Okay...My Learning Play by Play

[Strickl3r]

Nice map for a stomp
I would strongly consider to go early libary, bulb math and go for a HA rush.
Beeline BW is good i think, but i wouldn't delay Ah much, because the information, if we have horses and where they are is kind of important. HA rush is almost a must imo on this start.

Spoiler :

In my game i rushed Monty + Pacal with just HAs and Hannibal with Elepults/HA. Game is practically won, although Dutch has a few techs on me. Stopped at 620 AD with 16 citys. Didn't selftech Alpha because of Pacal and the Dutch. Bulbed math and teched HBR.
So much Forests <3

Only vassaled Hannibal because my economy was crushed for some time and i didn't made it to feudalism earlier.
Ziggurates came in very handy. Still don't have CoL^^

Didn't build 1 cottage on my own^^but was pretty late with the granarys because i traded for pottery.

 

[Deadelus]

you want your first city to be 1N of gems, for these reasons:

1.) it can share the capital's pigs; you'll be able to improve the pigs before you even settle the city, and therefore the city will start growing right away
2.) 1S of gems has only 1 poor food resource (the dry rice), while 1N of gems has 2 (2 pigs). you want lots of food for this city so it can work many nice commerce tiles (gems and cottages) as soon as possible!
3.) more overlap with the "capital." i think this will be one of those rare situations where you want to move your capital, and the 1N spot allows you to share 3 cottage spots, whereas 1S allows only 1. if you don't want to create a bureaua capital (say, you find stone somewhere in that north desert for the mids), then this last point won't be a consideration.

also, you really want to create a settler at size 3, not at size 2.

I edited my post above yours including more scouting but I see your point about the 2nd city.

 

[Deadelus]

Nice map for a stomp
I would strongly consider to go early libary, bulb math and go for a HA rush.
Beeline BW is good i think, but i wouldn't delay Ah much, because the information, if we have horses and where they are is kind of important. HA rush is almost a must imo on this start.

Spoiler :

In my game i rushed Monty + Pacal with just HAs and Hannibal with Elepults/HA. Game is practically won, although Dutch has a few techs on me. Stopped at 620 AD with 16 citys. Didn't selftech Alpha because of Pacal and the Dutch. Bulbed math and teched HBR.
So much Forests <3

Only vassaled Hannibal because my economy was crushed for some time and i didn't made it to feudalism earlier.
Ziggurates came in very handy. Still don't have CoL^^

Didn't build 1 cottage on my own^^but was pretty late with the granarys because i traded for pottery.

See edited post above yours....

 

[Culture Bomb]

I was thinking about a city on the coastal plains directly to the east (SE of eastern pig.)

With the Cre border pop it could be an amazing city with gems, pig, rice, fish, a fair amount of riverside and not too many sea tiles.

On the other hand it is too far away to share any tiles with the capital - am I looking too far ahead here and should I be thinking about a closer location first.

 

[Tall German Joe]

I edited my post above yours including more scouting but I see your point about the 2nd city.

hmmm, well in this case, because you're creative (the trait) you can settle 2S1E of the gems (so that they're still in your BFC) with your first city, and then chop out another worker and another settler and settle that 1N of the gems with your second. hopefully you can grab both of these, as that's a pretty good setup for a 3 city HA rush. the horse city itself will be weak due to poor food, but when you need horses you need horses!

 

[Strickl3r]

My advice for city placemnt would be:

2nd city 3E of capitol. Work gems asap and share pigs as soon as you get AH.

3rd and 4th city (3 pop whip the settlers) I would suggest on the PH next to the grassland cows and 3W1S of the capitol.

Those 4 citys are all you need imo, don't bother with seafood stuff.

 

[Tall German Joe]

I was thinking about a city on the coastal plains directly to the east (SE of eastern pig.)

With the Cre border pop it could be an amazing city with gems, pig, rice, fish, a fair amount of riverside and not too many sea tiles.

On the other hand it is too far away to share any tiles with the capital - am I looking too far ahead here and should I be thinking about a closer location first.

that would indeed be a nice city, but it's too far away to develop quickly. you want to get up and running as quick as possible!

 

[Tall German Joe]

My advice for city placemnt would be:

2nd city 2E of capitol. Work gems asap and share pigs as soon as you get AH.

