NP/F #1 - Asoka/Monarch

[CreeDakota]

That is a pretty ugly capital. I hate calender capitals and plains hill sheep is a pretty weak food resource.


The only thing the CAP has going for it is forests. The question is what to turn those into.


While Rags is a warmonger I find him a bit easier to befriend than the others. HR+Open border+religion=friendly and now a non threat and a good trading partner. With that in mind Rexing and trying to block off some good land may be just as viable as killing him.


No need to go into slavery until ready to whip. That is the whole point of spiritual. The point to remember is to Switch out of it when your are done whipping to avoid revolt events (if you have events on that is!) With Spiritual alot of the lest standard civics become viable for short bursts. I also love spiritual for diplomacy, you can say yes to any religious or civic demand switch and painlessly swap back into your favorite civic later.

 

[Chillaxation]

I threw the 2d map away I got also, which had 2 deer only on a bunch of plains and tundra. Here's a likelier start:



I'm thinking SIP and agriculture > bronzeworking > animal husbandry, though our warrior move may throw that out the window. I dislike settling directly on FP unless forced to do so. Hills are in short supply at our fog frontiers, also, so moving could make Delhi hammer-poor.

 

[GGracchus]

I threw the 2d map away I got also, which had 2 deer only on a bunch of plains and tundra. Here's a likelier start:



I'm thinking SIP and agriculture > bronzeworking > animal husbandry, though our warrior move may throw that out the window. I dislike settling directly on FP unless forced to do so. Hills are in short supply at our fog frontiers, also, so moving could make Delhi hammer-poor.

Not many forests and some FP's...I might go AG-AH-Wheel-Pottery, then BW for some early cottages. You need forests to combat unhappiness and monarch barbs aren't too bad.

 

[Chillaxation]

You need forests to combat unhappiness

I thought this only came much later in the game?

Also I figure that if we take agriculture > animal husbandry we work the cows tile and a farmed FP on 2 pop, building settler. If we take wheel/pottery, laying down a farm and a pasture, and cottage 2-3 FPs before BW comes in it's a long time till we work all the improved tiles in the capital. Is it worth it? Wouldn't it be better to chop out the first settler than sit with unworked capital tiles?

 

[shyuhe]

He probably meant unhealthiness, in reference to the floodplains.

 

[Chillaxation]

T0 - India researches agriculture. Delhi builds a fast worker.

T2 - Scouting warrior finds coast and ice borders to our south, so time to head north.

T9 - India: Agriculture > bronzeworking.

T15 - Delhi: fast worker > warrior. Grow to size 2 before building.

T24 - It's been awfully quiet, and I find out why. Our scouting warrior finds a north coast and a peninsula. Suspect semi-iso or iso. India: bronzeworking > animal husbandry.

T25 - Delhi: warrior > settler. Our fast worker will chop until AH comes in, then pasture the cows to our south.

City sites on the NW peninsula will be hammer-poor and probably ought to be settled later in the game unless we get an iron or horses revealed. There is a bit of coastline across the inlet from the NW peninsula so I hold out some hope that we're on a fully-sized continent.

New warrior is scouting E to look for a more balanced 2nd city site. Alfa in the dotmap is tentative.

Bird's eye view:







Here's Delhi.

 

[lymond]

Unless Creative, try to learn to settle cities such that you have food in the first ring. For instance, the north city with rice could go 1N on the desert tile. Not only does it get you rice immediately, it eliminates a bad tile and allows for insta-irrigation of the rice later.

Most of the dot-mapped cities don't look like early priorities. My feeling is you will be settling a city to the east in the fog with all those flood plains first - and towards the AIs. The other dot-mapped cities are low priority early and provide not much benefit for production. If you do want an early productive city that is visible, settle 1E of the cows which gets rice and clams and can help work a cottage for Delhi for a while. This city could also serve as an early GP farm untill you find something better later. Still, it is a city that can wait if you find you need to rush to grab land to the East which appears to be the direction of the AIs depending on the map - not sure what the map is.

Generally, you want your first couple of cities to be "productive" and productive fast, so make sure food and strat resources are able to be improved immediately. These cities help build more workers/settlers/units.

 

[Chillaxation]

The desire to possess is at the root of all anxieties.

- Ramayana

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T36 - India: animal husbandry > wheel. Horses are revealed on the NW peninsula, but the inlets surrounding the N peninsula suggest that if we settle a marginal city, it ought to choke off the NW peninsula if at all possible.

