Rat 09 - going for conquest

[Dimy]

Ok here's my 15 turns (and I got some bad news at the end...)

3240 BC: Our Warrior in the northeast gets attacked by lions, I give him a Woodsman I promotion and take 4 turns to heal.

3200 BC: nothing happens

3160 BC: Now our warrior in the northwest meet some lions, I move him in the forest for some defense bonus. Now here's a nice pic with flying cam enabled:

3120 BC: Our warrior kills the Lion and is also promoted to Woodsman I. 3 turns to heal.

3080 BC: Archery is discovered, next is Bronze Working (13 turns). Worker is ready in Rome, but the only thing he can do is building pastures... so he's only useful on the cows in the south of Rome. I think the worker was build a little bit too early (Rome was only size 2), but that's ok... the pasture should give us a nice bonus when it's finished. A warrior was already prebuild and queued up, so not to waste any shields I'll let Rome finish the Warrior and queue up Barracks next.

3040 BC: Worker starts building pasture on the Cows.

3000 BC: Tribal Village spotted by our Woodsman I warrior in the northeast... We get a free Warrior... a tech or some gold would have been nice here, oh well... we can still use him to explore. There are lions directly to the east of where our 2 warriors now sit... I fortify the warrior we just received.

2960 BC: The Lion is killed by the Woodsman I Warrior and need 6 turns to heal. The newly received warrior continues exploring the norteast...
A warrior is finished in Rome and will defend the city (for now), Barracks is started.
Our Woodsman I warrior in the Northwest meanwhile spots another Lion and moves to the forest directly northeast of the Lion to get some more XP.

2920 BC: The Lions attack the Woodsman I and are getting killed, our warrior has some more XP and need 5 turns to heal. Pasture is ready south of rome, but there's no other work the Worker can do at the moment... so I send him back to Rome. When we discovered some more worker techs we'll be able to use him again. I immediately reconfigure the "worked tiles" in the city screen and change it from a forest tile (2 food, 1 hammer) to the cows with pasture tile (3 food and 3 hammers!).

2880 BC: The worker is back in Rome and I let him rest there for now... he's useless at the moment. As for discovery... here's the bad news, it definitely looks like we're alone on this continent! Why is that bad? Because we have no AI to conquer... and might not have any AI to conquer untill we can build Galleons to cross the oceans! And it's very likely we fall behind in tech as well... This doesn't look good for our goals
Now that I know we probably won't have an enemy to fight, I change our science objectives... I had beelined to Iron Working, but instead removed the Iron Working from the queue and queued up Agriculture instead. But first we finish Bronze Working.

2840 BC: nothing happens this turn...

2800 BC: Some wolves are spotted near our Woodsman who's still healing in the forest... he should do alright if attacked though.

2760 BC: Smart wolves... instead of attacking the nearly healed Woodsman fortified in the forest he attacks the nearby unpromoted warrior on the plains just north! But still dies...

2720 BC: nothing of interest

2680 BC: my last turn and again nothing of interest

Barracks in Rome will be finished in 5 turns, Bronze Working is up in 3 turns. I queued an archer and settler in Rome to build next. A nice place to settle would be at the river mouth to the northeast of rome. But there are plenty of other sweet spots to choose from. Here's a map:

 

[Arathorn]

5 health bonuses and 2 happies? Oh boy. Hope for a landbridge in the west!

BTW, conquest, even with a late start, should be very doable. I'm pretty sure I could have won one Monarch game that way, but I did domination instead. Just keep your techs MOOOving along and you should be OK.

Arathorn

 

[Xarathas]

Since we're more than likely to be on this continent alone, I think we should detour from iron working and pick up irrigation/mining/sailing, and find a city to send out a galley to confirm whether any nearby landmass are reachable by galleys. There's no point rushing for iron working at this stage since (more than likely) no one will compete with us for iron If we do find a land bridge to the west, then we can just switch back as planned.

As for religion, assuming we're on this continent alone. I think we should hook up that marble to the north with our third city and Oracle for one(CoL or Theology). Should be able to get that done in time on Prince lvl.

Hmm.. not sure where we'd want to find our second city, however. If this continent indeed does not have any hostile forces on it, it would probably be a good idea for our second city to be a coastal one... perhaps to the SW or the E for the rice?

What do the rest of you think?

Like Arathorn said, even with a late start on conquest it should be still manageable. Especially since we're only on a standard sized map

 

[Dimy]

Yeah...as i already said in my report (and actioned upon) i queued up irrigation after bronze working (which is nearly finished), worker techs will be most important now and then we should indeed go for the quickest way to Galleons.

 

[Xarathas]

Woop.. missed that point taken.

 

[ThERat]

the reason why I chose a worker was due to the cows. At that moment Rome was pathetic and would have needed 12 turns to grow as well. Even it means now the worker has nothing to do, long term I hope the pasture will help. Now we have to change goals, get the worker techs first.

