RB2 - Clueless Catherine Conquers Crowded Continents

[Gold Ergo Sum]

If we are going to stay small for a while, then I definitely recommend Stonehenge. Social policies are far easier to obtain when your empire is small, and Stonehenge really doesn't require a lot of hammers for the large culture gain. We might be able to rip off most of the Honor policies prior to going to war.

As for expanding our own empire, for the most part, I don't bother building settlers. Within 100 turns, I've been able to take multiple A.I. cities (including the capital). I don't think I've ever built more than two Settlers in a game yet. So different from Civ IV.

 

[Kylearan]

I had also thought about the Great Library, but came to the same conclusion as Aretii - it's not immediately useful to us. I didn't think about the Oracle though, that definitely makes sense!

Seeing the surrounding terrain, I also think there's no immediate need for many of the worker techs, so I like the Stonehenge suggestion and went for the Animal Husbandry -> Pottery -> Calendar route. ...which was sped up by our warrior exploring the ruins (*after* I had founded our capital) and getting Animal Husbandry as a freebie! And the good news is that we have horses in the second ring of Moscow!

Moscow started to build a scout, while our warrior moved south, then crossed the river and found the first city state: Helsinki, a maritime city state.

A maritime city state so close to us is nice! The problem is that a lot of other civilizations turned out to be close to it, too.

Our warrior was drawn along a clock-wise circle around our capital, guided by ruins and hills. The second ruins provided us with advanced weapons (we have a spearman now), the third with maps of our surroundings (boo!). After that, I didn't find any more ruins, as the map is crawling with AI units.

Our scout moved northwest into the tundra, simply because that was the only region left not yet scouted by other units. The only thing he found there was a barbarian encampment with two brutes on the northeastern peninsula. I fear the brute will come for us sooner or later, but our city can deal with it.

Meanwhile, Moscow started building a worker. At size 2, I set the city to max production, speeding up the worker while delaying our growth - I hate to work bad, unimproved tiles.

The worker completed exactly on turn 20, and I set Moscow tentatively to a settler, up for discussions. I think we should build a second city ASAP before the good spots get taken!

The worker already crossed the river on his way to the cows. Next turn, Moscow's culture will get us an additional hex - it will either be the cows, the sugar or the horses (Sulla would hate this! ). If it's the horses or the sugar hex, buy the cow tile immediately!

Here's the map so far:

We've already met Washington, Suleiman, Caesar, Wu, Montezuma and Bismarck. Note that we have only found one city state so far, Helsinki! This will be very interesting - will the AIs try to win over Helsinki? We also found our first natural wonder, Old Faithful.

Just when our spearman arrived at China's capital, Wu asked for open borders. I agreed, as she's relatively far away and won't be our first target, and the spear needed to cross her borders anyway.

As you can see in the lower left corner, our spearman is near a barbarian encampment. He will be safe from attack (in a forest across the river), and it's up to the next player to decide if we should attack the encampent (cross the river first - move onto the sheep hill, then attack the next turn) or simply continue scouting south along the river. Since there are grey borders of another city state visible behind the camp, I think move around the river and then attack.

Roster:
Kylearan -> just played
Aretii -> UP NOW
SleepingMoogle -> on deck
SpazzMaticus
Gold Ergo Sum

 

[SevenSpirits]

I think it would have been good to buy that horse tiles as quickly as possible. It's 2/2! Actually I'd still buy it immediately. We want all three of those tiles that could be expanded to, since Calendar is on the way, and we should probably end up buying two of them since culture pops are so slow. Might as well get one more turn of extra food/production.

 

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I hate to build a Settler without growing at least one more time, but I don't know the game well enough to know how many turns we might be able to shave off the build.

Our two nearest Civs, especially the Ottomans, are pretty weak A.I. Civs. I think we can run them over without too much difficulty whenever we decided to stomp them.

As for the Barb encampment, it would be useful to leave it and see if we could curry favor with the nearby city-state that will inevitably want it destroyed, but that will delay our scouting indefinitely.

I am not too concerned with Barbs at our capital. With this many Civs, all the good land will be settled quickly.

Hard to tell where our Settler should go, if we build one, from those pics. Maybe to the SE towards Washington, near the river sugar and cows?

I also second the idea of buying the horses over the cattle. That is a 2/2 tile right?

And we already have a Barb camp spawned up in the tundra I think.

