and 2-pop whipped it. Not sure if that would have been better.

I finished Bronze Working and have decided to go Hunting > Pottery > AH > Writing. I intend to settle my second city on the ivory. With such great commerce I don't think we need to skip anything.

Justinian finally showed his face on Turn 33.

I revolted into slavery while my settler traveled. Settled my second city on the ivory. I intend to chop and 1-pop whip a worker there.

I quickly got out another settler. This one went on the middle sugar.

I found wheat near Wang's borders. I 2-pop whipped a settler in the capital to hopefully grab it.

Here's the current situation:

I have three cities and one settler approaching the wheat spot. My creative culture should keep it secure from Wang.

My three workers are busy improving the food.

Strangely, I haven't encountered the founders of Buddhism or Hinduism yet. Justinian usually gets Buddhism. Wang too. There might be more religious people to the west. Isabella?

 

[krikav]

Nice going Wrathful!

I upload my T50 save if you want to compare.

Also alot of thoughts, some comparisson of mine and abit strategic planning:

Spoiler :

I posted a checkpoint at T5, where I planned on going. Hunt->AH->Mining->BW. And settling second city on the dye.
After some feedback I did some quick trials just teching with no scouting and I think AH->Mining->BW is strongest.
However in my game I did continue with hunting first.

I'm suprised that we have almost exacly the same tech situation, I do have some more gold in the coffer but I thought that I would be more ahead seeing I went Hunting before AH, and that I also met Wang before teching mining.
Wang was in slavery at least half of my teching BW and Napoleon got it the last turns as well, so I thought I saved alot of beakers that way.
I have yet to meet anyone else but the two closest neighbours, so that could explain it.

I have just built a settler as well and need to go to city site 4.
I had not scouted the wheat yet. But apart from wheat being a power tile... that spot looks quite bleak I think.
I have considered settling on the PH next to the stone, but I think thats bad. Also next to the oasis, grabbing a dry rice and the copper, but that site looks quite annoying as well. Perhaps a quick library will get us that copper quick enough?

The best candidate I can think of right now is NW of that lake toward napoleon.
I think with rice, cow, freshwater and a few hills that could become a very nice production spot. I have also looked for some decent hill close to napoleon to settle, as a lightning rod...

What are your plans so far? I see these strategic elements:
Stone for pyramids + Cheap libraries + no fishing -> Engineering bulb possible and might be beneficial.
Few spots close by for more good cities makes the happines bonus from rep nice.
Police state could be useful.
Perhaps an construction attack that later continues with engineering?

 

[Wrathful]

Thanks for the feedback krikav. Unfortunately I cannot open your save; I think I have the wrong mod installed.

Spoiler Feedback :

I'm pretty sure I teched Hunting before AH. For what it's worth, I don't think the bonus from AI's knowing the tech you are researching is very significant. Maybe a few beakers saved.

I think the wheat spot is worth it. Riverside wheat is a strong tile, and there are more riverside tiles as well. I did intend to settle the copper too, although I had not spotted the dry rice yet. The spot has grassland copper (a strong tile), an oasis, some flood plains, and it can share some grassland cottages with the capital.

Good point on the stone. I'll definitely try to chop out the Mids in my capital. There's still loads of forests left there.

I had not thought about my strategy yet. You mentioned an Engineering bulb. I've heard about this before, but how exactly is it accomplished? Avoid Fishing, Civil Service, and Theology and use a GS to bulb Engineering? I think I would like to try it.

 

[krikav]

Thanks for the feedback krikav. Unfortunately I cannot open your save; I think I have the wrong mod installed.

Spoiler Feedback :

I'm pretty sure I teched Hunting before AH. For what it's worth, I don't think the bonus from AI's knowing the tech you are researching is very significant. Maybe a few beakers saved.

I think the wheat spot is worth it. Riverside wheat is a strong tile, and there are more riverside tiles as well. I did intend to settle the copper too, although I had not spotted the dry rice yet. The spot has grassland copper (a strong tile), an oasis, some flood plains, and it can share some grassland cottages with the capital.

Good point on the stone. I'll definitely try to chop out the Mids in my capital. There's still loads of forests left there.

I had not thought about my strategy yet. You mentioned an Engineering bulb. I've heard about this before, but how exactly is it accomplished? Avoid Fishing, Civil Service, and Theology and use a GS to bulb Engineering? I think I would like to try it.

The save was with Buffy. I attach a save without mods now, and also a screenshot.

Spoiler T50 Screenshot :

 

[krikav]

Thanks for the feedback krikav. Unfortunately I cannot open your save; I think I have the wrong mod installed.

Spoiler Feedback :

I'm pretty sure I teched Hunting before AH. For what it's worth, I don't think the bonus from AI's knowing the tech you are researching is very significant. Maybe a few beakers saved.

I think the wheat spot is worth it. Riverside wheat is a strong tile, and there are more riverside tiles as well. I did intend to settle the copper too, although I had not spotted the dry rice yet. The spot has grassland copper (a strong tile), an oasis, some flood plains, and it can share some grassland cottages with the capital.

Good point on the stone. I'll definitely try to chop out the Mids in my capital. There's still loads of forests left there.

I had not thought about my strategy yet. You mentioned an Engineering bulb. I've heard about this before, but how exactly is it accomplished? Avoid Fishing, Civil Service, and Theology and use a GS to bulb Engineering? I think I would like to try it.

GSci bulb paths:

It's very easy to get lost and confused with the bulb paths, and I'm sure I am missing some fine detail here as well... But:

We want to avoid fishing, since then we would have to get sailing and calendar before being able to bulb machinery.
If we go fishing at all, then it's "impossible" to bulb engineering since we would have to get everything toward and astrology as well. But since optics requires machinery, machinery is still possible to bulb, allthough we would have to get calendar first.
The reason we want to avoid CS and Theo is because that opens up the path toward paper and then education.

Spoiler Game specific thoughts about this :

I think the techpath should look something like this: Writing->Masonry->Math->Construction->MC->Machinery (Bulb?) -> Engineering (Bulb.)
Somewhere along the line we need to trade for Alfabet and Ironworking.
If we expand too much, I think we will be tempted to get currency, which probably delays us too much.
And we also need to get aestethics, which we probably have to self-tech, but it can be used for trade bait for alfa.

