Racing Deity to Space

[Bucephalus]

I think Spoonwood is aligning north in what most of us call NE, thus he is suggesting moving black E to hill and blue SW to hill.

Right, I see that now.

I'd prefer black on the plains, to get the production of the hill in a core town. I admit I never consider scientists in core towns, I usually have plenty in the boondocks.

I think I agree; I must admit, I like a bit of versatility in my core cities, and that includes having shields available when I need them. And the difference between an irrigated plains and a hill, even when railed, is only one citizen; if we are to have science farms, that's fairly inconsequential.

With the increased incoming production for Athens, we might want anohter warrior before the next settler for some more fog busting. It takes 8 turns to grow 2 pop in Athens without the granary and less than that for the 30 shields.

I think we could use another couple of fogbusters; I was thinking the new city about to be founded could pop out a warrior, then maybe a worker.

edit
we have 3 suggestions for blue dot, Buce's, SW's on the hill SW (to settle less grassland), and mine 1NE (for tighter spacing). Really we should wait for more terrain info before making a decision.

Yep, we don't need to make an immediate decision - there will be only one settler to place in my set, and if we go with the warrior builds, we should know more then.

 

[Spoonwood]

Sorry, I have thought about compass points differently than everyone else it seems. I guess I do mean blue southwest, black east, and yellow southeast. As far as I can see it we want as many scientists as we can get. One extra scientist in 4 or 5 cities might drop sometime off a tech, because you might lie that close to the threshold of dropping Motorized Transportation from 6 to 5 turns or whatever. So, I think it better to plant on the hills and maximize scientists. On top of this, we want our workers to get down as soon as possible. Do we want to spend 3 extra turns mining (it's 9 on a hill vs. 6 on a grassland, for a mine, right?) a hill... and then spend 2 or so more turns also roading a hill in 3 or so cities? I'd rather have the worker do something else, like road elsewhere, railroad earlier, or add into a city. We also have an extra grassland to select from *as it grows* if we settle on the hill in cases of fat X overlap. We'll only really need to worry about production for a market, a 40-shield library, and a cheap university in core towns like this before the industrial age. Maybe a temple and/or cathedral depending on our luxury situation. In the industrial age, it works out quicker to railroad grassland squares than hills, and once we have rails I don't see the 1 or 2 extra shields from the hill giving too much of a benefit.

On a similar note, to maximize commerce, I think it would work best to maximize our use of sea squares eventually. The same goes for border tiles. In other words, if we have a spot that won't get used at the borders or on sea squares (or even in our core) or by an AI, we plop down so we can use that tile at some point to maximize commerce, even if it creates a pretty tight spacing in some spots.

Fogbusting worries me, because we need to settle quickly before the AI(s) start grabbing territory in spots we'd rather have early on. We'll also get commerce earlier this way... the simplest way to pick up the tech pace. Then again, fogbusting gives us better information.

 

[Bucephalus]

I guess we should wait for Ignas to weigh-in on the city placement debate, then.

But as for fog-busting, I fail to see your reluctance; we haven't explored much beyond our city boundries, either to the East or West, and to such an extent that it's impeding our decisions on city placement of the core.

We have yet to undercover any resources locally, and contacts are minimal.

 

[Spoonwood]

How often have you guys gotten beat to a settling spot by a turn or two at this level? It seems to me that the AIs know where the luxuries lie fairly quickly and can get there all too fast at this level. Horses and iron we simply won't have the ability to spot for quit sometime. Also, we might still grab the gems up near Ashur and get enough culture so it doesn't flip, if we can basically get a settler out there now. It's risky, but it might just work since the AIs seems to behave as if they assume they already have a luxury if it lies in their fat X. I don't think contacts will matter too much until we've completed the Republic slingshot. Any nearby AI will contact us soon enough, and I've even had it happen that a far away AI waltzes near my territory before I can get to theirs... while still in the ancient age. We also have a warrior in Athens we could use to fog-bust, and we need 60 shields for granaries in a few places really.

 

[Andronicus]

How often have you guys gotten beat to a settling spot by a turn or two at this level? It seems to me that the AIs know where the luxuries lie fairly quickly and can get there all too fast at this level. Horses and iron we simply won't have the ability to spot for quit sometime. Also, we might still grab the gems up near Ashur and get enough culture so it doesn't flip, if we can basically get a settler out there now. It's risky, but it might just work since the AIs seems to behave as if they assume they already have a luxury if it lies in their fat X. I don't think contacts will matter too much until we've completed the Republic slingshot. Any nearby AI will contact us soon enough, and I've even had it happen that a far away AI waltzes near my territory before I can get to theirs... while still in the ancient age. We also have a warrior in Athens we could use to fog-bust, and we need 60 shields for granaries in a few places really.

