PH03: Happy Little Wonderland

[Meatbuster]

Now zipped, and using a more "trusted" service.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/73311/warlords_pickers.zip

 

[Ozbenno]

Catherine is all right as a leader. Half production theatres is always nice in a cultural game. Of course industrious would have been nicer!

 

[pholkhero]

as i said, i rolled my own (still no pictures splashing ), and here's what a i got:

Remember, we're playing with only 6 opponents on a Large map so we should have plenty of room, i think. I'm just wondering how hard this variant is going to be ~ getting a wonder in every city makes me think we should prioritize the cheap ones ~ in my head i was thinking of having the usual 9 cities for the Cultural win and so needing 9 wonders overall.

Here's Catherine's stats from my corner
Creative:
* +2 culture per city
* dbl prod: Coliseum, Theater.
Coliseum: 120h; req’s Construction; +1 Happy, +1 Happy per 20% culture rate
Theatre: 50h; req’s Drama; +3 culture, +1 Happy per 10% culture rate, can turn 2
citizens into artists, +1 Happy from Dye;

Imperialistic:
* 100% increase in Great General emergence
* 50% prod bonus to Settlers
Settler: Str0, mvt2 100h; Can found a new city

Cossack (replaces Cavalry): Str15, mvt2, 120h, req: Military Tradition, Gunpowder, Horseback Riding, Horse; +50% vs. Cannon, +50% vs. Mounted Units, doesn't receive defensive bonuses, 30% withdrawal chance;

Research Institute (replaces Laboratory): 250h, req: Computers, Observatory; +1 unhealthy, +25% science, +50% spaceship production, +2 free Scientists, can turn 1 citizen into scientist

Starting Techs:
Hunting
Mining

Here is the start:

I moved the settler SW to the hut, one of the few times in civ i'm hoping for a map. We get gold instead.

As you can see, I settled on the spot, not seeing any reason to move with all the food and hills available. Nice production city. We maybe should aim for a Pyramids here to get some GE points to pop a wonder or maybe even 2 with GEs in 1 or 2 cities.

Here's Moscow:

and the scouts immediate area:

I started researching Agriculture and building a worker, but we should discuss opening moves first if we can. Should we scrap that and go for Masonry (and maybe Judaism) and then onto Code of Laws?

Let's all discuss before i play 20 turns (then we'll go down to 10 each, i think).

 

[pholkhero]

All lurkers and alternates:
Signing up for PH04

 

[Ozbenno]

I think Agriculture is OK as a starter to get the Rice farmed but if we're trying for Pyramids we need to get Masonry after that methinks. Bronze Working after that as there are plenty of forest for chopping (to me a forest on a river is a free chop as you can always replace later with a watermill) and then Pottery.

Is it worth sneaking in a warrior before worker, for barb protection and to let Moscow reach size 2 before we start worker.

So we're thinking Pyramids for first wonder, what will we aim for for city 2?

In general for cultural win these wonders strike me as great: Pyramids and Statue of Liberty (if we research that far),

These as good: University of Sankore, Colossus (if we have coasts), Great Library, Sistine Chapel and any that give GA points.

 

[·Imhotep·]

It's definitely tougher to get wonders on Monarch, but it will be easier than usual because we have no Industrious opponent. Creative and Imperialistic sure are great traits for this map, we should be able to grab a lot of land. I would have prefered Stalin of course, but it does not matter that much. I've played a lot of games with Churchill, who isn't Industrious either, and I got some of the early wonders too. It all depends on your Capital, and that spot looks altogether tempting.

Well, if we are heading for Great Engineer points - which is a natural move considering our variant - we should not aim for the Pyramids head first. I think we should bend all our initiative first on the Gret Wall. Why ? Well, there are several reasons:

• It is 200 hammers cheaper than the Pyramids
• It solves the Barb Problem forever - remember we are playing a Large Map !
• It gives +2 Great Engineer Points as well as the Pyramids
• It looks awfully cool

So Masonry should be a research priority. The earlier we get it the better. My Research Path would then be Bronze Working > Masonry > Agriculture >The Wheel/Archery. We don't need the Rice immediately because those Flood Plains give enough food to grow the City and work the Hills. But we have to see if there is Bronze in one of those Hills, and that's very likely because they are Plains Hills (I never saw a Metal pop up in a Grassland Hill). It's not so much for defensive purposes but for the production bonus it gives - +3 hammers are something. We should use the headstart we have with Mining.

