RB12 - Roadkill

[chriseay]

Choosing Archipelago for this variant is mean! No rivers to speak of.

Of course, more resources on the coast, and all cities can be on the coast to connect to trade network, so maybe that's for the best. If the variant flies, would be interesting to see it tried on Great Plains.


- Sirian

I've actually been playing around with a game sorta like this on the Great Plains script. My challenge, not much different than this, has been to found all of my cities on the river I start on, and forcibly take any AI cities. Adding the no road challenge would certainly add difficulty (and probably fun).

 

[Perplexity]

I am going to be out of town this weekend. Feel free to swap my down if my turn comes up before Monday.

 

[Zed-F]

Ok, I have the save. I will try to play tonight or tomorrow morning.

 

[Zed-F]

Wasn't able to play yesterday. If you'd like to skip, go ahead. I will try to play today, but no guarantees. If not, then I probably won't be able to play until Wednesday.

 

[xenikos]

I'll check back in at midnight tonight, and if you haven't played by then we'll skip to perplexity.

 

[Zed-F]

Ok I have played my turns, report up soon.

 

[Zed-F]

Preturn: Ok, this start looks not very good for the variant we have planned. With no bonus resources at all, our capital officially sucks. We will never be able to whip it and yet it will never have many shields. Oh well, not much to do about it. Settler before worker even? And we have nothing to defend with but a single warrior? Hm. Well the settler is almost done, so I suppose...

I think about where to put it. The idea of going for wonders... I don't think that's such a good one, in the short term. Our capital is the only place we could make the attempt and it can't get shields without sacrificing growth. And if we put our first settler on the stone, we're even more screwed for growth. The stone will have to wait. In fact, the plains wheat is not so good either; it only gives 2 food and a shield, and we can't farm it until Civil Service as we need fresh water. I think planting a city to grab the deer and the fish is our best bet. Of course we'll need hunting for the deer, so I switch to that instead of Masonry.

2800-2000 BC: 20 turns at this stage go by quickly. I finished researching Hunting and Bronze Working, and revolted to Slavery since we are Spiritual. Lizzie is also in Slavery. We met Alexander and Toku with our work boat, and explored the island to the east. There is no copper on our home island. In addition to finishing the settler, I built a couple warriors for military police and fogbusting, and started on our first worker.



Currently we have just resumed research on Masonry, but that could be postponed again. We could also go for Pottery to get Granaries, one of which will be needed shortly at our fishing village. Or we could try for Animal Husbandry to see horses.

The save: http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads11/RB12_BC-2000.Civ4SavedGame

EDIT: note the pic is 'upside-down'. Just trying out flying camera and that was the easiest shot to take. Hopefully I will get better with practice.

 

[xenikos]

Zed -

You can put farms on wheat/corn/whatever without irrigation....which means the bare grassland square on that river would have been miles and away a better place to put barcelona (provided one is committed to the plan of using one city to get both deer and fish). But, you didn't know that. Thanks for the turns!

 

[Zed-F]

Last time I tried to put a farm on a corn with no fresh water, it wouldn't let me. Maybe something changed? Besides, I don't think that having the corn and deer is necessarily better -- I think fish+deer is just as good. If we're going to be whipping a lot, most likely we will want a lot of lighthouse-powered sea tiles to work anyway. From the point of view of whipping, the fish is more valuable than the corn.

Still, corn + deer would not have needed an obelisk for culture, so perhaps that would have been a better plan anyway. Too bad I didn't know about that farming tidbit! I'll remember that for next time.

 

[Perplexity]

I guess I'm up then. I should be able to play tomorrow night.

I dunno about this game. Looking forward to checkng it out.

 

[xenikos]

I'm positive that nothing changed - the corn/wheat was probably just out of your cultural borders.

Anyways, things have obviously changed - given our northern city placement, it is now impossible to ever grab that stone (unless we were to give up that wheat by the river, which is just not a good choice). I opened up the save to see what of the world has been revealed, and here is my new suggestions for further city placement:

I think white dot is our #1 priority, for fairly obvious reasons. This city, with a hill, lots of forests, a river, and a stone that can be quarried (if we so choose) will be our biggest production city.



Red dot should be #2, with both a happiness resource (that'll kick in the instant we get calender) and that clam, along with good land. Plus we want to get to it before the Japanese do.

Blue dot is just a big question mark - it depends on what we find to the south of that island (more land, I'm praying). That seems like our obvious choice for further exploration too, now that we've found Alex to the NE and Japanese to the SE.



Black dot should be #3, and Light green probably #4 (or #5 depending on what shows up in the south near blue). And yellow is an approximation that should probably go one or two tiles to the south.


Well, there's my imput. Clearly there's no reason to go for masonry for a little while now, and horses lose their importance on this kind of map - so granaries seem like the clear tech choice, then perhaps iron working.

 

[Perplexity]

OK I play now.

 

[Perplexity]

OK, here goes. I'm not sure how many turns I'm supposed to play. So we'll see.

--Pre-Turn (2000BC)
Wow Barcelona is gonna have problems. So little food.
Dunno what else. Move the work boat.

--Turn 1
We are the 6th most advanced. Liz #1 and Toku #2. Hmm.

--Turn 2
Tokugawa adopts Slavery. Alex too. Woo.

--Turn 3
Nothing.

--Turn 4
Nothing.

--Turn 5
Worker finishes in Madrid. A lot of reasonable things to build here. I think Settler is a good idea... 17 turns. But I'll chop the forest on the hill.

--Turn 6
Start the chop for the Settler.

--Turn 7
Judaism FIDAL. Continue exploration with the Work Boat.

--Turn 8
Masonry finishes. Start The Wheel.






Just kidding! Start Priesthood.