3rd and 4th city (3 pop whip the settlers) I would suggest on the PH next to the grassland cows and 2 W 1 S of the capitol.

Those 4 citys are all you need imo, don't bother with seafood stuff.

cities need to be at least 3 tiles apart unless they're on different islands...

 

[Strickl3r]

I meant 3 E and 3W1S, edited

 

[Deadelus]

hmmm, well in this case, because you're creative (the trait) you can settle 2S1E of the gems (so that they're still in your BFC) with your first city, and then chop out another worker and another settler and settle that 1N of the gems with your second.

Why not settle that 3rd city on the grassland hill 1NW of the gems I get the gems/horse/cows with overlap for the corn for a few turn quicker growth if needed. don't want to take away from capitol but in a pinch??

And on a side note I need more workers like yesterday...ugh

 

[Tall German Joe]

1NW of the gems is OK, but don't be so afraid of overlap. don't think of it in terms of "one city takes away the tile of another," think of it more in terms of getting the most out of your whole empire. overlap in the early game can be beneficial because means that you can improve the tile before the city is even settled, thus jump-starting the development of the new city. it also helps you avoid "wasting" good tiles when your needs change. for instance, if your city is at the happy-cap and already suffering some whip unhappiness, the extra food won't be much use. your choices will be to whip further (common in war-time) or switch out the food tile for something else. if another city can work that tile, isn't that great? you can even swap the tile back when your whip unhappiness reduces a bit!

another common tactic with overlap is to plant "satellite" cities to work cottages while your capital focuses building infrastructure. thus, when you finally switch into bureaucracy, your capital can take all those tiles back to make the most out of the +50% commerce boost and other buildings (like an academy or oxford) that the satellites won't have.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

So I stopped mining the pigs and build a road cuz I didn't wanna move to the other side to improve the corn yet, built 3rd warrior and grew to pop 3 b4 settler. Decided to put chops in to finish settler.

Hmmm... Stopping mining the pigs and roading instead was a mistake. Not tremendous but still.
The keyword, here is: yield. Roads don't yield anything, except for trade routes (marginal). Mining the pigs was debattable only in comparison with farming the corn. It's clearly superior to roading the hills.

At the very least, you should have farmed the 2nd corn (yield!) before starting chopping.


None of this is vital, though. It's got to do with "doing the most of what's available". So no worries. Chops aren't bad by any means.
But if you chop, you don't need to grow: good yields are the reason one wants to grow.

Now is a good time to stagnate your city. I'm surprised you could chop 2 forests already. Did you send the hammers into warriors?


@City 2: it seems the keyword is Gems.
My natural inclination would have been to settle 2S1W of the Fish (researching Fishing before city is settled and improving gems in advance). The site is very strong, long term.
However, short term, it's true that a city 1N of the gems would develop more easily, especially with pastured pigs (thinking ahead! yes!).
Difficulty with settling 1N of the gems is that it requires another whole settler to work the Fish. Monty being in the area, chances are he'll take the Fish spot before that happens. Sooo... Not sure what's to do. Ain't no bad choice, that's for sure.

Using the cows to the south east to work the gems is a no-go: the cows are the only apparent food that can feed the gold tile, so the gems need be fed by another food source.


@Iron Working:
In many occasions, if you think "Iron Working", you should be thinking: Alphabet! Which unlocks the trade for IW.
Exception can be made if there are several, jungled high commerce tiles. 2-5 gems: ok, beeline Iron Working! Otherwise a trade is the better choice. Difficulty and neighbouring AIs dependent: the higher the diff, the less attractive IW is. The more AIs are around, the less attractive IW is.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Only justification of early IW before alpha is either a prat rush or a full-fledged perma-resource choke.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Come on... Jungle goodies? That's a justification.
Done that before, happily enough ! ! Jungle boogie is alright, too... But few things beat the jungle goodie.

EDIT: pretty sure you've done so yourself before, haven't you? Not saying it's the way to go here, though. Gems aren't jungled and don't come in pairs.


ANOTHER EDIT: @Daedalus:
Regardless of the city location, you should focus on having a trade route online right from the time the city is settled.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Okay okay, massed jungle gems (or no alternative to jungle whatsoever) also justifies. I was tired earlier today and not thinking straight.