I remember NC 191, where we were in semi-isolation with napoleon. This might be a wonderful oppertunity for payback!
I have not yet scouted our neighbours lands though, and the quality of what we can be able to conquer should be taken into account, it could be better to go for Wang.

Could it be a good idea to gift Napoleon a city early on, so that he doesn't DoW us with bad timing?
That way we can also choose a flatland city spot for it somewhere decent.

 

[Wrathful]

I have played to turn 84.

Spoiler To Turn 84 :

I think this was a pretty good turnset. My goal was to build the Pyramids. I plan to go for an Engineering rush. I have never done that before and it sound pretty fun. Thanks to krikav's advice I have a basic understanding of the tech path.

I met Pacal on Turn 60:

I also wanted to gift a city to Napoleon. He's a warmonger and can't be trusted. But there's a problem: he is the worst enemy of Wang. So I decided to wait until after I made this trade to gift Napoleon the city.

Wait, isn't that a fair trade? An actual fair trade? Not an unbalanced "fair" trade?

It may have actually been a mistake to trade for this. I wonder if I should have put some beakers into Alphabet and traded for that instead. But I will need Iron Working to bulb Engineering later.

Regardless, I did gift the city to Napoleon.

Guess I have to watch out for Wang now.

Lots of funny business going on in this screenshot:

Wang captured a barbarian city far to the north, and now he's building a gigantic road to connect it. 30+ worker turns to gain 1 commerce per turn? You can also see Napoleon's iron mine near his city of Orleans.

On turn 81 I noticed that the cost to sabotage production in Paris was rather high. (2600 or so). I checked the trade screen and saw that Napoleon had stone...

Next turn I whipped the Pyramids for two population. They were finished on Turn 83 and I revolted to Representation immediately. Here's the current situation.

 

[krikav]

I should have broken up this into several smaller turnsets, but I got mired down into a drawn out war and wanted to get it overwith... :/
Overall, I'm quite dissapointed with how this turned out.
I'm not sure if the result was good or bad, but in any case I would love some feedback!

Spoiler To turn 145 :

The first plan was to attack Napoleon, and I decided to gift him a city, placing it in a location that would be easy to conquer and to let him develop it.
The thought with that spot was that I would probably get enough culture pressure on it with the pyramids, that I could attack it the same turn as I later declare. And it's a decent spot for a city.
Not sure why it got "Liberated", but that gave a nice diplo bonus.
However, I failed to pay attention to Napoleon being the worst enemy of Wang, so this city gave me a huge diplo penalty with wang.

Wang also built ToAR, Stonehenge and the Hindu Shrine. And since he now hated me and Napoleon liked med, I instead choose Wang as the first target.

The pyramids was built in Lagash since there was an abundance of forest there, and it would culture push into Napoleons territory for a quicker conquer.

Spoiler Help yourself Nappy! :

Since I didn't make any contacts after Nappy and Wang, I built two scount and sent them to both directions.
At turn 86 I made full contact.

I got the pyramids built turn 78 and revolted to rep right away.
A few turns before pyramids were done, I let all my cities grow into unhappines, forseeing Rep-Happines.

At turn 86 I traded for IW (I was reluctat to trade before I had a picture of the diplo situation) and saw that I didn't have any iron...
Ur was founded the next turn to gain access to copper.

I traded for about two thirds of alfa and for IW, and teched according to the engi bulb plan.
Got MC at turn 94 and the first GScientist at turn 95 which bulbed machinery.

Got the second GSci at turn 300BC (Turn 99?)
Had to research one turn for engineering which I got 275BC.

A few turns before engineering, I had the queues in most cities filled with vultures, archers, spearmans and catapults pre-built lacking only a few hammers each. This to save the upkeep.

There was alot of disharmony in the military buildup.
I didn't have iron, got copper too late and I teched HBR way too late (I thought I would be able to trade for it since Isabella got it very early but no...)
Since I had the queues FULL of pre-built units, and since I could not yet build elefants I had really big problems whipping efficiently and managing overflow.

I also wante to reach Feud for the possibility of early vassals, so I didn't revolt to police state. Not sure if this was a mistake or if it was prudent.

At 125BC I had what I felt was a acceptable stack to attack.

Spoiler Overview DoW Korea :

The war with Wang seemed to go on forever, and I had alot of RNG like losing two consecutive trebs at 95% success rate.
Wang was extremly difficult to capitulate, and since he was at such a pity state at the time when he finally did (that at the fact that almost everyone hated him) made me want to just kill him.
This made the war even more prolonged.

At turn 140-141 something strange happend.
Wang vassaled to Zara, which declared on me. But at the same time Napoleon declared on Zara? Don't think that he was plotting beforehand so I'm not sure what happend. (Some sort of dogpile-mechanic?)
I decided that since I wanted to tie up both Zara and Isabella, I paid a hefty price to get her in on the action.
This is party to get a good diplomacy bonus with religious nut Isabella as well. I want to use some sort of religious civic later on, and since I'm hindu I thought it was prudent to get her to like me.

Spoiler Help me Isabella! :

At the final stages of the war, I got another GSci and used him for a GA to get back to Rep (Was in Police State) I remained in vassalage since I'm building heroic in the capital and I don't really have enough cottages to justify burocracy.
I also changed to theocracy, mostly since this is favourite civic of justantine, isabella and zara, and caste system to gain some more great persons. And most cities are and will run specialists for the duration of the golden age.

I'm VERY CONFUSED with what to go for tech-wise.
Going the regular lib- route now for no particular reason, but I can't figure out what else to do.
I would want to get more wartechs, but knights wont do it.

Troops are moving toward Napoleon, and they are quite numerous since I have been building for the entire duration of the wang war, and haven't lost that many.
I'm very confident that I have enough units to capitulate napoleon quickly, since he is also quite backward.

After Napoleon Pacal is the next target, Isabella and Zara are waring and I'm working to improve relations with Justantin.
Pacal is the biggest rival and the tech leader.

My funds are not enough to get both education, philo and lib. And even if I do, I won't have that much fun things to lib... Gunpowder is "Meh".
Military Science and Military traditions are miles away.

