Randomly Conquering Monarch 6CC

[Nad]

It seems we have a reasonable amount of room to expand and lots of resources nearby. With coast on 3 sides, only having one front should also be a big help. The jungle to the north is a bit of a pain. We have room for one good city to the east of Paris. There is a superb city site to the west of Paris, which is coastal and on fresh water and which grabs the gold, fish and cows...unfortunately there would be 2 tiles overlap with Paris...just about worth it IMO to do that. The other 3 cities will have to be to the north, but that's all jungle. If we want to found all 6 cities quickly, then the northern ones should be the ones we grab first, the sites to the east and west of Paris should be safe. Perhaps we should go for a city to grab rice and bananas, another to grab ivory, spices and cows, and keep one city up our sleeve or build it in the fog to the northwest once that's cleared. We also need to take consideration of copper and iron once we have the relevant techs.

So this would be my rudimentary dotmap at this point, subject of course to change:

Thoughts, especially on priority?

In terms of what we build/research next, I think we should get a few archers going after the barracks to ensure we can settle safely and protect our cities from barbarians. Do we want to go for the Pyramids at some stage? If so, how many settlers should Paris build before starting on it?

After bronze working, I think we should try to get pottery, animal husbandry, masonry and writing in pretty short order.

grs is up next, please play 20 turns.

ROSTER

Nad...just played
grs...UP NOW (20 turns)
Greebley...ON DECK (15 turns)
goraemon (15 turns)
knupp715 (15 turns)

It'll be 10 turns each in round 2.

 

[knupp715]

Hmmm.....Other Posibilities:
Build a city south of Paris on the desert tile on the coast. We will get both the cow and ivory resources within the city radius, plus the coast would boost economy. Since this is a continents map I think most of our cities should be on the coast.

Orange dot: We could build this city one tile north east of where it is now. I know, this will move it off the coast but then we will get cows in the city radius. Plus, if we do build a city south of Paris, then this will prevent a culture overlap. Something to think about at least.

Red dot does look like a good city placement, despite the crowdedness.

Yellow dot looks like a very viable option. The other two however, depend on if we build a city in the south. We also should uncover the fog to see any other resources that may be available up there. We may want to move the northern city placements, expecially after we get iron and bronze working and we may need to build a last city away from our other cities to grab it.

 

[Greebley]

One problem with the dot map is we miss a cow. I would consider moving the yellow town south by a square. Getting the elephant within the workable squares gives very little bonus - the cow is much better. The problem of course is that we have to wait for an extra border expansion to get the Ivory. It looks like the yellow town would still be on the river.

We could solve that by moving the ligth blue town south as well.

I don't see a strong preference for which town first, but some require lots of jungle to be cleared. They will take longer to get up and running. Perhaps we should go for orange second - the wheat can support some cottages on the plains.

I would build cottages over farms - they are better in the long run. I don't know if we will be able to do it in this game, but getting towns that are 7 gold and a shield with the right civics is really powerful.

Edit: I am not advocating no farms - I think we should have some to speed growth. I see a mix of farms and cottages being best

 

[grs]

I will pick and play tonight, which is ~12 hours from now. Is there a strong reason we don't want orange 1E? I would prefer that as second town, because it would have a food bonus without a border expansion. We would swap some plains for coast, which I do not consider that bad. Could someone please post a closeup view of that area? I have no civ access right now.

I agree with yellow 1S and maybe light blue 1S too, but we need to finish exploring the area to know.

If we want The Pyramids without stone, we have to start it soon - question is: do we really want it that much?

Unless it is raging barbs - which I don't see it is - 1 archer/town seems more than enough. I must admit I usually build 2 or 3 towns before my first archer, but that's probably not ok in a SG.

 

[Nad]

Ok, not my best dotmap ever. I agree with the moving-south of the northern dots, that makes a lot of sense. In fact, blue dot could move south(EDIT)EAST!!to reclaim the missed ivory once yellow moves one south. As for moving orange dot...I'm not sure about that, its siting was to maximize land tiles, since with only 6 cities our production will be limited in trying to take out all other civs. Can we afford what would effectively be a fishing village if it is moved one east?

If we do move orange dot east, then it would make sense to found that first because of the fast growth potential. Yellow and blue dot should become good cities fairly quickly, jungle clearing is nothing like as tedious as it was in Civ 3.

And we still need to see where the copper and iron is before we can fully commit. Bronze is in soon...

As for the number of archers...I think we need plenty and quickly. This game is going to be a challenge enough, we cannot afford to lose a city or settler to barbarians because we took unnecassary risks. In addition, we're going to be military heavy in this game anyway, so why not start that buildup early?

 

[grs]

Having only 6 cities is an argument indeed. I won't call the modified orange a fishing village though. We exchange 3 plains with 3 coasts, 1 plain forest with a grass forest and 1 plain with one grassland.

If we don't move orange, I'd chose the light-blue se variant as second town. We need to research animal husbandry soon then, instead of using more farms first.

 

[Nad]

It's your call on orange dot grs, there are arguments on both sides, go for whichever you deem better. And as I said, copper and iron locations might also affect our thinking once we get the techs

 

[Greebley]

I would keep orange where it is. I see the change as being 3 plains lost for 3 sea. That is not worth it even if we do gain a single forest grasslands instead of a forest plains. The only other square that changes is coastal water->non coastal water).