I see Rome as the worker/settler pump and hope we can get a coastal town and hill town next.
We defentiely need to make sure we get 1 religion for culture as well.

I thought the queue built suggested to form a warrior straight which is a sign we are not alone. Well, I was wrong.

By the way, Dimy, nice write-up

Roster:
ThERat
Dimy - just played
Greebley - up
Thrar - on deck
Xarathas

 

[Xarathas]

quick notice.. I'm going to be leaving for a cruise on Friday and will be back Monday evening. Hopefully I'll get my first set of turns before then.. Feel free to skip me if my turn's up during the weekend.

 

[Dimy]

Any news from Greebley? It's been 24 hours since I played my turn...

 

[Greebley]

I am here. I got it.

 

[Greebley]

I will be out from Nov 18th through Nov 28th. Computer access will be limited. I plan to finish my current turn before I go. Skip me if my turn comes up.

 

[ThERat]

Greebley, are you able to finish your turnset tonight? Else, we skip you until you are back from your trip

 

[Greebley]

I was hoping to play tonight before I left, but have had to deal with issues at work. I will not be able to play before I leave so skip me.

 

[ThERat]

ok, sure Greebley

Roster:
ThERat
Dimy - just played
Greebley - away from 18 to 28th Nov
Thrar - up
Xarathas - on deck

 

[Thrar]

got it, will have it done in the next couple of hours.

 

[Thrar]

(0) Apparently Rome just grew - I see no reason to continue with the barracks now, so I switch to settler. Since I don't think we'll need Bronze Working soon, I also switch to Agriculture immediately. Can finish BW later.

(1) Ok, I just noticed we didn't have 2 warriors as I had seen before, but 4!! This will definitely be enough military for a while, now that we know we're on our own. I'll leave the woodsmen walking around the island, the normal guy comes back to later guard our 2nd city.

(2) Thanks for building all those warriors, at least I have something to move

(3) move along...nothing to see here.

(4) ...

(5) Hey, there's a hut!

IBT - western woodsman killed a wolf, now at 4/5.

(6) this might be the most exciting screenshot in this turnset: what will they find?

Damn...36 gold.

(7) mapped out those tiles missing in the middle. We have horses!

(8) Agriculture! Finally something to do!!! Worker starts on a farm. Next tech will be the Wheel (8). Rome's warrior heads south to have a look at the waters, I can't decide on the settle location.

(9) ...

(10) ...

(11) No unknown water resources in the south.

(12) settler complete. Now where to settle? This is the situation:

These two circles suggested by the computer are exactly what I was thinking about, if only...if only we wouldn't need a culture expansion to grab the cows on the eastern location. Settling directly north of the river would mean that we can never access that rice (except by settling on top). The eastern circle is a great site, but we can't get that expansion now.
Finally I decide to settle 2 north of the river circle, directly west of the cows. Settling the southern circle would be a city without any resource or bonus, which wouldn't help very much for expansion. Later (probably much later) we might settle the hill east of Rome, or north of the rice. Since there's no warrior cover, I move the settler only one tile to avoid bad surprises (causes 1 turn delay).
Back in Rome, I order another settler. The barracks can wait.

IBT - Lions attack our western woodsman - promoting him to woodsman II!

(13) Worker starts on next farm, no roads available (and necessary) yet.

(14) Antium founded, start on an archer (no granary available yet). There's another hut in the west!

(15) preparation for the next turn: Xarathas, your first will be a big one!
(hut to be popped in the west, research of Wheel completed)

Our empire (well...):

Thoughts on how to proceed:
My #1 choice for next tech would be Pottery. Granaries would help a lot, and we even get them 1/2 price! I don't know how much time we have until the research on BW begins to decay, maybe research 1 turn on Pottery (there will be A LOT of research carried over), switch to BW for one turn to avoid decay, then finish Pottery?
Antium above all could use a worker, maybe switch after growth? The third city could be founded on the southern circle, and share Rome's worker. Our civ traits give us 1/2 price granaries and lighthouses, some coastal resource cities would be nice, unfortunately there are not many around...


Xarathas, have fun!

 

[ThERat]

Roster:
ThERat - up
Dimy - on deck
Greebley - away from 18 to 28th Nov
Thrar - just played
Xarathas - on cruise from Fri til Monday

Unless Xarathas can play today (since it's Fri in the US now), I will play the turns tomorrow. The early turns aren't that eventful anyway.
By the way, we should try and grab 1 religion. I usually try and go for Oracle and then get confucius.

 

[Xarathas]

Hey guys.. I need to head for the port in 20 minutes, so I won't be able to play the turns and do a write up =/ I'll be back Monday though, so please skip me this round (and next if necessary, sorry). I'll be able to play turns starting Monday night.