I'm chopping out a bunch of ziggurats and once I get wangs cities to grow abit my techrate will probably skyrocket.
Perhaps I should just go for napoleon and be content with that for now?
DoW on Pacal for a phony war to keep him from running away economy and techwise?

Any feedback would be helpful, mostly ideas for the long term strategic plan.

Spoiler Empire overview :

Spoiler Tech Situation :

 

[ArchGhost]

Spoiler :

Well no... If you go mining -> bw you will not have AH in time to improve the pigs on turn 20, you will either have to make a detour back or let your second worker improve the pigs. Either way you get a 6 yield tile online 3 turns later and after that you will run on only 2 power tiles (2 corn) instead of 3 (2 corn+pigs) for quite some time. The added benefit of abit earlier chopping and whipping might be able to compensate for this, but I don't think it does.

Settling the city on ivory I don't really like, that forfeits the possibility to help capital with cottages.
Also the dye won't be really useful until calendar. I rather settle on that and save the ivory as it's a quite good tile to work.

I'm abit in the dark, since you don't provide specifics about your proposed plan.
For your feedback to be useful to me, I really need more details.

Spoiler :

Earlier chops can pay off if you have enough forests
Earlier whipping can pay off with enough food.
With this capitol spot (that 3 of us playing this game all moved to the exact same PH with 2 corn + pig spot intuitively, nifty) there's enough for either.
So BW is the better choice for productive output by a long shot. Pig is a really nice tile but but since we start with Agri and not hunting or mining, yet so much to chop, BW is pretty clear in that it need to come quickly or we will run out of stuff to do before tech catches up.

Also have to consider you can just farm the pigs for a while in certain cases, like this start where they happen to be riverside. here if you go BW immediately you'll be able to chop early enough to not need to farm them anyway, your worker will be busy chopping or roading stuff with a Wheel start.

Another consideration is all the worker turns moving around on the hills and such. By the time I had both corns done, I didn't have enough time to put a farm or pasture down on the pigs -- BW was in and it was chopping time. Especially so because I opted for Mids early when i saw stone.

here's an exceprt from my notes when playing it, where I kind of work through it my head:

Spoiler notes :

Well now...ANOTHER wet corn, stone and ivory nearby and tons of forests+ food....Mids? Elepults? this seems like a good'un....





So now I think Mining > BW instead, then Wheel > Masonry. I can just farm the pigs for now after the 2nd corn, take stone with city #2, and wait until the warrior reveals more to consider the ivory. Man, IDK, though, pigs are really good and I can just prechop forests until Stone hookup....or settle on it to save 6 worker turns.





Gonna hold research for as long as i can until I see more about the ivory site.

(upon warrior revealing Ivory with Wet green cow, rice, and 2 sugars)
Well damn. Each of those food tiles can be farmed for floodplain-like results, even the cow. I could skip AH for now and not delay mids or the ivory city much...




Still gonna hold research until 5 turns, but definitely planning on skipping AH for now in favor of Mids, then will go AH if no copper, else Hunting then AH, then Pottery > Writing.

Nothing significant to the south. It takes worker 4 turns to cross between the corns, ouch! Will grow to 4 after BW and chop/whip settler > worker after 2nd corn is done.

Now, mind you, I had almost immediately decided on an opening Mids gambit upon seeing all the forests, good food, and stone, so the ivory spot was my second priority (I ended up settling that 1W of cows, didin't need it immediately and CRE anyway). But after realizing what we have to work with in this spot, delaying BW was pretty clearly gonna slow us down in any case whether we want to try for mids or simply expand ASAP, compared to AH. That caused me to put more of my chops scrambling for the stone and chopping/overflowing into Mids, and on Deity it might have been more prudent to make sure we secure that ivory, but it worked fine on Immortal (Nappy didn't manage to steal my elephants before I got there).

I waffled about a bit on whether to go AH too, but considering all you can do without it for a long while (i only got it after Masonry and Pottery, just before writing -- i traded for hunting later, happiness not really an issue with Rep at turn 62) and how many of these tiles are riverside and can be farmed/cottaged effectively, you can ignore it

For reference I went Mining>BW>Masonry>Pottery>AH>Writing>Aes, got the Mids by t61 and into Rep, still expanded to my first 5 cities and picked up Alpha and Currency at decent dates (Writng t70, Alpha t92, Currency t99). I could have easily skipped AH altogether until Alpha tradebacks, as i wasn't concerned with an early elephant attack (indeed I was delayed by about 10 turns compared to your game, likely due to Mids opening + AH teching, though I also expanded more).

As for the settling on the Ivory/Dye and the engineering bulb considerations....
well in my game the economy tanked hard at 7 cities and Rep scientists from Libraries were pushing all my research, so cottaging wasn't doing much and I settled cities for production instead. I also considered the Engineering bulb but with no forge or PHI trait to speed it up I said screw it and just went full SE mode to stay afloat while whip whip whip and chop chop chop (sooo much chopping, incredible land here). uruk later became NE spot with its triple food.

I think i went a bit overboard because by the time I capped Nappy after Wang, I had over 80 units running him down and was redlining so hard I had to pop a double GA to recover :/

 

[krikav]

Thanks for reply ArchGhost! I don't have time to really dive into the details right now, been a few days since I had this game loaded, been playing other maps. But I think we are pretty much in agreement!

Spoiler The BW/AH question. :

I really don't want to get mired down in this question, since I think I have much more to learn by focusing on the development a little later in the game, but...
This is not a opening where you can delay BW.
You wanted to make a run for masonry/mids earlier. And in such a play (or any other opening gambit) that requires you to pick ONE of AH/BW (and not both), then you pretty much have to go BW first.
What I'm saying is that if you go for both, AH first is probably more efficient, mostly because you get the pigs up 3 turns eariler than you would get the second corn, that AND you save a worker turn because if we improve the pigs between going from corn to corn we use only 2 turns for transit instead of 3.
This goes against what you say "Another consideration is all the worker turns moving around on the hills and such.", it's precisely because of the hills and layout that I think it's best to go AH first and getting them pigs done while your worker is there.
Do you see the worker path I have in mind? Move toward east corn-> Improve Corn 5 turns -> Move toward pig -> Pasture pigs 4 turns. -> Move toward west corn 2 tile move to the forested PH -> Improve corn 5 turns. Thats 17 turns for all 3 tiles and all movement.