Obelisk finishes in Barcelona. Start Lighthouse, we really need it here.
Liz converts to Judiasm.

--Turn 9
Worker has finsihed chop near Madrid. There's no place for a farm here. Bummer. I will build some grassland cottages, I guess.

--Turn 10
Oops, we don't have cottage building ability yet. Guess I'll make a mine.

--Turn 11
Buddhism spreads to Barcelona. That's nice.

--Turn 12
Work boat exploration, that's all.

--Turn 13
Yawn.

--Turn 14
Yawn.

--Turn 15
Priesthood finishes. Pottery seems like a pretty important target. Too bad it requires The Wheel. I go for it anyway.

Barcelona expands. That's good. Barcelona should build a work boat soon.

I'm gonna stop here (1400BC).

Screenshots and save in the next post.

 

[Perplexity]

Here are some screenshots. Also the save.

 

[Maksim]

Got it. Will play tonight.

 

[xenikos]

Perplexity -

thanks. what was the logic on the tech choices? We can't do anything with masonry for the time being, and priesthood - for temples? the oracle?

I think our tech priorities should be, after we get pottery...
-Iron Working (to show us iron, and also to provide our capital with a 3 food square by cutting that jungle
-Alphabet (hopefully soon enough that we can trade it to catch up

 

[Perplexity]

I left Masonry on from the save. I guess it might have been a little premature. Still, we'll need Aqueduct sooner than usual in this variant, and trying for Great Lighthouse is always a reasonable option on archipelago maps.

Priesthood was mostly for temples -- we'll be hitting happy limits sooner than usual.

 

[Maksim]

Very well, so we begin.

First of all, the Lighthouse being built at Barcelona is major weed. A workboat sent to the fishes in its vicinity is a much greater return on investment. It only takes 10 turns at three hammers, and Lighthouse takes twenty. The benefit of fishes is +3 food, while Lighthouse gives +1 food per tile worked.

We only work one water tile. Ergo, the workboat is twice as cheap and three times as beneficial. In fact, I’m hard pressed to come up with a situation where you would choose a lighthouse over a workboat, given the choice (well, a large starving conquered city would be a counter-point but we are nowhere near there yet).

We are playing a pretty difficult variant here – let’s avoid costly mistakes, please.

We have one settler almost ready at Madrid. I agree with sending him to the small river up north so it can grab the wheat immediately, and the marble after an obelisk. After the worker finishes with the mine at Madrid, he will head over to help with farming/quarrying/building a camp for Barcelona.

Speaking of Madrid, that single move east we made in our very first turn has cost us dearly. Without wheat in its city radius, it will take forever to grow. Without pottery, we can’t even do anything useful with people working grasslands for break-even food. So I’m not going to try and make it grow for now.

What could it do? I debate going for the Oracle but it would take 25 turns (19 after the mine finishes). This might be doable but the best thing we could pick up with it is Metal Casting from our current tech set. I could, of course, forget about the wheel/pottery, go for writing, hope to pick up alphabet via Oracle and do some trading with AI, and would probably do so in a single game. However, if I fail, it will cost us the game, which would be unthinkably rude to Torello.

Thus, Madrid will finish the settler, then build a galley and another settler so that we can have four cities – doubt we’d be able to support much more than that. Afterwards, it could build a worker and switch to growing cottages, perhaps, but that’s not for me to decide.

I’ll play 15 turns.

1360 BC (1) – Worker begins mine.
1320 BC (2) – Madrid builds settler (7 turns’ journey for him!). Begins Galley.
1160 BC (6) – Stonehenge is BIDAL. Worker finished mine, and is sent north. I change Madrid to work both mines so it will grow no more.
1080 BC (8) – Seville founded. Starts on Obelisk. We finish Wheel, start on Pottery.
1000 BC (10) – Barcelona builds Workboat, continues working on Lighthouse (what else?).
975 BC (14) – Pottery learnt. Iron Working began at 60%. Will take 27 turns. Nothing else strikes me as useful, anyway.

One turn invested in IW. Maybe switch and do Animal Husbandry instead? If horses pop up anywhere near us, it’d be a nice boost.

Overall, I’m skeptical of our current situation. We have three cities (growth-stunted capital, fishing village and a start-up) and our economy is already non-existent.

However, once we begin building cottages, and Seville comes online, things will start looking better. Barcelona will grow quickly now – it could afford having some plains cottages (1F would be no problem with the extra food it has, and 1H would be much appreciated). Seville will be a powerhouse. And Madrid… Well, they are the holy city of (Zen?) Buddhism, right? They’ll be figuring out the sound of one hand clapping, then!

Thus concludes my turn.

 

[Perplexity]

Very well, so we begin.

First of all, the Lighthouse being built at Barcelona is major weed. A workboat sent to the fishes in its vicinity is a much greater return on investment. It only takes 10 turns at three hammers, and Lighthouse takes twenty. The benefit of fishes is +3 food, while Lighthouse gives +1 food per tile worked.

We only work one water tile. Ergo, the workboat is twice as cheap and three times as beneficial. In fact, I’m hard pressed to come up with a situation where you would choose a lighthouse over a workboat, given the choice (well, a large starving conquered city would be a counter-point but we are nowhere near there yet).

We are playing a pretty difficult variant here – let’s avoid costly mistakes, please.

The lighthouse made sense before the border expansion. I failed to look outside the 3x3 box to see what else was in the cross. That was definitely an error.

Thus, Madrid will finish the settler, then build a galley and another settler so that we can have four cities – doubt we’d be able to support much more than that. Afterwards, it could build a worker and switch to growing cottages, perhaps, but that’s not for me to decide.

Cottages around Madrid has to be a very high priority.

 

[Perplexity]

Roster

Xenikos
Zed-F
Perplexity
Maksim (just played)
Torello (up)