 

[Aretii]

I let out a laugh like a seal when I saw that we had second-ring horses discovered from a hut tech. What wonderful luck! As Russia, river grassland horses are an incredible 2/3/1 tile once improved.

We've found roughly half the civs on our continent, but (I hope) have met them all. Seven civilizations on one landmass! On Standard! This sure is a cramped setting! Any way we expand, we're going to be running straight into conflict, and there will be war sooner rather than later (the AI gets uppity when you steal its land). There's that nice cows/horses/sheep spot west of Moscow, but that's practically on top of Istanbul! I definitely think the Ottomans will be our first target - they have beautiful land and two luxuries we don't have. Another possibility is the deer/bananas/silver/Old Faithful spot west of Washington, but that would be a royal pain hooking up to our capital. I'd call it indefensible were it not for the... shall we say, questionable military competence of the AI.

I'd call this a got it, but Kylearan appears to have neglected to attach the save . I won't be able to play until tomorrow, in any case, as I have two exams and a research proposal to prepare for. I definitely think settler needs to be our next build, followed by Stonehenge - early vertical growth is going to be paramount here. Are we agreed that Honor is the first track to pursue? After researching Calendar I will probably head toward Bronze Working, as I think we're going to need some spears sooner rather than later, and the forest chopping from Mining will be useful for building Stonehenge. How many turns am I to play - fifteen?

 

[Kylearan]

Damn, it's been a long time I've played an SG. Forgetting the save is silly. And yeah, I also should have included more close-up shots of our immediate surroundings, for discussion on where to settle...sorry, didn't think about that.

I agree about the settler -> Stonehenge plan. Also with making sure to get both the cattle and the horse (hopefully we will get at least one of those naturally next turn!).

Regarding the barbarian encapment, maybe we should really invest 2 turns scouting which city state is east of it, maybe we get lucky and they already want the camp destroyed.

Aretii, yes, you should play 15 turns. SleepingMoogle should then decide what feels more natural, 10 or 15 turns.

 

[Aretii]

No worries. Consider this an official got it. Will play and post tomorrow.

 

[SleepingMoogle]

Well, we upped the number of Civs without increasing map site so starting close to others isn't too surprising. It's interesting we've only met one city state so far though. The counter should still be at 16 right? But we should try to befriend Helsinki if we can. Extra food allows us to focus on production and gold instead. So let's hope Moscow acquires that Horse resource next turn and lets us keep the gold for bribing later on.

(Interesting note: The body of water that Helsinki borders must be absolutely teeming with fish if they are to support us.)

Anyway, I'm a bit wary about starting a Settler at size 2. Rapid expansion is key, but we are bound to piss off someone unless we plant in the Tundra, and right now we have no units to defend the city with from early aggression. It also limits our output and growth for another couple of turns, and with 11 opponents who started with Pottery (courtesy of the difficulty setting), we really should start on Henge the moment we finish Calendar research. Someone is bound to beeline it, and they already have a head start on us.

If we are to go for an early Settler though, how about just east of Helsinki? From the screenshot, it has a nice amount of hills and plains tiles, coupled with some food resources and Silver/Silk for more happiness. Planting there definitely won't go over well with Washington though.

 

[Spazzmaticus]

Damn it, the forum ate my response again.

So, to make it short:

- refraining from settling second city seems best. If we are going for stonehenge then there's no point in getting out 2nd city which will make policies more expensive. Also we only have 1 worker and no time to build second.

- we can sell open borders for cash (50g). Do we really need open borders from AI? I'd say cash is better

-same thing goes for excess happy resources (excess as in generating excess happy faces). So I'd sell that marble as soon as we connect it (300g). We actually don't want to have too much extra happy as we don't want to get golden age too early.

- We need to befriend Helsinki sooner or later.

 

[Sullla]

Next turn, Moscow's culture will get us an additional hex - it will either be the cows, the sugar or the horses (Sulla would hate this! ). If it's the horses or the sugar hex, buy the cow tile immediately!

Absurd lack of specificity in this part of the game design. First of all, you should be able to choose what tile your city gets on border expansion, rather than having to wait and "hope" that the AI governor picks something decent. Secondly, Civ5 then compounds this error by sometimes not even telling you what tile you're going to get! "Oh, it's going to be one of these three, based on a completely random dice roll. Have fun with that!" Very, very shoddy design work.