Spoiler The Rest :

Did you get wang to capitulate quickly? It was such a marathon in my game.
At what turn are you now?

Uruk gave away one corn to a helper city in my game, and with all it's hills I figured it was suited for heroic.
Did you go for NatEpic at an early date, or was that once you had secured Wangs marble?

I have probably underutilized Rep, party because I was in police state for aeons while fighting wang.
The cottages I have in the capital feel abit like a waste since I'm not building heroic there. I have also started to build quite abit of cottages in the sugar/cow/dye-city. I have at times thougth about moving the capital there, but I'm starting to think that vassalage and nationalism will take precedance over burocracy in my game.
However, at the time when I did my tech push toward engineering and feud, all cities had two scientists, so the benefit from rep was there, perhaps the cottages just gave that extra edge and was beneficial anyway.
In any case, I'm sure it's because of them I have been able to weather out the drawn out war with wang.

Napoleon seems like a pretty soft target here, any idea why? I think his land looks perfecly OK, not sure why he is lagging behind. Could it be because of my city gifting? Did that set him back?

In hindsight, I think that going for engineering bulb here was probably a mistake. It would probably have been much more efficient to simply go for a earlier construction attack.
What do you mean with "No forge"? Is it because Ind leaders get more benefit from going down the engineering route because of the cheap forges? Or is there some detail in engineering bulbing I'm missing?

 

[Wrathful]

I made some more progress and have reached turn 107.

Spoiler Note on Engineering bulb :

Even if this strategy is suboptimal for this map I still want to try it. Never done it before and it sounds really fun.

Spoiler To T107 :

This turnset was a race to Engineering. My research went Alphabet > Construction > HBR (pre-build some elephants) > Metal Casting > Machinery > Aesthetics > GS bulbs Engineering.

There wasn't much else of interest. I spent most of my time managing workers (I may have built too many). I also tried to find the last AI.

My southern warrior encountered a no-man's land. Some angry barbarian archers chased him away. Actually, there's a lot of land for Wang to claim here. He could expand to 15 cities or so?

My northern band of clubmen made contact after centuries of trekking through France and Maya. Hey, didn't I say something about Isabella being in the game?

Back in the homeland, Wang continued to be useful by supplying me with cattle.

Pacal wanted to help too. Sadly, he could only spare one lonely missionary. Not enough for me to convert.

Research was pretty fast. I got Machinery in 250 BC. This resulted in:

200 BC Engineering. Now it's whipping time!

The question is: who do I attack? I really want to take out Wang, but he is just a few turns away from Feudalism. Should I attack Wang or go for Napoleon instead?

 

[krikav]

I made some more progress and have reached turn 107.

Spoiler :

Haha, how nice of Wang to road your place! He did get a barb city way up north in my game, perhaps he did in yours as well and decides to connect them?
I'm not sure who is best to attack. After the city gifting Napoleon got happy with me and Wang got angry. Wang built the hindu shrine and stonehenge and possibly also ToAR (don't remember), so I decided to go for him.
It was not fun however.... What a marathon!
I think Napoleon is a way easier and more fun target, but as you said Wang has really much land, he might get very difficult to handle if left alone for too long.

 

[ArchGhost]

@krikav
fair enough to not wanting to be endlessly circling the opening tech question. All I'll say further is

Spoiler :

we don't have to Pasture the Pigs anyway in any case since we have open hills to mine, start with roading to save worker turns later, etc But the biggest factor is finding the second corn in that spot; its plenty of food enough.

other discussion:

Spoiler :

Did you get wang to capitulate quickly? It was such a marathon in my game.
No, Wang gave me trouble and resisted far beyond the point he was already beaten. I was running into the issue of bieng forced to take his super far away cities to FORCE him to cap, which would have made him so small he'd be useless alive. He eventually capped at 3 cities after 25 turns of war (about 10 more than a mounted war would have ran)

Did you go for NatEpic at an early date, or was that once you had secured Wangs marble?
Only after I was done with war production and started to recover. Uruk ran only corn + pig for the war, and was my Stable city; it only produced 5 exp elephants. Early NE is more for teching or Lib slingshot games, where getting it fast can amass lots of scientists. I suppose you could do just about nay other war stuff too by getting GMs instead and cashing them, but without marble early NE sucks to build.

I have probably underutilized Rep, party because I was in police state for aeons while fighting wang
Yeah, with 7.5 beaker per scientist it's hard to give up for me. That can be your entire research while you run 100% of your commerce to pay expenses instead. Police state is rather weak on lower cost units that can be easily whipped, and I use it more in very long wars with lots of back and forth especially when slow building in Caste

Napoleon seems like a pretty soft target here, any idea why? I think his land looks perfecly OK, not sure why he is lagging behind. Could it be because of my city gifting? Did that set him back?
His 1st and second city don't have multiple powerful food resources. First 2 cities are the most important to an AI because they build a settler out of one of them very soon. he also appeared to be hurting from unhealthiness, as he took most of the floodplains stuff in the area in my game. His land out toward Pacal and North sucks until CS.

What do you mean with "No forge"? Is it because Ind leaders get more benefit from going down the engineering route because of the cheap forges? Or is there some detail in engineering bulbing I'm missing?
it's just me complaining about 44 turns for GE out of Mids, if you don't want to risk getting a different GS. A forge would let you run an engineer for +5gpp a turn with Mids and get one in 20 instead, and you need to go MC + Machinery for Engineering bulb anyway. A PHI leader or Oracle > MC would make engineering bulb a lot more attractive as you don't necessarily have to sit there for almost 40 turns waiting on your GE.

I expanded more (7 cities) so I wanted currency instead, and didn;t feel like giving up Rep Scientists for that long. So I forewent MC and a forge for Aes> Alpha>Currency

Here is my write up if you care to look through ( i have played to the end, forewarning):

Immortal, No huts/No Events

Spoiler turnset :

Immortal. I have been mostly just playing Earth18 games lately, so we'll have to see how this goes :/



the start:
Gonna move warrior either 1N or 1 NE. Settler will go 1SE and settle there unless warrior shows something to go 1E/1NE instead.