Rumor has it - can't find the post now - that AIs are now much less likely to settle behind the player's frontiers, even with open borders treaties signed. Can anyone confirm this? My own experience in a Russia game a couple of weeks ago was that an AI settler turned right around after I settled a site first, but it could be a fluke. If true I guess I wouldn't have to choke off everything from the antarctic circle to the inlet, just settle a couple of cities to suggest any AIs I find might be better off moving elsewhere.

E of Delhi is a nice city spot. More hills to NE and SE. E warrior has found marble in the SE subantarctic tundra region. It could be in the BFC of the dry wheat city, but I'm not crazy about it as a 3d city site.

T37 - Delhi: settler > warrior. There's a very likely commerce spot to Delhi's E that takes advantage of FP and gets a couple of fur tiles, with moderate hammers. Will settle 2d city there and bet on production cities further E.

T39 - India founds Bombay. Bombay builds a Monument. By the time the Monument is in and the borders are popped, Hunting ought to be in. That will increase the happy cap. I'm undecided on whether to work the fur tiles once they're camped, but my instinct is to develop the FPs first and work them.

T40 - Delhi: warrior > fast worker. Barb warrior creeping on NW peninsula, and Delhi isn't growing so the new warrior is sent to join the NW warrior. E warrior has found copper on a desert hill.

T43 - Delhi: fast worker > warrior. Considered getting a 3d worker. E warrior finds stone on desert flats.

T44 - India: wheel > pottery.

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Here's a bird's eye view of the situation:

Spoiler :

With bare maps on, here's the dotmap:

Spoiler :

The unsigned dot N of Delhi and S of the wheat/clam spot is a failsafe. In case I totally screwed up and haven't noticed a creeping AI, settling that unsigned dot will close off the N and NE peninsulas. It's marginal but works two otherwise untouched FPs, so I'll be settling it in the middle term.

Site Alfa will be a fair production city once it border pops. I settled it with copper in the 2d ring because I haven't seen an AI yet; 50 turns with no contact doesn't automatically confirm isolation, but it begins to rule out an axe rush. I think it'll be more important to build workers and settlers, so getting right next to the grassland cow and keeping the FP in range means more to me.

Sites Bravo is my candidate for 4th city. I think Bravo is the best way to pick up those grassland cows considering the marginal sites on the NW and N peninsulas, and most of the other ways to work the cows get a lot of deserts are ocean.

Site Charlie picks up the dry wheat and the marble. If you look closely you can see that the ice tile in the 2nd ring of Charlie is coastal, meaning that altogether Alfa, Bravo and Charlie choke off the Indian peninsula.

With bare map off, here's our valiant forces.

Spoiler :

And photos of Delhi and Bombay.

Spoiler :

Getting sort of anxious about isolation, but whatcha gonna do? Other than beeline currency and optics, I mean.

 

[lymond]

Bombay is perplexing. I don't like it. Instead of focusing on a marginal "commerce' city, try getting up an excellent production city by settling 1NE of that spot - or even on the wine. No reason not to get the cows sooner than later. Seems you are thinking more about the "next" city location as opposed to making the first city better.

Just think about Bombay in those spots and how much more production you will have in this city, which is much more important early than commerce.

 

[GGracchus]

He probably meant unhealthiness, in reference to the floodplains.

Yeah, I did.

 

[Chillaxation]

Instead of focusing on a marginal "commerce' city, try getting up an excellent production city by settling 1NE of that spot - or even on the wine. No reason not to get the cows sooner than later.

Maybe I overestimate the drawbacks of settling on FPs and commerce resources. Thank you for your help.

 

[Chillaxation]

And in Indraprastha, in the thick darkness, the rain soaked Arjuna's peacock-feather hat, while under a leaky tree Krishna was telling him of their past lives together.

- from the Mahabharata

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In this turnset I found out India's not isolated, not even semi-isolated.

Heeding lymond's advice and taking my own goals for this game to heart, I settled the stone/copper/cow site instead of the marked site Alfa. Barbs were creeping plenty and I thought it would be better to claim those two critical resources and establish a quick production city than claim only one and wait for a border pop to hook up copper.

T51 - Delhi finishes warrior, begins settler. We need copper and a production city, and our forces are strong enough for the moment.

T53 - India discovers pottery, begins to binary research hunting. Bombay finishes its monument and build a granary.

