PH15: Every One is Special

[pholkhero]

I reckon that given the basics of success are production and research the best balance is to only run lots of specialists (and settle them) in science city. Other cities don't really need to run specialists at all and can focus instead on civ-wide wonders and unit building.

i agree on running LOTS of specialists, but, thematically, i would like to run at least 1 or 2 specialists per city.

Also, a merchant city will be a huge benefit as well, i think. If we ran Caste and run many merhcants and scientists in our cities, we may do fairly well with our tech rate.

Plus, with the No-Cottage requirement, i think we will have maybe food to spare in some places so running specialists or not may be a moot point after all.

I think this is the best way to go. I would save the Pyramids for the stone city, we are creative so it would be stupid not to use the double hammer bonus from stone.

I'm open really too. As rolo and pigs can tell you, i just think up the games...i leave the details of the strategy to others to help with along the way. That is, i haven't any pre-conceived notions as to which city would work best in which location, esp if we wanted to run specialists in more than one city.

In other words, unless someone comes up with a good counter-argument, i say we go with this plan...at least for this city.

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

With the horse popped where it popped I would want to suggest settling 1S of the rice on the hill. It loses the gold, but still has the marble and will pick up horse and one clam from Athens. As a bonus it is coastal. Long term I think it will be a much stronger city.

I'm not sure whether this would be such a good idea.. Through settling 1S of the rice we would also loose the blocking idea of the city. In case we really want to settle this spot I'd rather go for the stone city first, as the mids are bit more important than the GL. But we should scout a bit more to the south around the horses. Maybe there's another spot worth a city..

 

[nocho]

I'm not sure whether this would be such a good idea.. Through settling 1S of the rice we would also loose the blocking idea of the city. In case we really want to settle this spot I'd rather go for the stone city first, as the mids are bit more important than the GL. But we should scout a bit more to the south around the horses. Maybe there's another spot worth a city..

Well maybe . It's just that I don't know which city 1S of marble should be. Maybe the military city then? At least it has decent production, but it won't have much food for hired specialists, but military city won't need that.

Indeed the advantage of what you say is that a city directly around the southern horses would be possible. Maybe even 1N of the horses so eventually it can take all Athens' clams for hiring quite a lot of specialists. Merchants I would then say again . Obviously should have to be settled after claiming lots of other places first.

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Well maybe . It's just that I don't know which city 1S of marble should be.

Why not taking this one for the priests?? I think we want an early Oracle with the marble and as we won't get hundreds of rels within our empire we won't need lots of food to feed the priests.. But at least we'll get about +4 from rice and cow and +2 from irrugating the rice and therefore the gras 1W of it.

Maybe the military city then? At least it has decent production, but it won't have much food for hired specialists, but military city won't need that.

I'd rather take the spot 3W3N from marble as our military city. This would block Pacal totally and as you mentioned we need production without lots of food. So we should settle this one third even before the engeneer city as the mids won't fall that early, do they?

 

[nocho]

Why not taking this one for the priests??

It could be, but I'd rather have a productive military city than a priest city. As I see it I think the most important cities will be the scientist, the military and the merchant cities, probably in that order. A priest city won't add that much to the common good so I'd build it later. Getting Oracle is nice but not that crucial imo. Then I'd rather go for Pyramids around the stone first.

Maybe if we get the military place up and running quickly we can rush Pacal and get a prime spot (or spots) where his capital is right now.

Just some thought-spamming here though, I wonder what others have to say as well...

 

[Meiz]

Personally I would probably settle these three cities fairly quickly in order of: Red (Merchant city, Temple of Artemis), Blue (Engineer city, Pyramids), Green (Scientist city). We of course would need IW for the third one.

This will restrict Pacal to have only medicore cities, so he shouldn't grow too powerfull at all. Therefore we should be able to take him down quite easily in the future and get those improved cities under greek control.

I can see a lot of good city spots in north east region so in my opinion we should expand towards there before thinking about any military actions.

 

[r_rolo1]

So, do we have a plan now?

 

[nocho]

So, do we have a plan now?

We'll have to live with whatever you come up with .

For my part Meiz's map looks fine, Thy had slightly other ideas...