The result. Thats a hard map edge to the right! So probably settle on the PH 1S and call it good. PH will net me a gain of 1 turn even if I take 2 turns to settle.



Voila. Nice. PH and pig + corn. should make up for the 2 turns easily.



Could go either Mining > AH or AH > Mining...both lose 2 worker turns moving across the hills from the corn to pig and then back to mine the hills...hmm. Probably go AH 1st for the chance to reveal horse, then Mining > BW. Tons of food and forests, can't dally too much to BW.





Well now...ANOTHER wet corn, stone and ivory nearby and tons of forests+ food....Mids? Elepults? this seems like a good'un....



So now I think Mining > BW instead, then Wheel > Masonry. I can just farm the pigs for now after the 2nd corn, take stone with city #2, and wait until the warrior reveals more to consider the ivory. Man, IDK, though, pigs are really good and I can just prechop forests until Stone hookup....or settle on it to save 6 worker turns.



Gonna hold research for as long as i can until I see more about the ivory site.



Well damn. Each of those food tiles can be farmed for floodplain like results, even the cow. I could skip AH for now and not delay mids or the ivory city much...



Still gonna hold research until 5 turns, but definitely planning on skipping AH for now in favor of Mids, then will go AH if no copper, else Hunting then AH, then Pottery > Writing.



Hmm, i found out that the holding research thing only works until TURN five, not for the first 5 turns after settle. Oh well, quick reload 2 turns back, lesson learned, exact moves done again and still no one met or barbs seen.



here's the scene now. Definitely feeling good about Mids for this. Warrior will loop down and scope out the stone city more clearly so I can determine if I need to settle on it or can go 2N and pick up some sugar for more food.



Nothing significant around the stone means I'll probably plant city #2 1N of Wang's scout, who was met this turn. Will be immediately able to imrpve/share the corn and quickly gain access to the stone and sugars. Tentative spot for city three will allow famring of the cows/corn, share some sugar, and pick up elephants. May put an interior city on the hill 1E of ivory later.



Nothing significant to the south. It takes worker 4 turns to cross between the corns, ouch! Will grow to 4 after BW and chop/whip settler > worker after 2nd corn is done.



T 25 BW is in and copper is revealed to our south. Still gonna go Masonry as I forgot we start with wheel already, so I can hook up Stone for earlier start on Mids and failgold on SH/GW. Bronze is there if we need it, I don't feel any real pressure for AH anymore though we may take the bronze site as city #3 now. It;s otherwise not so hot, but hey, it has fresh water >_>. Hopefully Nappy leaves our elephants alone long enough for city #4 to get there.



T28 we hit size 4 and start a settler. Worker completed 2nd corn last turn so will move into a forest shared by cap + city #2 site that is riverside and likely to regrow. This will get us a 62/100 2pop whip in 3 turns, not horrible.



T32 settler whipped for max (69/100) overflow. seems I goofed and got too much production last turn, had to throttle it a bit. Worker starts a road to stone.



T33 settler out. worker in 2 turns



T34 ah crap. Wang built the Great Wall, meaning he has stone + masonry already. He's pretty close too. Looks like a race is on! Workers will quarry, road, and chop like fiends as I just got Masonry myself. research set to Pottery > AH > Writing. Screw Stonehenge if he got Masonry + stone that fast...



T35 Eridu goes down 2N1W of the stone.



T38 stone is hooked up and we're starting Mids in Uruk. Met Justin last turn. warriors fogbusting north as Wang is mostly to the southeast. Nappy is just north of our phants, might whip a settler in Uruk and overlfow into the Mids to make sure I get it before the copper spot as Wang is unlikely to take that before me.



Eridu is gonna 1pop whip a worker after it grow to 2 and gets its warrior out. I need the extra worker turns and it can hit +10 production a turn on worker between stone + corn. Seems good since my other 2 are gonna be tied up chopping until Mids are done.



What sorcery is this?!? Perhaps an inland sea map? Ho boy. Those phants might be seeing some heavy use in the future (Engineering Bulb if I get Mids?).



T47 Pottery is done. Still gonna pick up AH before writing as I want to improve the Pig + Cow, and it'll cheapen Writing a little. getting Writing a bit later shouldn't be a biggie as CRE will let us put libraries in place at a later date more quickly.



T49 i found Kish up by Ivory like I wanted. gonna probably do another settler whip > overflow into Mids to pick up the southern Bronze + Rice and then a couple more cities up the East river/border for land to push elephants out of later.
















T50 Overview. Stonehenge was built by Nappy. He doesn't have stone too, does he? Ugh.

We've claimed a lot of land thanks to BW, CRE and whipping/chopping, and started on Mids, but are lacking in development.



Immediate priority is to whip a settler and settle for the Bronze, to be hooked up quickly after the Mids are complete (or fail) as insurance against Nappy and barbs, who I have seen wandering toward me with Warriors already.





A settler is 2pop whipped into the mids again for overflow, 2 turns later on T61 we finish the Mids. Eat it, Wang Kon. That Settler is also ready to settle for the bronze, but I'll wait for a road connection first.



Eridu just whipped a Granary a couple turns ago, and the worker will complete next turn, so I wait one more turn (T62) before swapping to Representation. I reconsider and found Lagash now so it will push border to Bronze earlier; I can almost 100% all the way to Writing right now, only an extra turn or two with the extra city founded.



T66 Napoleon founds Lyons a bit to my north. Hmm. I better get two more cities out in that space to claim what I want or he'll take it...





T69 sure bro. Gladly. Demanding a surplus basic resource for 10 turns of no sudden plotting or DoW? I'm in.




T70 Writing is in. Research set to Math tentatively. open Border with nappy and Justin, not Wang (he's Nappy's Worst Enemy). Hopefully I can use it + HBR to snag Alpha a bit later, as I can't farm scientists in my Libraries if I want the Great Engineer for Engineering in ~40 turns.