I agree we need 60 shields for granaries ... but first we need pottery. Hence the push for more contacts (Russia and Sumeria both start with it so it must be out there). 4 turn growth, 8 turns for 2 pop growth limits our settler production to 8 turns pre granary. Our shield potential will allow us to build more than a settler in those 8 turns unless you want to send us back to size 1 (which would lose the 5fpt).

Forget the gems. Its in a core Bab town and we wont be winning any culture wars there. If we want it we will have to fight for it. There may be closer lux in the fog, but we wont get it if we dont know where it is (our exploring warrior saw 2 Bab settlers heading south).

 

[Spoonwood]

We don't have to win the culture war for the gems. We just have to have enough culture to avoid a flip. We'll build libraries and univerisities pretty quickly anyways.

 

[ignas]

Next town on pink dot for building currags and sharing irrigated cattle with Athens.

One or two more warriors for exploration for a better view where to place our towns.
And forget those gems for a while.

 

[Andronicus]

Buce, do you want to play next set? We appear to have a majority for pink dot and await further fogbusting to decide subsequent.
I'll be away for Xmas at my parents till Sunday. I doubt I'll have computer access there.

So Merry Xmas guys

 

[Spoonwood]

I had Bucephalus up next in the roster anyways... unless you guys don't like that one.

 

[Bucephalus]

Yeah, I'm on the case, guys.

I meant to have had it played by now, but Mrs B decided that buying gifts for everyone we've ever met was more important than Civ.

Should have it done today.

 

[Spoonwood]

No problem at all Bucephalus. I do have to agree with Mrs B in this case.

 

[Elephantium]

Yeah, I'm on the case, guys.

I meant to have had it played by now, but Mrs B decided that buying gifts for everyone we've ever met was more important than Civ.

Should have it done today.

lurker's comment: And you didn't put your foot down and assert the true hierarchy of priorities? *tsk* What's wrong with you, Buce?

 

[Bucephalus]

lurker's comment: And you didn't put your foot down and assert the true hierarchy of priorities? *tsk* What's wrong with you, Buce?

No use arguing with Mrs B., once she has the smell of 'shopping' in her nosrils - she's like a force of nature, a one-woman campaign to spend our way out of recession.

Besides which, there were still at least three people this side of the Horsehead Nebula, to whom we hadn't written a Xmas card yet.

Anyway, I finally found a gap in all this madness, so find the save below.

Not worth a turnlog, but here's the best bits:

Babs are spreading like a rash - even at this early stage we'll need to think in terms of war, I think.

They still lack Alphabet, but they have all other first tier techs.

We have no more contacts, but I caught a flash of someone moving on the IBT of my last go, to the SW of 'Nikos', our exploring warrior.

We have two new cities, Sparta and Thermopyae.

Writing due in 10-ish.

To those of you who enjoy it, Merry Xmas!

 

[Spoonwood]

So, Ignas is up and I'm on deck.

 

[Andronicus]

Havnt opened the save, but can we trade alpha for pots? - pots for granaries is the only tech we need, later we can trade writing (after researching CoL) for other first tier techs

 

[Bucephalus]

Not, IIRC; Hamurabi isn't being too forthcoming with 'fair' trades for Alpha, and I think 'Pots' is one of the 'almost-a-deal' techs.

If we move our northernmost warrior W/SW, we should pick-up a contact in a couple of turns. Might be worth the gamble waiting.....

 

[ignas]

Somehow civ is not working on my new laptop so I should skip.

 

[Spoonwood]

We can trade Alphabet for Pottery, but not much else (Hammy's 5 gold). It looks like some of that hill debate seems fairly moot at this point, as Hammy has plopped right up there. I think we'll want Ceremonial Burial to help with cultural pressure. Hammy has 6 cities total, all of them south of Babylon... almost all in our direction, so he can't have settled north. I'll guess that indicates resources down south by us, but I don't know.

We have 9 turns left on Writing. Should I trade Alphabet for Pottery now since that's the only tech I can get for it from Hammy? I'll guess he's already met the northern neighbor we'll probably find soon, so I think they'll learn Alphabet at the same time. We can risk not having CB, but I think we definitely want Pottery, and we don't want to trade Writing away so easily to ensure the slingshot, so I think it best to trade for Pottery right now. Both Athens and Sparta can get started on granaries. What do you guys think?

I'll wait to play until I hear from you guys.

 

[Bucephalus]

I'd be inclined to wait a turn or two, just to see if we can meet the new contact (and if I'm not wrong, I spot the edge of a border nearby our warrior); if they have met the Babs - which seems likely - all of the techs they share will no longer be viewed as a monopoly by them, whereas Alphabet still will be.

OTOH, if we trade it for Pots now, they will trade it away on the interturn.

You may want to let Athens' warrior finish as mp for Sparta, but yeah, granaries sound good.

 

[ignas]

Ok, found the solution, civ is working again. I could play tomorrow if it's ok.

Agree with Bucephalus, we shoul wait a bit before trading as Alphabet is expensive tech and we could get quite a bit from it.

And where to place towns?