I played this out. Won 1888AD space.

Spoiler :

Settled in place. I did indeed settle near the gems to block Monty and to get easy gems. I went mining, BW, IW, then picked up things like pottery, AH, writing. Why IW? Not for gems.

I've been toying with a strategy on the upper levels lately. Basically, you get an archer, spear, or axe onto defensive terrain immediately adjacent to AI metal. As long as you're not too close to the city itself, the AI will expand and spam archers, but will never attempt to improve the tile.

So, I did this to Pacal. I camped 2 archers 1 SE of his iron (and I knew where it was before he could hook it up), and walked a spear up onto a forest tile next to his ivory. Scouting the north, iron was quite distant up there and I didn't bother to lock it down, although I could easily have just pillage-trapped it or cut roads as needed.

I did pick up copper to the north, and as a result I simply expanded as much as space allowed while Pacal could build nothing but archers, holkans, and chariots (he isn't a spammer and didn't even attack me, not that any of that could break protective archers anyway). A bit before 1 AD I had 6 or 7 cities from settling and moved in with a paltry stack of 10 vultures and a spear. Pacal had way too many chariots and holkans defending instead of archers, making a joke war even easier.

Monty had only 3 cities on the mainland because I boxed him in. I snuck attacked his hill city near me (defended only by jags, not good vs veteran high CR vultures) and had whipped out a couple cata to harass his capitol after cutting iron. He counter-attacked onto the hill city and lost everything.

I killed neither of them, using monty for code of laws and pacal for metal casting and several other techs. I was in the tech lead significantly before 1000 AD, and libbed democracy. Cottage spammed production automated ending of turns later, I actually hit a sub-1900AD space race...not bad for basically axe rushing then automating everything.



When Cyrus wasn't beating down America, he was protecting me. For that duration I just built some infantry and machine guns since nobody had better than rifles, but that was only a small precautionary diversion because most of the other AI were fighting also.

 

[pomthom]

1N of eastern gems, use the pig from capital as food. This handles commerce will capital focuses on early production.
2S of eastern fish (if available) gives a good defense point against Monty.

My thoughts exactly

 

[Strickl3r]

Come on... Jungle goodies? That's a justification.

No it's not, because you are obv better of if you let the AI settle the jungle stuff and just take their citys. I know it's kind of obv for most players, but i felt like pointing it out.
Of course you can get away with it on emperor, but it's still semi optimal.
And after all you can get away with capping 3 neighbors, instead of maybe just one on deity, so why not go for it?

 

[rfcfanatic]

Just out of curiosity about Emperor difficulty and about that start in particular, I gave a try to the Gilgamesh game. Of course I failed but as I saw AI Chariots doing well against my Vultures I got a question - does the anti-Axemen attack bonus of Chariots also apply to Axeman UU replacements?

 

[pomthom]

Just out of curiosity about Emperor difficulty and about that start in particular, I gave a try to the Gilgamesh game. Of course I failed but as I saw AI Chariots doing well against my Vultures I got a question - does the anti-Axemen attack bonus of Chariots also apply to Axeman UU replacements?

Yup (unless I deeply misunderstood something)

 

[BornInCantaloup]

No it's not, because you are obv better of if you let the AI settle the jungle stuff and just take their citys. I know it's kind of obv for most players, but i felt like pointing it out.
Of course you can get away with it on emperor, but it's still semi optimal.

Well... yes. That's what I call "the axeman argument". I wouldn't attempt to oppose it.
Obviously, cities and wonders can be captured (axeman argument is often used for wonders as well: "don't build, capture!")... I don't think it's obvious, however, that the way of the warmonger is better than the way of the peacemonger. Both ways have costs of different types, making comparison difficult. Also, the return on units is difficult to assess: 3 axemen = a settler. 3 axemen can be converted into a captured city, can be promoted, can fail. A city requires workers, buildings, costs maintenance, etc.
I don't think that the "scaling with difficulty level" part has anything obvious either.

Sometimes settling the jungle is good, sometimes it's not. Sometimes (most times) Alphabet is a better choice than Iron Working and sometimes it's the other way around. Never say never, nor always