I'm not exactly sure what's the best way to go about this other than using the Engineer after I have Metal Casting + Machinery. Time to start cottaging and building Libraries though to get us slogging through the tech tree.
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Scratch that. I just got Rep, and am Creative for Libraries for easy access to Scientists? Screw Engineering. We'll just have the Elephants for safety I suppose. Or i could still go for a later Construction attack (t100+) against Wang or something, if Nappy is cooperative. Not utilizing +7.5 beaker scientists is crazy, what was I thinking?

Looks like Wang will beat me to the Wheat spot. Oh well, I only wanted to check it out because the game suggested that spot for my Settler. Planning to settle two more cities, West and East, and then move forward by cottaging and running Rep scientists with my cheap Libraries.

Time for a break.

Spoiler turnset :

Resumed.



Played on a bit, nothing remarkable going on. Started to run scientists (screw the engineer idea, I don't have MC for a forge and am not PHI, either would've helped it along) and put down cottages, whipping granaries and growing.



Met Pacal, the Hindu founder, on the opposite side of Nappy on T78.



Gifted Napoleon a city over by Pacal to boost relations to Pleased.



Founded my 2 other interior cities to bring me up to 7.



T91 Aesthetics and my first GP (scientist) born in Uruk.



T92 Alpha for Aes outta Wang after only one turn of research, nice. Picked up Iron Working + Hunting from Pacal now as he's likely to either be hated soon from the looks of it (I still haven't met the other religion founder yet, but Justin is aligning the world against Pacal and Nappy) or will cuddle up to Napoleon before I can hit him and get out of control, so I want to snag techs now while I can.



T99 Currency is in. The economy is officially recovering.



With my full picture look, I have no iron or horse. I'm thinking I should use my stronger land to instead push elepult now since Cuirs are off the table as of this point; I need to do damage now as I'm not really big enough to overpower everybody later all at once with only 7 cities I feel.



I can take Horse and Iron both from Nappy, as well as eliminate a dangerous unit-spamming opponent to one side. He'll have elephants of his own soon though, and will fight like a demon for sure as he's a top unit spammer. But it's more security for the future and I can quickly control his Ivory and Iron early in the war if I go that route, limiting the numbers of elephants I'll likely see. I'd need to take just about all his land to make this worth it, but as he appears to be in the corner spot, I'd get a lot to use later.



On the other hand I can go for the same on Wang instead. I'm less sure of his resources (he has at least metal) but PRO Longbows are nasty just as elephants are. He may be less annoying to attack as less of a unit spammer and I think he lacks horses though. He would also be more of a prize, a better techer than Nappy if vassaled, even with few cities, and I might even get Nappy into the war with me if I go for him.





I'm building a scout for Wang's land, but I've decided to go for Napoleon I think. Wang is at Code of Laws and not far from Feualism, needing only Mono + Monarchy to tech it. Napoleon is about at the same spot techwise but is smaller, a slower techer, and curiosly weaker than Wang is right now. If something changes during the build up or Wang attacks me (he can at Pleased) it will be different. But for now, I think Nappy. I know it seems absurd to hit him when he's kinda my only buddy, but he's still capable of turning on me at Pleased, he's more vulnerable, Pacal is his only friend, and he'll be a worse problem than Wang later on if I don't. Wang will play out later, and i may even just move on to Pacal after Nappy instead if he is isolated diplomatically.



Peeps are getting Math, so set tech to HBR first before Math + Const. This will give me a little more development turns too and maybe trade Math after meeting more.



T100 Heh, me and my big mouth. All AIs can tech Longbows now, having traded Monarchy around. On the plus side, Math is up for grabs, and I snag it from Zara.



T103 HBR. Construction now. I have a nice number of workers and forests in 7 cities just waiting to power out elepults in 3 or 4 turns.



T107 Construction. Now the whipping begins. Gonna slowly tech my way toward Feudalism.



In world news, Wang Kon isolated himself by swapping into his own Confucian beliefs, making him the firm worst enemy of Nappy and Pacal. Scouting his land shows it's richer too; Nappy is lacking strong food in his first couple cities and it slowed him.



Wang is the definite target now. I just need to make sure i can get Napoleon into a war before I strike and I can focus everything on taking him. If I DoW Nappy may even join me.



Barracks, Catapults, Elephants, and maybe a stable in a city or two are going to be whipped now. Wang has moved away his border garrisons so apparently he doesn't think I'll be too devious.



T112 I'm starting to tech Feudalism after self-teching the small religious stuff and trading Currency to Wang for Monarchy. Catapults are already rolling off the line and I'm chopping away everything I can, starting with the forests nearest Wang's borders.



T113 Wang stole Meditation from me, so yeah, he's going to the chopping block for sure now. Punk. I'll take his close, fertile land and let him keep expanding west into what appears to be barbarian laden territory.





T116 Build up continues and we'll be ready in a couple turns for DoW.


We meet Izzy, the Buddhist founder and complete our roster. With 20g to grease the palm, she trades Gems and Gold to boost our happiness for the upcoming war/whipping. Not opening borders with that powder keg though as she is isolated.



My path seems clear here. Neutralize Nappy with a beg/bribe, plow through Wang Kon while awaiting Jewish spread to convert to it. Probably go for Nappy or Pacal next, and then Nappy for sure if he's not already wrapped up. Then use my relative security to strike out to the other side of the map later and pick off the also isolated Izzy before mopping up; Even if Wang is hated, Nappy will be liked by Justin/Zara if he stays Jewish and cancel it out, and either way i'll have vassal buffer states on either side.



Justin or Zara look to be my long term rivals, as I won't be attacking them for a long time and trying to make nice instead. Unfortunately both are pretty good AIs that often end up powerful, so this may be a rumble yet.



T118 Judaism finally spread to us. We'll wait a little bit to convert as we have units coming through in the pipeline we'll need very soon.



DoW on next turn.





T119 Zara demands our conversion so what the hell, let's convert to Jewish.

DoW on Wang Kon. Time for reckoning. Napoleon is neutralized with a beg of 1g. Wang could bribe Zara on me with Code of Laws I guess, but I'm not really worried about him as I haven't even found him on the map yet.



The “barbarian” colors out west of Wang are actually Justinian, and Izzy borders Pacal, meaning Zara is a far away as possible, on the other side of the map with no world wrap. Perfect. Nothing to fear in the future.