If we do it correctly and get the Great Wall our first Great Engineer will be able to rush one of the earlier wonders, if we are lucky, we can rush the Pyramids in our second city with it. But we'll take what we get...

Imhotep

 

[Ozbenno]

Good point on the GE points. Hanging Gardens is another GE wonder that the AI usually leave off.

Does Great Wall expand as your boundaries or is it "set"?

 

[·Imhotep·]

Good point on the GE points. Hanging Gardens is another GE wonder that the AI usually leave off.

Does Great Wall expand as your boundaries or is it "set"?

The Wall itself does not expand. But the effect applies to all your cultural borders, that means that a barb can never enter your borders - whether within the visible Great Wall or not - on the continent you've built it.

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

start coming in a bit.

Okay, I did. Can I stop now?

 

[·Imhotep·]

Okay, I did. Can I stop now?

Give yourself a nudge out of the door. Sign up !

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

Obviously some American coloquilisms, they don't teach in German primary schools.

 

[Zophos]

Pholk...from the screenies, it looks like we have only one hill in the fat X of Moscow (2E from the city). Several other hills E and S , but they'll fall outside the fat X. Please confirm, since I don't have a save to look at yet.

On the tech question, I'd say we want to have Ag (96 beakers/10 turns), Masonry (128 beakers/11 turns) and Bronze (193 beakers/18 turns) as our first three, in SOME order (and please check my math on the research times - should be 10/turn for Ag and 12/turn for the other two, since we have the pre-reqs).

The extra hammers from a copper mine would be really handy, and I think we should have all three techs before we try for our first Wonder. So I'd say Bronze, then Ag, then Masonry and head for the GW.

The next question is...do we get a settler out before we try for the Wall?

 

[pholkhero]

Zophos is right ~ there IS only one hill in the BFC ~ more likely this is our commerce/super-sci city.

However, i think Great Wall may be a great investment for the time being. ANY grass forest, to me, is a free chop, so we might be able to chop it out quick. Perhaps crank out a quick warrior and then onto the worker so that we can use him immediately to chop. Go for another warrior to get to Pop2 and then build a quick settler w/our Imperialistic trait. Then, chop out the Great Wall. Builds: Warrior>Worker>Warrior>Settler

Tech-wise:
Agr>BW>Masonry>Great Wall ~ my rationale: Agr to farm the rice and flood plains for now. BW for the chopping AND slavery civic, and then Masonry for the Great Wall. We could then try and settle @ copper if there's none at the city (though I think there will be).

 

[Zophos]

Tech-wise:
Agr>BW>Masonry>Great Wall ~ my rationale: Agr to farm the rice and flood plains for now. BW for the chopping AND slavery civic, and then Masonry for the Great Wall. We could then try and settle @ copper if there's none at the city (though I think there will be).

I was rethinking techs on the drive to work (and after some caffeine), and I agree with the above. The worker won't have anything to do if we go BW first. With Ag first, he can start farming the rice and maybe some FPs, and BW would hit w/in a dozen turns or so after the worker shows up.

On a side note, my math must be off somewhere - the screenies show Ag in 9, not 10.

 

[pholkhero]

Here's some cheaper wonders we may want to aim for in our cities.

Great Lighthouse, Hanging Gardens, Oracle, Stonehenge, Versailles, Taj Mahal, the Kremlin ~ that's 7, not counting the Great Wall at the capital ~ anybody else have any ideas for some wonders for our Wonderland

 

[Zophos]

Full list of WW, sorted by cost (at Normal speed):

Stonehenge 120
Oracle 150
Great Lighthouse 200
Colossus 250
Great Wall 250
Hanging Gardens 300
Great Library 350
Parthenon 400
Temple of Artemis 400
Pyramids 450
Angkor Wat 500
Chichen Itza 500
Hagia Sophia 550
Spiral Minaret 550
University of Sankor 550
Sistine Chapel 600
Notre Dame 650
Taj Mahal 700
Broadway 800
Rock & Roll 800
Versailles 800
Hollywood 1000
Kremlin 1000
United Nations 1000
Eiffel Tower 1250
Pentagon 1250
Statue of Liberty 1500
Three Gorges Dam 1750
Space Elevator 2000

(I've been playing Epic too long...everything looks cheap. BTW - all numbers are taken from the charts in this post.)