 

[grs]

2880BC worker finishes farming the wheat and will chopmine the grassland hill next
2840BC bronze working - animal husbandry; bronze decides where we will settle
2760BC barracks - archer
2560BC forest cleared; archer - archer; first one goes exploring since the next one will appear next turn
2520BC archer - archer (1 turn to get Paris to size 4); worker starts camp; spot barb archer to the south and recall exploring archer; warrior defends vs lion
2480BC archer climbs a hill next to barb one
2440BC archer defends successfully and heads back to Paris; other one starts to explore again
2400BC animal husbandry - pottery; horses are far in the north
2360BC spot barb archer in the nw, next to gold hill
2280BC archer defends vs barb archer; Judaism has been founded somewhere; spot more horses to the ne
2240BC spot more ivory ne
2200BC ivory connected; start another farm (we need more food); warrior spots barb archer ne

Next town should be placed at the 4-resource-crossing - fabulous location. There is a similar location to the ne; while there is a mountain in the cross, it could still be an excellent spot, if it were only one of those

 

[knupp715]

I agree that the blue dot city site would be an excellent spot to place a city.
Another good city spot would be one tile west of the mountain (near the rice). It would have rice and cows in it's immediate city borders plus bananas when it's radius expands. It looks like a great city for growth.

 

[grs]

These would be four excellent city spots; whether we want yellow (with fresh water access) or olive (with immediate access to 2 bonus resources).

We could rethink if we want the orange one in any version - especially if we decide for olive.

 

[knupp715]

I think the olive would be a better choice. Yes, the fresh water would help out growth, but we have tons of food resources already, so I don't think this will be a problem.

With the olive city in place (if this is what we decide) I think we should forget about the orange city altogether. It would have 1 resource, and it just wouldn't be that great of a city. With the 6CC I think we need to look for the BEST spots on our continent. Yea, they might be spread out in the beginning, but later in the game we will be way ahead having 6 great cities (spread out (also this will limit AI expansion)) rather than 4 great cities and 2 mediocre ones.

I think we all agree that RED and BLUE cities are both in. Along with the yellow/olive. I also like the idea of having a city in the blue circle (if we get there fast enough), along with our last city to the north west of Paris.

 

[Greebley]

alternatively we could go for the cow, wheat and banana and forget about putting the rice in our city borders. Is rice better or worse than wheat? I am guessing it is not as good.

A lot of food is nice. Could be for specialists or to suppport cottages.

I got it. Light blue/teal would be my choice for cities.

I will play tomorrow night, so there is still some time to discuss city sites.

 

[grs]

alternatively we could go for the cow, wheat and banana and forget about putting the rice in our city borders. Is rice better or worse than wheat? I am guessing it is not as good..

. Cow/wheat/banana would miss all the river tiles unless we build another city there.

All in all I would favour the yellow one, because of the additional health and the immediate trade route through the river.

 

[Greebley]

Good point. I agree that yellow is the best.

In that case, I think the orange town a decent town. We will want to see what else is north before deciding. I don't really see a better spot for our 6th town (assuming we are settling all on this continent).

We may also be forced to build it because the AI grabs a spot we wanted so another advantage of yellow is it leaves this option open as a town we are likely to always get.

 

[Greebley]

Got Pottery and went for Iron Working next.

We lost a Warrior defending in the forest vs an Archer.

Built Settler, Scout, Archer, Started worker.

Founded "light blue" town of Orleans which started a worker.

Notes:
An Archer and Scout are North of Orleans.

We can see an American border to the North. We may want to build our cities pretty quickly. Perhaps a settler next? If so the Archer mentioned above shouldn't explore too much, but be ready for guard duty for the 3rd town.

 

[Nad]

Nad
grs
Greebley...just played
goraemon...UP NOW (15 turns)
knupp715...ON DECK (15 turns)

Nice work guys. I agree with settler next. Then we have to decide whether to keep Paris on military/settlers or have a stab at Pyramids.

IMO, Pyramids would be nice but not essential. Being able to switch to hereditary rule/representation for happiness, police state for war weariness, and universal suffrage for extra production would be very nice options to have. I think if we started it after the next settler we'd probably get it, but that would be at the risk of losing some of our city sites.

Given that we have archery already and copper, and we'll soon know about iron, I think we should go for Pyramids, since we'd be in pretty good shape to raze any AI cities that pinched our sites. This would be a gamble though. What do others think?

EDIT: um yeah, we'd need masonry after iron working before we could go for it.

 

[grs]

Hard to say. I would like to have the 4 mentioned cities before we start The Pyramids and after that, it could be too late to start!? But if I take a look at how long it will take until we have learned masonry, I guess we will have the 2 more settlers we need then.

 

[Nad]

goraemon, where are you? It's been 31 hours since Greebley posted the save.

Please confirm you are in the game. We'll give you another 5 hours to post a "got it", otherwise we'll have to skip.

Thanks

 

[goraemon]

Ah crap, I was not paying attention. I'll take a look at it