T123 Justin saves me 5 turns on Feudalism for HBR + 140g. Thanks bro. Now I just have to continue to beat Wang into submission and take his best land before turning around on Nappy.



T125 Annnnnnd he got Feudalism...of course. Justin apparently traded it to Nappy even before this, but Wang's PRO longbows are the biggest headache. More catapults...



T144 I hate AIs. He just refused to cap for like 10 turns after it was already over and he lost all but 3 of his cities (he had a stupid 3 catapult suicide mission on my copper city he wanted to complete first I guess), making the whole war drag out for like 25 turns total. Punk. Well now he's done.



(I forgot to catch the Nappy DoW in a screenie, was a little at the moment!)

DoW Napoleon with a second stack I had waiting, begging one gold from Justin. Man Wang doing that still pisses me off...



Nappy got a lot of extra time to power up thanks to our Korean troll, but he is isolated on my border and my inital army is like twice the size of when it hit Wang. With the full weight of 13 cities pumping Elepult he'll collapse eventually. Especially since I've whipped in Ziggurats now and can sustain it somewhat.



Then I don't know, maybe cannons. Or go into the long game, for Factories etc. Can't think straight right now, Wang really aggravated me.



T154 Napoleon is about to lose his second city; he's going for Gunpowder. Pillaged his Ivory and Horses before I saw many Knights pop up though, as he got Guilds within 3 turns of the DoW. I only saw a handlful of elephants or Knights the whole war, and he started spamming archery units near the end, so clearly he wasn't able to get trades to replace his horse/ivory.



My economy is tanked; building wealth in every city, running in the red and no tech to trade for gold. Might have to pop one of my scientists for a GA and swap Caste I think.



I did so and I'm now running in the black and can start banking some gold, maybe farm another GP to chain another GA with my leftover scientist. If Napoleon is gonna be anything of an annoying dirtbag like Wang this is gonna take a while too...



T164 Whew....Nappy gives up after i wiped out his stack for a second time and lost his third city. (This is the wrong screenie, but this one shows he was willing to talk and he'd been ready to cap for a bit) He had just gotten Engineering too, in 2 turns after picking up Gunpowder, wow! Those AI trades though... Anyway, with Nappy rolled up, It's time to settle in for the long haul.



I'm dead last in tech, my economy can't function outside of the GA I'm in (2nd triggered in a row using GS + GM), but with two vassals, one a decent size and the other a decent techer, we should be fine in the long run. Time to abandon war and try to turn around the ailing economy so i can begin to tech again, actually trade for some stuff, etc.



Cities clear their queues and get ready to crank some workers (i have only 9 for 15 cities) as well as a handful of settlers. I can use the settlers to grab some extra cities in spots the AIs left unsettled and then keep them or gift them to my vassals to strengthen them. then it's pretty much gonna be all Wealth, growing, developing land, and teching for a while.



T170 Well, Golden Age has been over for a couple turns and we can still stay afloat. A lot of that is Caste + Rep I would say. Workers are out, cities are founded, and we are slowly going to bounce techs off Nappy and Wang to get back into this.



The plan is to head for cannons with Napoleon's help, evaluate the situation, and then either attack then with cannons + muskets or knights, or move forward to Assembly Line first.



Break

Spoiler final turnset AKA story time :

The rest of this is largely type from memory after the fact, so please excuse the lack of specific detail.



So as I slowly started to get to a point I could tech things my vassals didn't have and trade for them, Pacal raced to Rifles (he had them way before Justin won Lib in around 1270AD) taking him pretty much off the table until I get cannons anyway.



I slowly collected my developmental techs: Civil Service, Guilds, Chemistry, Philo, Printing Press....and had Wang + Nappy help me along by trading for the Edu line I was teching. Nappy had been rocketing through war techs at the last second as I beat him up, so he was in a good position to tech Chemistry, Steel, and RepParts for me. Wang mostly focused on large, single techs like SciMeth, Biology, and also Constitution so I could get to Assembly Line later. My NE city, Uruk, was busy farming scientists for bulbing into things to make them easier to trade for or finish, like Education, Printing Press, and SciMeth.



As Nappy approached Steel I briefly monitored the world tech standing -- he'd be the only guy with Steel, everybody else was holding off on it. I was in a position to tech Military Science, so Cannons + Grenadiers could be a consideration against Pacal's rifles.



In the end, I chose to not go through with it. I didn't want Steel proliferating to other guys quickly, so I had him stop 3 turns short and start on RepParts instead. He would just trade it everywhere for crap he wanted instead of trading with me, which would slow me down, and cannons everywhere are no bueno when they suddenly get upped to Artillery. Also, there were no guarantees Pacal wouldn't just continue on to Infantry and Marines quickly as well (which he absolutely ended up doing!) And I still had no designs on Justin/Zara yet.



So I decided to fall back to Assembly Line and either go for Tanks or a Space win. It went mostly smoothly getting there; my cities were already well workshopped and my US-bought factories churned through infrastructure in the OR civic, which I had spent time spreading Judaism everywhere for. I decided to crush Pacal with Tanks before he went any further -- bugger was at Industrialism already before me, but he was the only one, and nobody liked him. Still, he was by far the most advanced, even with only 9 cities, and needed to be put down.



Assembly Line to Zara for the rest of Electricity, then self-tech Industrialism with Nappy going for R/R. After Industrialism and infrastructure finishing, Nappy couldn't keep up anymore and I just self-teched Combustion, traded my war tech around to my vassals (we were all three still furthest behind in the tech tree) and shut off slider to pump tanks til game over.



When I launched Operation: Smear Pacal he only had a handful of infantry per city and one small stack of about 20 Infantry + artillery way over by Izzy's border; I could see his entire empire with 2 airships. That changed in about 2 turns when he suddenly mustered a ton of arty onto my initial tank stack and spammed marines in his cities, and promptly got mechs before I even took a second city. I knew he was in the space techs but didn't know he already had Laser too, stopped caring about what he was doing frankly. With only about 45 tanks in 2 stacks I had to regroup for a second after taking a big hit on the chin from those arty, but he effectively cleared most of them out for me by doing that.



Pacal also decided to finish up Advanced Flight in about 2 turns flat, and start to upgrade his leftover Cavs into Gunships in addition to the bombers and straggler arty he was already annoying me with.