 

[Dimy]

Yeah I agree on the religion thing, we could grab one of the later religions for sure. We have plenty of land to expand so it's looking good. I just hope we won't be for too long in isolation as this definitely hurts scientific progress. But we should be able to outsmart the AI

 

[ThERat]

save

looking at the game, I think what we should do is, get pottery and then head for priesthood, build the Oracle and get CoL
CoL is crucial since we want to expand fast on this Island
since the Oracle can be built faster with marble I try and settle that spot in the north near marble faster

the highlights:we get the wheel, pottery and mysticism
step on hut get 41gold
get setterand settle Cumae in the north next to marble
Rome gets a rax, go for archer first then maybe granary for growth
Antium also gets an archer, since it is slower growing, go for granary
Cumae is on obelisk for border expansion to grab the horses

situation
we get meditation, in 4, we should go for priesthood first,
then masonry to grab the marble for faster Oracle
Antium looks like the shield powerhouse. Rome should go for settlers and workers (we need more of those)
once we got Oracle, grab CoL as the free tech

 

[Dimy]

Goals:
Research Priesthood and Masonry
Connect Marble to speed up wonder builds like Oracle
Build more workers

Note: For some reason the screenshots I have made during my turn were not saved I went back to my final save game and took some screenshots of the situation after my final turn, sorry about that. On the good side: nothing really interesting happened, so no big loss there

Turn 0 (1520 BC): I check out our cities and situation. I go to the techtree and queue up priesthood and masonry, i change the production in rome from archer to worker.

Turn 1 (1480 BC) : *Yawn* note: I'll skip reporting the turns where nothing happens from now on.

Turn 2 (1440 BC): Worker near Antium starts building a road to connect the two rivers, this road should make a trade route between Antium and Rome, when this connection has been made, the worker will start building a road northwards to connect Cumae and the marbles and eventually the horses to our empire.

Turn 3 (1400 BC): Antium finishes the Granary, starts constructing Obelisk to expand culture borders.

Turn 4 (1360 BC): Meditation is discovered, as queued up earlier next research is Priesthood (5 turns).

Turn 6 (1280 BC): (skipped turn 5 as nothing happened!) Worker is finished in Rome and continues building the archer it started earlier.

Turn 7 (1240 BC): Obelisk finished in Antium, start on Barracks and queued up Archer.

Turn 9 (1160 BC): Priesthood is discovered and Masonry is due in 4 turns. Archer finished in Rome, great timing... we can start building the Oracle right away. At the moment Rome produces 1 more hammer than Antium, and since Antium is at the coast I think it's a good site to build a Lighthouse and the Great Lighthouse wonder. Oracle is due in 25 turns...but this will be much quicker by the end of my turn In this turn, Rome and Antium are connected as the worker finished building the road between the two rivers, the worker now starts to build a road towards the horses and marble next to Cumae.
I promote the archer in Rome with City Garrison I and fortify him in Rome. I move the warrior in rome to the northwest on barb guard duty.

Turn 10 (1120 BC): Our worker near Rome hooked up our Cows for extra health in our cities. I start building a road to the Rice in the east.

Turn 13 (1000 BC): Masonry is discovered, Sailing is next so we can build a Lighthouse in Cumae and eventually the Great Lighthouse.

Turn 14 (975 BC): Our warrior from Rome meets a barb warrior in the west... I move our warrior to the forest/silk tile for defense bonus.

Turn 15 (950 BC): Our warrior easily wins the battle, need 4 turns to heal. No promotion unfortunately. Another barb warrior pops up in the east! We have a Warrior on guard duties there as well and move the warrior towards the barb warrior.
Our worker near Rome finished the road towards the Rice...only to find out we need Iron Working to clear the jungle and build a farm there! Well..that was a waste of worker moves...
The worker in the north has connected Cumae to our trade route and will build a road on the marble in the next turn (then obviously build a quarry).

I check Rome city screen and see we have reached our max happiness! I switch from emphasise on food to emphasise on production and turn on Avoid Growth... The Oracle is now due in only 13 turns! And the marble isn't even yet connected. So we should definitely finish the Oracle within the next 10 turns :

Same situation in Antium, size 4 is max happiness at the moment, so I switch to Avoid Growth. Please keep checking this and as we have extra happiness turn this off! Cumae will grow to max happiness in a few turns as well, so keep an eye on that.

In the next 15 turns we should definitely be able to finish the Oracle and get CoL! Then we have our religion and can get extra happiness in our cities to allow them to grow again. Sailing should also be finished so we could also start building a lighthouse and the Great Lighthouse in Antium. The research on Bronze working hasn't decayed yet, but we might want to research it next after Sailing (only 2 turns left for BW anyway). And maybe Iron Working so we can connect the rice. Also I just realise I moved our Rome worker to the wrong tile... please move him to tile we're actually working in Rome!

Here's an overview of our continent, check out the road our worker build... marble is nearly hooked up now!