Colossus is the cheapest one missing from Pholk's list, but I don't see coastal cities looming ATM. Parthenon and ToA are cheap(ish), but I doubt we'll get cities out in time to nab 'em (given that there are higher-priority Wonders with the same techs). We might consider dropping the Pyramids in our second or third city, if we can pop a GE in time from the Wall. Or would it be better to put it in the capitol to generate future GEs?

Also note that shrines are Wonders, too, so we might get one or two that way. With a cultural victory, there's a real attraction to founding (at the least having)2-3 religions, and that makes things like Sankore and the Minaret look better, too.

 

[pholkhero]

my thinking re: Colossus was that we should build the cheaper Great Lighthouse in any coastal city we get sometime soon.

as i said, i'm thinking we should at least go for 3 religions (w/2 being our-founded CoL and Taoism since we'll be heading up the top of the tech tree) hopefully an "old" religion (BudHinJud) will spread to make up the 3rd religion ~ and so we'll need 9 cities and 9 wonders ~ 9 seems like a bunch, no? we could save the Broadway, RnR and....ahh...the other multiplying late-wonder in our Big 3 cities and but the other wonders in lesser cities.

 

[Ozbenno]

We probably want to stop teching and ramp up the cultural slider after Liberalism (or maybe Democracy) so every wonder after Taj Mahal (except maybe Statue of Liberty) we may never get to.

If we go for Stonehenge in our second city, the GP points can be used to pop a religion maybe. We should try for founding 3 (as above plus Christianity/Islam) and hope another 1-2 work their way to us.

The GE points from Great Wall can then be used to rush a wonder in third city.

There is possibly sea at the bottom of the last screenie in pholk's report, this could produce a coastal town for Collossus/Great Lighthouse for fourth.

We virtually won this game already, how easy was that .

More seriously, we should try to keep a GP farm with pure Engineer points until we get all our wonders done and then switch to Artists.

 

[pholkhero]

Alright, i set work to those rice, build a worker and direct the village wise men to work on the secrets of Agriculture. I send our noble scout in what i shall call a "counter-clockwisest' motion around our fair city.

He sent back pictures quite soon ~ Our Southwest 3840 bc:

Continuing around, busiting that fog, in 3760 bc, we popped a map from a Goody Hut:

3680 bc:
Ahh, we end up next to a Lion

Hah, he moved away on the IT. Sweet!

As you can see, on the next turn we discovered Agriculture, just in time for a worker in a few turns. I start our wise men on the secrets of Bronze Working. I'm hoping we have some in our BFC.

3400 bc:
Our worker is done, and I start on a warrior to let the city finally grow.

Meanwhile, the worker starts to farm that rice.

3360 bc:
Just north of the city, I pop another GH for us:

148g total. We have a nice little nest-egg to start our empire with

3240 bc:
Oooo ~ i popped a hut here and grabbed xp ~

I took Wood I & II on the following turn and moved toward that hut.

3200 bc:
And here's our lands:

Certainly DOES seem to encourage settling fewer, STRONGER cities.

Bronze working will be done in 4, and our warrior in a bit more. I think we should aim for a settler when possible. Our worker is just SE of Moscow on the Desert Flood Plain.

I was thinking of farming that tile, but building a mine on the plains hill may be better. Imhotep can decide. Also, we could use our first GE for a Pyramid in Moscow

I think a nice GE-focused GPF might be nice in our capital for now.

 

[pholkhero]

Roster:
01 Pholkhero >> just played
02 Imhotep >> UP NOW
03 Zophos >> on deck
04 Ozbenno >>
05 Rex >>

Alternates:
01 Robo Kai
02 Xtream

Okay, Imhotep's up for 15 turns, and Zophos and Ozbenno will do 15 as well. Rex can finish the rotation with 10.