T55 - We hurry Bombay's granary for 1 population.

T56 - Bombay: granary > warrior. I shift our warriors more and more westerly as a barbarian spearman has been sighted in the E fog. I anticipate some effort at protecting the nascent 3d city while cows and copper are improved and copper connected. Our workers begin moving eastward.

T58 - Delhi: settler > warrior. Settler is sent E turn by turn. We must at least connect Delhi and Bombay by roads, otherwise this eastward settlement will be made even more difficult than it already will be. I'll build a fast worker in Delhi next and have it work on getting that road connection built. Give or take a turn it ought to be finishing the road when the copper comes online.

One of our several E loping warriors gives us our first contact - with a Japanese archer unit.

Spoiler :

T59 - India: hunting > masonry. We have enough savings to research masonry at 100% immediately.

T61 - Barb spearman approaches our forest/hill positions. Warriors are not fully dug in so I prepare for a loss. Settler unit hangs back as both fog and open ground near the barb are dangerous.

T62 - Barb surprisingly loses to first warrior. Settler moves up.

As a side note, I find I'm more and more comfortable with mass warriors for a long time for basic barb defense. If I play the terrain correctly even barb axemen can be stopped for a little while.

T63 - India founds Vijayanagara, which builds a granary. 2 warriors in the rearguard go back, as Delhi and Bombay will soon be needing police units - plus there could be trouble from the NE before copper comes online.

T65 - Delhi: warrior > fast worker. This new warrior heads to the NE hills to watch for barbs just as the rearmost warrior comes into Delhi.

Bombay: warrior > scout. I'm feeling more confident and we need more fog out of the way.

T66 - India: masonry > writing. We'll need to build some savings for this, so binary research begins in earnest.

T68 - Bombay: scout > warrior.

T70 - Delhi: fast worker > granary. Copper is mined and roaded, so we have to wait 1 turn for it to be available in Delhi as fast worker moves and builds half the road this turn. Pretty good timing. We'll whip the granary as soon as possible.

T71 - Copper's online. Granary in Delhi gets whipped. Bombay is forced to switch production to spearman.

T72 - Delhi: granary > axeman.

T73 - Vijayanagara whips a granary for 1 pop as soon as it grows to 2.

T74 - Vijayanagara: granary > monument.

T75 - Delhi: axeman > settler. Bombay: spearman > worker. Also, a Turkish work boat has stumbled on our cultural borders.

Spoiler :

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At this point we're behind: we ought to have alphabet and 4 cities, but we're still teching writing and at 3 cities. Simultaneous big needs are - in increasing order of importance - setting up libraries and popping the first GS, bronze-age defense, growth to happy cap in all cities, and settling quickly. The next idea is to switch worker/settler/unit duties between Vijayanagara and Delhi as they each grow to cap, while Bombay chops a library and pops the GS.

I think self-teching alphabet is the next step, and if the Bombay library and the stone hookup are in before we get alphabet, Bombay builds Pyramids for fail gold.

Overview, and regional views of the bare map with dotmap.

Spoiler :

India's units and cities.

Spoiler :

 

[WelshGandalf]

Rumor has it - can't find the post now - that AIs are now much less likely to settle behind the player's frontiers, even with open borders treaties signed. Can anyone confirm this? My own experience in a Russia game a couple of weeks ago was that an AI settler turned right around after I settled a site first, but it could be a fluke.

I made a recent topic on this very thing as I wanted clarification too.

 

[Chillaxation]

I made a recent topic on this very thing as I wanted clarification too.

Thanks for the link, WelshGandalf.

 

[Ghpstage]

As a side note, I find I'm more and more comfortable with mass warriors for a long time for basic barb defense. If I play the terrain correctly even barb axemen can be stopped for a little while.

You've missed the point of Warrior based barb defences. It doesn't work by them being effective in combat, indeed trying that at higher difficulties will likely prove suicidal due to early Axe spawns. The way to use them is to spawnbust and prevent barbs from ever appearing!

In your game the entire NE and the area directly north of Delhi could be completely spawnbusted with just 3 units, so get those units out of your culture and working

Delhi: fast worker > granary

I for one don't think Delhi needs a Granary this early. The primary role for the capital at this early stage is to build Workers and Settlers which already convert to making whips unecessary, and the second job usually assigned is either running specialists, or workign cottages, both of which don't happen if your whipping!