Well, there's answer to all of that: masses of City Raider II tanks and spy revolts. Research off, EP slider up and focused on Pacal only, build a round of 10-12 spies. Mass up tanks outside a city to threaten it, keep a Great medic in the stack to heal off collateral from planes, and wait for spies to walk in while he stacks in it. Revolt the city for max cost, no need to wait (1-2k EP in this game) and immediately wipe the stack; even gunships, mechs, and modern armor can't stop CRII tanks in numbers when there's no defenses. You can raze the city if you want to avoid recaptures and just move on to heal outside the next one with a supermedic present,, but I was going for faster caps on the other AIs so I wanted them to boost my size more as they came out of revolt.



He loses 3 cities and folds. I DoW Izzy immediately after accepting his capitulation while moving my tanks up to their border, in order to find and intercept her stack. She impressively takes one of Pacal's gunship and mech defended border cities with just Infantry (her arty was delayed by a turn somewhere else) while I took one of her border cities, then she plopped everything she had into her new prize....which was in revolt for 7 turns, and no defenses, connected to Pacal's rail network...yeah. I wiped her entire army next turn and she immediately gave up. I missed getting the picture, but it was rather uneventful to cap an AI in 3 turns anyway.



Immediately DoW on Zara. He and Justin apparently had a defensive pact I didn't care to look for, as Justin DoWed me right back. Ah. Anyway, all my leftover and already en route tanks going through the North will converge and wait for Zara's stack to come through Izzy-land, while all my cities producing fresh tanks rally south to meet Justin head on as he barrels through Wang's border.



Anyway, something quite funny happened. The AIs raced to Fission earlier when i was in recovery mode, and because of Pacal's extremely rapid development, he unlocked Manhattan Project way before Zara eventually built the UN. I was promptly elected with my 20 cities + vassals with 13 cities and banned nukes. They only managed to build 4 nukes between the two of them, Zara and Justin. And they made sure to burn them all up rather uselessly on my already weak vassals bordering them. Zara and Justin both nuked their own infiltration routes, making it impossible for them to quickly run reinforcements to the cities they captured, and lost their stacks without ever hitting me due to the fallout hampering them, while over a hundred tanks pressed into Zara's territory and the result of about 15 per turn churning out since DOW were waiting to punish Justin.



Zara was immediately ready to cap, being wiped to less than a third of my power in one fell swoop, but was afraid of Justin...who was brought in by their own defensive pact. Whatever. Justin took Wang's border city, then moved deeper. I let his stack of tanks + marines and gunship take another city I was stacking near, so he'd put his bombers in the nearby cities behind it. When he moved into Wang's second city, I erased the stack, immediately gifted it back to Wang which popped the culture back out, raced down the railroads and also wiped out Justin's air force stacked, as I predicted, in his own nearest border city. He was also ready to cap after that, according to BUG, but I had to wait due to the fact the Defensive Pact made him actually DoW me, and that always makes them take longer to talk even if they are getting their asses handed to them...



T304 Justin is willing to talk now, and immediately caps.



Zara follows suit


T305 Conquest victory

Spoiler endstate :

Anywho, another late game win. Usually means I did something majorly wrong at some point, I don't think I particularly handled the elephant warring well, overproduced and killed my economy, was recovering from that all game after that. I hate how slow siege warfare is anyway., in real time. It get very tedious, and when guys like Wang drag it out it makes me very unhappy panda.

 

[krikav]

@krikav

Spoiler :

Thanks for the answers, especially the detail about AIs usually building their settler in the first two cities.
Do you know of some resource that cover how an usual AI gameplay looks like?
I guess one could start a few games just monitor what they do with the help of worldbuilder, but I would assume that someone has already done the hard work and summarized the "standard AI script".


I have read through your first turnset, very nice notes with the right level of detail. There are some things for me to compare with, thanks for putting this up!

1.
As I read it I see that you have a large sense of urgency and you attend to your empires needs at the present, not getting distracted with "That would be good to have in 50 turns" etc.
But a thought arose as I read about the pyramids race.
Do you think that you really should worry that much about your immediate neighbours getting pyramids before you? I'm thinking I would almost rather that Wang or Nappy would build them for me, since I'm most likely going to conquer them anyway?
Ofcourse that would lead to Rep being available later, it's probably best to build it yourself in this situation, but I'm not sure it's worth to bend your game over backwards to make a rush for them.

2.
Looking at your Lagash settlement. You have opted to reach the dry rice.
I settled that city NW of the oasis. instead grabbing a pair of floodplains and keeping the positiliby to grow some non-riverside grassland cottages for the capital (this wasn't the right focus in this game however).
Another reason I opted for this placement was due to a graph I recently stumbeld upon from this article:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/the-curious-cat-city-upkeep-explained.138473/



NW of the oasis will keep that city within the "Cheesy Circle", and I think the effect of this was1GPT already at pop1.
I'm not sure my reasoning is better, but since I gave this graph a thought perhaps it can be of use for you in other games as well.


3.
And toward the end you mention something about the engineer and bulbing engineering.
Is there something I haven't paid attention to, regarding the use of an engineer to bulb engineering? A GScientist can bulb toward engineering as well if we lack fishing. Allthough we need some other things.

 

[Anysense]

It's actually pretty insane that AH and BW cost the same. Let's compare: both reveal an important strategic resource. Former allows you to improve two types of 6 yield-tiles (cow,pig) (edit: oh, forgot sheep), but if these tiles are riverside or hill, you already have the ability to improve them to 4 or 5-yield tiles. Latter allows you to turn forests into 20 at the cost of 4 worker turns and the ability to run a very strong civic, slavery. I think BW is just a much stronger tech.

Don't forget that AH unlocks Writing (or gives a discount if you tech Pottery too), while BW is a detour from the main research line. BW is often an option though, but if it was more expensive it would rarely have been affordable.
Besides, it may happen so that there is no other food available other than requiring AH.

 

[sampsa]

Certainly. AH is not necessary for writing though. Also pottery is a lot stronger tech than AH for obvious reasons. Yet like you remark, sometimes teching AH is still the right choice. I think it's clear for everyone that on this map we can skip AH for a while.