Three AI capitals that close? Doesn't sound like time to build a settler to me. Get horses, get chariot archers, get horsemen, AI capital of your choice goes splat.

 

[Kylearan]

Sulla, I actually agree with you that it's stupid not to tell us which tile to get if multiple tiles are available - that adds no real value to the game. I don't mind the fact that cultural expansion is out of your control in general though.

Anyway, I've been in a hurry yesterday, but this deserves an answer:

I think it would have been good to buy that horse tiles as quickly as possible.

Absolutely! I should have bought the tile immediately after the gold was available. I remember I've been annoyed about having to work such bad tiles until border expansion; don't know why I haven't thought about buying the tile earlier. I'll continue my fine tradition of doing weedy decisions in SGs.

So I'd sell that marble as soon as we connect it (300g)

Only if we have connected it after we've completed Stonehenge.

If we don't build a settler now, I'd suggest to build a warrior until we complete our research on Calendar. We might need to protect our tiles from barbs, as there are no AI cities between us and the northeastern encampment who could take care of it. And with the brokenly cheap upgrade costs, a warrior will come in handy later anyway.

 

[SevenSpirits]

Only if we have connected it after we've completed Stonehenge.

So actually...

The quarry itself is what gives the wonder bonus. You can trade the resource (the 5 happy) away and it doesn't matter. Though note that only the one city of ours with the quarry will ever get the bonus. I'm not sure if it's based on which city is currently controlling it or which city's culture claimed it originally.

 

[Kylearan]

Ah okay, didn't know that. (Since it's an undocumented feature anyway... ) So I have to get rid of some Civ 4-thinking there, too.

 

[timski]

Crowded map! I agree with the sentiment to build upwards, rather than outwards:

* If this genuinely is a standard map, your biggest problem is long term: Some of your opponents must be sitting on a lot of empty land, while you have none.

* I doubt you will be able to expand without scaring a neighbor, by settling in "their territory". At the very least settle in the direction of someone you expect to become an enemy very shortly afterwards. Civs starts with a unit bonus at this level, and they're not afraid to use that advantage if goaded.

Diplomacy will be interesting here. Convincing one civ to attack the other could be a strong strategy. Think this through early, because it's only a matter of turns before one of these civs starts to see another as "a problem", and requests some sort of pact.

If Wu asked for open borders, she must have Writing already. So watch out for a very early Great Library by her, if she chooses to build it. Especially if she gets her Marble hooked up. Remember it is possible to see wonders under construction, by scouting the map carefully. That almost certainly means she won't be building up militarily, so probably won't be much of an early threat.

Any idea what direction the other civs you mention appeared from? Identifying who is likely to share a border with Montezuma and Caesar (especially) is important, because those 2 are highly likely to war early.

One possibility is a very early rush against Washington: That looks like a great site (river, plains, hills). It's probably more likely that that war will break out with the Ottomans, depending on whether they are trapped in that corner or not.


The single city state is very interesting indeed. Naturally, you will want to be allying with it, because of the food bonus. And they are close enough to those other civs to be an effective ally in war (city states seem to only act against your enemies when they can see the enemy). However there is a very real chance that another civ will attack the city state - there are simply so many civs in its immediate hinterland, so much competition for land. That attack could be quite early. If so, the options are:

1. Stay neutral: Loose the chance for huge amounts of easy maritime city state love. Worse, risk the entire state falling to another civ - they're tough to capture, but a determined AI civ can do it. But don't accidently draw other civs into the conflict. 2-fronted early wars are very tricky.

2. Declare war: Timing is everything, however a few of your units can swing the war against the enemy civ, while simultaneously wiping out that civ's main army. Even if you can't take that civ's capital, you'll be able to extract a good peace deal.

This is the logical counterpoint to many of the city state fears: That their love isn't free. This game will be worth watching just to see that plays out.


Given your current proximity to other civs, the vulnerability of the central city state, and the lack of land, early war has become pretty much inevitable. Fortunately none of your immediate neighbors have early unique units (those come in the medieval period or later). None the less, I don't think it will be possible for you to sit back and quietly tech into the mid-game. I'd be very tempted to grab some early Swords, and try and take out a capital or 2 before they build walls. But with horses in your second ring, and a freebie tech on that tree, very early Wheel/Chariots are tempting. However, Chariots don't fit with Stonehenge, so you're probably better fighting slightly later. And the Swords line also takes you through Kreposts, opening up a mix of social policy and warfare as your core early strategy, rather than tech and economy.