You could do with looking at your worker usage too.
The road to Vijayanagara took 13 worker turns to complete and gained you only 1, a farm or mine anywhere would have been more productive and much faster to build.

 

[Chillaxation]

In your game the entire NE and the area directly north of Delhi could be completely spawnbusted with just 3 units, so get those units out of your culture and working

I totally do not yet have the eye for this. Does it involve clever use of hills and coastline?

I for one don't think Delhi needs a Granary this early. The primary role for the capital at this early stage is to build Workers and Settlers which already convert to making whips unecessary, and the second job usually assigned is either running specialists, or workign cottages, both of which don't happen if your whipping!

I was under the impression that experiments had been run that showed that long-term growth in all production factors was improved by immediate chops and/or rushes on a granary build, regardless of subsequent whipping. But I do tend to skip granaries in capital cities exactly because I like to utilize the one extra point by building the most necessary unit at once and letting them grow. Thanks for the advice!

You could do with looking at your worker usage too.
The road to Vijayanagara took 13 worker turns to complete and gained you only 1, a farm or mine anywhere would have been more productive and much faster to build.

But how would I get the copper hooked up to my other two cities? Sailing?

 

[Chillaxation]

In your game the entire NE and the area directly north of Delhi could be completely spawnbusted with just 3 units, so get those units out of your culture and working

Never mind - I looked this up. Thanks for the tip. I assumed barb spawns were based on line-of-sight.

EDIT: I'm sure most if not all of the people reading this thread know how Ghpstage would allocate those three units to spawnbust the entire area. But for the the help of possible newbie readers, it turns out that barb units cannot spawn in a 2-tile full square radius from any civilized unit, regardless of fog of war. Barb cities can spawn 2 tiles from a civilized unit if there is fog. Thus a solution of the kind Ghpstage proposes would look like the following.

Spoiler :

When I started desultorily playing Civ IV years ago, using units to keep barbs from spawning was called fogbusting, probably because it was known that barbs (units or cities) cannot spawn outside the fog of war. I didn't pay attention to the shift of the term to something similar but not precisely the same...spawnbusting, which can use 5x5 tile areas centered on your units to keep barb units from spawning. Barb cities are less of a short term and more of a long-term problem, and I suppose that if one spawns in the fog 2 tiles from a unit I'll catch it shortly enough by seeing its cultural border, if I keep an eye out.

 

[Ghpstage]

I was under the impression that experiments had been run that showed that long-term growth in all production factors was improved by immediate chops and/or rushes on a granary build, regardless of subsequent whipping.

The key word there is growth.

By the time you can build Granaries the odds are your capital will be at or near its cap, at least unless you have a lot of mining and hunting resources. This effectively removes incentive to grow more unless you intend to whip.
Added to this settlers and workers stop growth when being built and you can see that your cap won't be growing much early on.
Once you get a decent amount of (Monarchy/Drama/MC/Calender) then your Granary will be of use, but up till then it'll add little, and investments with delayed returns tend to be a poor choice. I would suggest that the same amount of hammers used to build a worker would have helped deal with your biggest problem, your lack of improvements!

But how would I get the copper hooked up to my other two cities? Sailing?

Hadn't processed the copper
Somethings gone wrong here. You should prioritise food over hammers!

I'll attach a shadow to 1120BC.

 

[Mylene]

The "dot map" stuff seems to be a rather big problem, i see it often lately and imo it hurts the learning process more than anything else. Drives the focus away from things that would be really important.

Bombay is a very "good" example, the cows seem to be planned for another city, while the focus should be only on finding the very best spot for your 2nd city.
Reading the game, comparing map - current situation, then planning to get some cities up..makes perfect sense, but planting a dot on every possible location around a 10 miles radius.../shiver

 

[Chillaxation]

Bombay is a very "good" example, the cows seem to be planned for another city, while the focus should be only on finding the very best spot for your 2nd city.

I'm sensing this more and more. It's no excuse, but I actually hadn't scouted the cow to the NE of Bombay until 2 turns after I settled Bombay. I definitely felt a twinge of regret when it got revealed, and that regret seems well-founded.

There seems to be a consensus that when settling your second city, waiting for a couple to a few turns to see if there's a +food with nice hills, especially in the 1st ring, is better than settling immediately. I have a feeling my instincts about when exactly I don't have enough hills nearby to settle an ideal production city will improve - and I now know that settling commerce cities can wait until after at least 1 new production city is set up.