(0) 1300BC Naturally I plan to follow my own suggestions made above in this thread! That means swapping Moscow over to Stonehenge immediately, running one turn of max growth to reach size 5. ETA is 36 turns, but that will drop drastically next turn when I swap over to max shields (notice for lurkers and other team members: don't build a settler when your capital can grow to the next size in just 1 more turn! We should have let Moscow hit size 5 before starting that settler.)
St. Pete is building a worker for itself, which seems like a good decision. However, it's working the 2/0/3 lake tile instead of one of our many 1/2/0 tiles; I'd rather get the worker out sooner at the cost of commerce (we're not racing to any important techs right now) so I make the switch. ETA for worker drops from 12 turns to 10 turns. I also move one of the warriors out of Moscow to explore the east for us.
(1) 1270BC Moscow hits size 5; after reconfiguring for max shields, Stonehenge is due in 16 turns, which I plan to further drop with some forest chops. The borders of St. Pete expand as it hits 150 culture!
Otherwise, not so much this turn.
(2) 1240BC Bronze Working -> Pottery. Well, Lee is going to like this one:
TWO coppers, one at EACH city!
(I swear I didn't look at this map in the Worldbuilder when placing the St. Pete's location, honest!) Worker at Moscow finishes building the road it was working on and starts chopping a forest (5 turns). (Why exactly did we research The Wheel before Bronze Working?
) I don't swap to Slavery because we're in a race for Stonehenge at the moment. We should swap as soon as it finishes (or we lose the wonder), however.
(3) 1210BC Poor St. Pete: the city has ivory, copper, and stone but no food bonuses. The plan for this city will be to build NO cottages, farm everything and turn it into our production/military powerhouse. (Moscow, on the other hand, should be a commerce city - lots of cottages there.)
(6) 1120BC Forest cleared at Moscow. Bad news in the east, as the Americans have already expanded to the point where they've largely cut us off. Still need more scouting - hopefully we can find a decent spot over there to start putting pressure on them.
(7) 1090BC The good news is that Napoleon seems to have expanded west, instead of towards us. There may well be a decent city spot over in the west, as opposed to the east.
(10) 1000BC St. Pete's finishes a worker; this city desperately needs a granary, but Pottery is still 3 turns away. I have it start on a barracks for now, with the intention of switching when the tech comes in. We also need to irrigate some of the plains tiles there to let the city grow, but that will require Agriculture, which we also don't have yet (should be the next tech researched!)
Stonehenge is due in 5 more turns at Moscow, but will actually complete in 3 more as a result of another forest chop. Our worker should probably start building some cottages there next, as our finances are going to drop badly if we don't start getting some of them going. (St. Pete's won't get any cottages either, so it won't be helping matters.)
Here are the spots I'm considering for the next city (we can and probably should whip a settler from Moscow soon, once it gets down to a 2-pop whip):
This looks like a poor city location, and it is. But for this game, the actual land quality is often less important than the positioning of cities. The potential red dot would still have 2 floodplains to work with, redeem one desert tile by being founded on it, secure us incense (and very possibly horses, wines, and spices too). And the most compelling reason of all: it would only be 3 tiles away from that second American city (blue dot), with a decent chance of flipping it! There's also an American archer/settler pair moving around this area (blue arrow); if they found a city on our borders, we should DEFINITELY grab this location, to ensure that their city will flip to us.
Now here's another possible spot to head next:
This spot is the min 3-tile distance away from TWO French cities!
It also has better land overall (although still some desert tiles), grabbing corn and (another) copper for us. Note that the city CANNOT go one tile north (where it would grab the gold as well) because then it would be 4 tiles away from the French cities, and that would defeat the point. Regardless of where we plant our city, east or west, the hope is that we may luck out into a culture flip.
The one reason why I'm promoting the east location (red dot) over the west location (green dot) is because I'm afraid that the whole east will be closed off to us if we don't get a move on over there. With so much space in the west, I think we'll be able to squeeze a lot of cities over there for some time yet to come. (In other words, red THEN green!) But I'm curious to hear what everyone else thinks on the matter.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/12069/RB29a-BC-1000.zip
darkwatcher said:
I don't mind waiting I can't do any computer games till monday
Are you going to be out until Monday? Please let us know your availability, because I don't want this game to sit on hold for 5 days.