Good stuff. 20 turns in and I'm already reworking my earlier ideas - I've completely ditch the Great Library/Civil Service/Chivalry. Maybe that's where Civ 5 feels most different: A standard or pre-decided approach can so easily be altered by discoveries on the early-game map.

 

[Kylearan]

Thanks for your detailed thought, timski!

Crowded map! I agree with the sentiment to build upwards, rather than outwards:

* If this genuinely is a standard map, your biggest problem is long term: Some of your opponents must be sitting on a lot of empty land, while you have none.

Well, we do have four more civs than usual for this map size, so the fact that it's crowded does not come that surprising (look at the name of the game... ). That said, I am a bit surprised just how crowded it is, so maybe some of our opponents actually have a bit more land to work with. That might result in a more challenging end-game, which I would really like!

Diplomacy will be interesting here. Convincing one civ to attack the other could be a strong strategy.

I agree, although I think it's too early to say who should fight who.

If Wu asked for open borders, she must have Writing already. So watch out for a very early Great Library by her, if she chooses to build it. Especially if she gets her Marble hooked up.

Let her! One less opponent with marble competing for Stonehenge, then.

The single city state is very interesting indeed.

We have two actually (you can see the borders east of the southern encampment), we just haven't formally met the second yet.

 

[MuLepton]

...
That attack could be quite early. If so, the options are:

1. Stay neutral: Loose the chance for huge amounts of easy maritime city state love. Worse, risk the entire state falling to another civ - they're tough to capture, but a determined AI civ can do it. But don't accidently draw other civs into the conflict. 2-fronted early wars are very tricky.

2. Declare war: Timing is everything, however a few of your units can swing the war against the enemy civ, while simultaneously wiping out that civ's main army. Even if you can't take that civ's capital, you'll be able to extract a good peace deal.

This is the logical counterpoint to many of the city state fears: That their love isn't free. This game will be worth watching just to see that plays out.

There is a third option, although it's probably only one you'd want to pursue if you feel you really can't intervene yourself:
You can gift the city state units to defend itself - that won't trigger war with the attacking civ. It has a certain charm in the way that the attacker will focus on the city state and (hopefully) weaken itself somewhat.

 

[Aretii]

Given the testing that's taken place in LOTR28, I am going to withdraw myself from this game in the interests of preserving the integrity of the save.

There is a lot more I could say on the subject, and I probably will, but I shall leave it for now at this: Firaxis, I am incredibly disappointed in you.

 

[SleepingMoogle]

Hmm, if we are to go after someone early Suleiman would be the obvious choice. He is fairly isolated from the rest of the continent, and we should be able to convince China to remain neutral if not side with us. Istanbul also looks like a pretty decent city to keep with tons of horses for production and trade potential, plenty of food for growth, and Silk and Silver for happiness.

We should make a decision on whether or not to pursue early war. Mining -> Bronze Working are solid picks if we're to go bash some heads, but especially the latter won't accomplish too much if we want to focus on growth and expansion instead.

Since Moscow will claim an additional tile through culture next turn, let's hold off purchasing the Horse until then. Maybe we'll get lucky and the city picks the Horse tile but if it picks the Cows or Sugar, we should purchase it ourselves. The Worker can start by putting down a pasture and put down some additional farms (both the flatland and the hills) for early growth.

 

[SleepingMoogle]

Aw.. that's too bad Aretii. Is there no way it will work out at all for different versions of the game?

If Aretii drops out, I guess I'm up next right? I'll pick up the save tonight and see what I can do.

 

[Kylearan]

Since Moscow will claim an additional tile through culture next turn, let's hold off purchasing the Horse until then.

Definitely. We don't have immediate need for the sugar, but want both horses and cows. So assuming it's a uniform random number, the odds of getting sugar are ~33% if we don't buy the horses now, but this increases to 50% if we do. So let's wait an additional turn.

Aretii, I'm really sorry to see you go, but I don't know what we can do right now to fix this issue. I hope you will remain an active lurker, ready to jump back in if a patch will fix this without breaking the save for us all. (Big if, I know. )

Does anyone else on the roster have the special edition?

MuLepton, if you have a standard edition, feel free to join us at the end of the roster. If Aretii will be able to play again with us, we will simply continue with six players.