RB1 - Let's get started

Of course .

Darrell

 

Can we farm desert hills? If so, we have two farmable hills, otherwise one. I like the idea of farming them for sure.

Darrell

P.S. In my current SP game, the tGL fell on turn 42 !

 

Yeah, desert/plains/grass hills are equivalent. The only restriction is you can only farm freshwater ones (which until late game is what you want to do anyway).

 

Based on early exploration, America's territory appears small, but very defensible. This gives me confidence, although England needs to be handled with care - they only appear to have one expansion path, and we're it. The Great Barrier Reef so early was great, since that allows population to grow to (about) 8 before unhappiness occurs.

I mentioned Tradition as a Social Policy option earlier, but primarily as a strategy of desperation: A way to magic up extra hammers and food to prevent the whole plan falling short. SevenSpirits touches on the fact that our Civil Service slingshot opens up a lot more sexy policies, and discussion of this is key to the mid-game plan.

Given some of the lurker comments here, it's perhaps worth trying to explain why I suspect we're heading the way we are, which in turn will inform "policymaking". My logic. I can't read Darrell's or anyone else's mind yet, so feel free to correct or add or disagree. (In the unlikely event that *I* sound convincing, remember this is still the blind leading the blind - don't be fooled by 3 days selective experience )

Ages open up policies. It doesn't matter which tech takes you into an age. While it's not automatically true that later policies are better, from what I've read, that often is the case.

Over the next week or so, you'll probably read a lot about how "overpowered" City States are, especially maritime states, with their generous gifts of food. Simply put, it's more effective to convince them to gift food then it is for you to grow your own, even if you have to trade "the family silver" (quite literally in our case) to gain such gifts.

The medieval era (which for us will hopefully dawn with Civil Service) opens up... Patronage: A veritable toolkit for instant City State gratification. So if we can reach a relatively advanced age so quickly without needing Tradition, perhaps consider simply holding the points, and not establishing any early policies (I believe that's possible).

Now, you might ask why, given such promises of bountiful food, we're heading towards a tech that gives us a substantial bonus to, erm, food production? Good question. As I see it:

1. At this stage we don't know if we have a maritime state on this continent. But we do know that we have lots of river-banks. So in the worst case scenario, we have something to fall back on for food.

2. For pure mathematical efficiency, Civil Service is the highest research point tech that's realistically going to get discovered using The Great Library.

3. We're teching along the least warmongering, most research (and to a lesser degree economy) focused branches of the early tech tree, which suits the gameplan and America's lack of early unique unit.

4. While the tech path isn't military, it does at least have Pikemen at the end of it. Not perfect, but they will hold off most of what we're likely to see anytime soon.

5. [Added:] Chichen Itza for +50% Great Age length. The value of this depends on the value of Great Ages, which in turn depends on terrain and how much happiness you can muster. I initially overlooked it given our current position, but longer term it could be powerful.

(That's the theory anyway...)

Beyond Civil Service, it's worth understanding that production is poor at the outset, but crucial to getting things built. Later in the game there's a reasonable theory that says gold becomes more important. And also consider Golden Ages: These don't add a hammer to a tile with 0 hammers, meaning plains and hills are great, everything else sucks.

What this may mean is that our capital will evolve function over time: From food now, probably shifting to mines, maybe later shifting to gold.

 

Okay I'm playing now - not sure if I will finish my turns tonight or not.

 

lurker's comment:

It's possible to save policies?!?! Wow... must remember that for my next game. With that option opened up, and with your current gameplan, definitely save for Patronage or Commerce, probably Patronage.

 

Just to keep everyone updated, I have played a set of 10 turns but I'm having some ummm technical difficulties, so I am going to have to get a bit creative for my turn report.

 

Unless I am going to war a lot and want Honor, I plan to always save my Social Policies.

I think Patronage, Order, Freedom, and Rationalism are all really strong, and Piety, Autocracy and Commerce have decent uses.

Liberty and Tradition are trash, unless you really want the Wonder bonus from Tradition.

 

I have finished 2 games and I have not been able to save Social Policies for future use at all. It seems you have to choose a Social Policy right away or else you can't end your turn.

 

Right-click the little round message icon on the right hand side that tells you about the social policy & that will "dismiss without choosing".

 

Okay let's get this started. First of all, what's a SG without some good names for people. I attempt to name our scout Davy Crockett but fail to figure out how to do that. I was pretty sure that I had seen that done in a previous game... I'm sure it's just some button that I'm hitting. It doesn't help that any time I try to alt-tab out of Civ to take notes the letters appear in my text editor at approximately one character per 10 seconds.

Also, as I am typing this report up from my notes, I note that a) all the screenshots come out in TGA format (which I knew), and b) even once I downloaded IrfanView, all of the screenshots came out as black. My video card is not the greatest, to be sure. Since I know that Cap'n Darrell would not stand for a text based report, I quickly queried him to find out my instructions. His response?

Hmmm.... certainly not much help there. Still - what could I do? Replaying the turns didn't seem like an option. I didn't want to let my teammates down and quit on THE VERY FIRST TURN OF THE VERY FIRST CIV 5 SG?!?!?

So I dug deep down, and came up with some of that good ol' American ingenuity (it seemed to fit the variant)



(rest of the report coming in the morning)

 

Subscribed.

 

Signing in as lurker - looks interesting so far. pretty graphics fer shure

 

Okay, so here goes with the report. Please don't mock me too much - I did the best that I could with the tools that were provided to me.

Turn 21 - A barbarian brute comes near and I bombard from Washington.



Turn 23 - After a few more bombards, our warrior who I (would have) named Crispus Attucks comes in to whack the barbarian brute.



You can see that Calendar is set to roll in on the interturn. According to our plan, I set research on to Writing on our way to The Great Library / Civil Service.



Turn 25 - Our 1 culture per turn from Washington has given us enough culture to adopt a new social policy. So I check through the thread looking for advice / thoughts. In the end, I figure that it's not going to really cost us any real benefit to wait till the end of this turnset so we can discuss things, so I hold off.



In retrospect, it looks like this was the right move. From what I can see, unless you really need some of the early policies, it can be much better to hold off until some of the later policies (Piety, Patronage) are unlocked. I think this is especially true given the aims of our game.

The rest of the turnset was pretty basic. I have our worker farming a tile at the capital.



And later on, I met 2 new neighbors with my scout - both in the east.





And of course, here is the save.

 

Whats the name of the interface/graphics mod you're using?

 

Great improvising with the pictures, rego!

 

Best turn report ever.

Lucky that you didn't meet Songhai or something though, would be harder to shop in

 

Thanks for easing us Civ4-ers into Civ V.

 

Thanks and you're right that that was good luck. It already took me several hours to get everything all set up right.

Did you notice that the terrain in my fake game is (fairly) similar to the actual game terrain?

 

yes yes - everyone saw that.

You were going to get bonus marks for that but your WB river work needs some practice. Go and watch my youtube river video!