What do you reckon yourself? Enlighten us please, if possible before playing

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

About Meiz dotmap:

With red dot we're going to loose a gold within our BFC for the horses although we'd grab them with green.. So I'd still go for the 1S of the marble. Doing so it would also be a better blocking city.. And as we want to get to caste quite fast I still think we should go for the oracle to sling CoL and therefore for the priest city next..
Green dot is ok for me even though I don#t like settling on thy dye...

And Temple of Artemis is a no go I think: It provides mercant points as well as priest..(1 free priest specialist..)

 

[pigswill]

We could settle south of marble and research archery in the short term. Once Pacal gets BW we won't be trying a chariot rush for sure (he said, having a vague memory that Pacal gets resource free holkans).

 

[pholkhero]

well, not to throw a monkey wrench into things but i agree on moving the red do to west a bit. I might even say 2S of the marble? also, if we do red where it is, we lose the ability to settle just south of our city for the horses.

and now that artemis is out, maybe a city near the gems and 2-phants for the merchants and make red military??

 

[pigswill]

2S of marble misses the rice. SE of marble is coastal, gets rice,cows and marble in first ring, gold in second ring. It would make south horse city very marginal but if we settle green dot we get horses anyway.

 

[pholkhero]

true...i guess i was working on the old assumption that rice and 1 or 2 of our fish would go to some city settled 3S of Athens. if that idea's out the window, the i def agree on 1 SE...i hate losing those extra hills but i do think i'd rather be coastal over there.

 

[nocho]

I didn't realize ToA was a hybrid specialist wonder, so then indeed it must be out, unfortunately.

Do we agree then on settling SE of marble? I guess it's the ideal compromise between Meiz's and my preferred red dot, Thy's preference of 1S of marble and it has pigswill's and pholk's blessing. It also still leaves the possibility of settling 3S of Athens if we so wish, eventually claiming all clams.

What city will it be? It can't hire many specialists, so I'd rather not designate it as the merchant city. That leaves priest or military city. Or artist or spy but would build those later. My vote would go to military but I'm fine with whatever majority opinion there may be. Of course.

 

[Meiz]

Do we agree then on settling SE of marble? I guess it's the ideal compromise between Meiz's and my preferred red dot, Thy's preference of 1S of marble and it has pigswill's and pholk's blessing. It also still leaves the possibility of settling 3S of Athens if we so wish, eventually claiming all clams.

Fine by me, alltough 3S of Athens can wait for a long time and could be our Moai statues city.

What city will it be? It can't hire many specialists, so I'd rather not designate it as the merchant city. That leaves priest or military city. Or artist or spy but would build those later. My vote would go to military but I'm fine with whatever majority opinion there may be. Of course.

I don't see any rush for military city as every other city can also build barracks and military. With marble, the natural choise would be priest city and the Oracle.

 

[nocho]

Fine by me, alltough 3S of Athens can wait for a long time and could be our Moai statues city.

I don't see any rush for military city as every other city can also build barracks and military. With marble, the natural choise would be priest city and the Oracle.

Ok, then priest it is! Actually Moai generates priest points (I just checked), so it must be built by our newly designated city. Good to have it coastal then.

It's been 67 hours since the got it and now that there seems to be a plan rolo can start rolling!

 

[pigswill]

I reckon that we need to get blue and green settled quickly, few more workers, few archers for protection and then think about wonders. We'll probably miss Oracle but with stone and a bit of chopping we ought to be able to nab pyramids.
Maybe designate red dot as our Engineer City because its likely to be the best candidate for the Pyramids if we let it grow to caps while building some units.

 

[Meiz]

Ok, then priest it is! Actually Moai generates priest points (I just checked), so it must be built by our newly designated city. Good to have it coastal then.

It might take a while before I get a hang on our ruleset

 

[Meiz]

Maybe designate red dot as our Engineer City because its likely to be the best candidate for the Pyramids if we let it grow to caps while building some units.

As nocho mentioned, Moai generates prophet points so I would still use marble city for priests and stone city for engineers.

 

[pigswill]

My concern is that Our Glorious Leader wants to play with the Pyramids and the sooner we get them the happier he will be, best chance of getting the Pyramids is at Red Dot with a road to a stone quarry.