RB6 - Island Hopping

[Rowain deWolf]

Tokugawa does not like us enough for open borders ...well...he shall pay for that!!

Toku is by far the hardest AI to get Open Borders with.
On the downside this makes him a very annoying neighbour if you troops get trapped by his borders.
On the upside he is usually a) very unpopular so its not too hard to find allies against him and
b) he is most of the time a weak civ as he seldom trade with anyone and so hurt his own development.

 

[Sadan01]

Got it. Downloaded save and reviewing now. Let's hope I can keep the ball rolling and not drop it. Report back soonish.

 

[Sadan01]

The 10 turns are complete. Here they are:

Turn 0 (1400BC)

Review game, everything looks set and ready to go.
Umm'ing and ahh'ing whether to actually push settler over to Japanese island to claim marble or go for Blue Dot instead.
Distance Maintenance is probably the biggest factor here. In fact, I think the Distance Maintenance will outweight the marble benefit for now as it will probably diminish our research capability greatly in the short-term considering we are already at -1gpt at 100% research and +2gpt at 90%. A difference of 3gpt and the distance maintenance will most probably wipe that out so we'd have to drop back to most likely 80% research in the interim. Blue Dot looks better to me for now. Opinions Am I too much?
We do have Copper in our lands so with the wonders that we may not be able to build with the aid of Marble, we can give the half-production-copper-wonders a go.
Hit Enter.

Turn 1 (1360BC) - Ahhh, Normal Play Speed. This might take some getting used to as I always play Epic Speed...

Settler built and Paris resumes on building a Granary - I choose to leave it that way for now.
Settler moves towards Blue Dot which the game thoughtfully points out for me.
Move warrior in SW in a westerly direction and find barb warrior's staring longingly at Sheep.

Put the Galley to sleep for now.
Masonry in 2 turns.

Turn 2 (1320BC)
Barbs seem to have a keen interest in the sheep.

I fortify the warrior in the forest and wait for them to come back (hopefully).
Nothing else on this turn. Masonry next turn.

Turn 3 (1280BC)
Masonry is discovered.

Start on Alphabet to enable tech trading (19 turns however) but intrigued by Sirian's comment when playing his turns:

Could be some metals out there, too. We should hope so!

Maybe Iron Working should come soon.
Paris completes the granary - Production changed to a Worker.
Orleans founded on Blue Dot. Production set to a Warrior.

Turn 4 (1240BC)
Rosette finished a Warrior. Set to build a Work Boat to net one of the fishies as Rosette is approaching health limit 3>5, next turn to be 4>5.
Move Warrior in Rosette to forest roughly in between Rosette and Paris to remove more of the fog.
Barbs stop being transfixed by the Sheep and start their way back around the coastline. Our warrior is hiding in the forest ready to lay the
Worker finishes mine at Rosette. Move Worker to tile SE of Rosette to build a cottage.

Turn 5 (1200BC)
Nada, nothing, zilch, zero, bugger all...

Turn 6 (1160BC)
Civ4 pressures me to think about building a Library in Paris. Later, Civ4, Later!

Turn 7 (1120BC)
Barbs attack our Warrior hiding in the forest.

Our warrior wins. At 1.2/2.0 strength. Set him to heal (in 4 turns).
Move barbs between Rosette and Paris further SE to uncover more of the fog. Nothing interesting sighted.

Turn 8 (1080BC)
Borders of Orleans expand. Ponies now in cultural boundaries.

Will not move worker from Rosette to there as Worker is almost finished (3 turns) in Paris to connect ponies up.
Warrior moved into forest next to copper. Still nothing interesting.
Worker finishes cottage outside Rosette. Let's do a first - I'll build a road. I think the cities should eventually be all connected so I might as well start it off.

Turn 9 (1040BC)
Workboat finished in Rosette. Rosette starts on another settler (Due in 10).
Workboat moves to NW fishies. Nets next turn.
Move warrior further SE to see if there are any barbs. None. Good!

Turn 10 (100BC)
Move warrior back to tile adjacent to copper resource.
Worker finished road. Left worker active as this is my last turn and the next player can decide what to do there.
Workboat builds a net in NW fish tile.

Note: The boat over near the Japanese cannot move whatsoever.

Rosette should build another workboat soonish to net the other fish resource for a bonus to food and a help with commerce or maybe another settler once our commerce situation is stablised.
Paris will finish the worker next turn to stable those ponies for chariots (horse archers if necessary).

 

[Sadan01]

More Screenies and the save:

Western Empire

Eastern Empire

Demographics

Note I will be away tomorrow night and most, if not all of Saturday. Back on Sunday (Australian EDST time +11GMT)

 

[Arhiss]

One reference posed by Zagaz I don't recognize... newb alert!!!

1640BC and 1600BC: Ibid

Define Ibid please

 

[ChrTh]

One reference posed by Zagaz I don't recognize... newb alert!!!



Define Ibid please

lurker's comment:
It's Latin for "ditto"

 

[BeefontheBone]

Lurker's lame joke: I thought it was a kind of bird...

 

[Garath]

Got It.

However, I've run out of Civ time today finishing Epic One instead, so I'll get to it tomorrow afternoon GMT.

--Garath

 

[Sirian]

Distance Maintenance is probably the biggest factor here.

That's a factor for sure. The biggest factor, in my view, is defensibility. Planting a city on the other guy's continent means a vast uphill struggle to defend the site if war breaks out... and invites war in some cases. It is not enough just to plant one's flag and expect the AI to respect it. On higher difficulties, at least, they won't. And we don't even have Archers to send along with it? I wouldn't try to make that move with less than three Archers (or better units) to send along.

Grabbing the islands between the two continents, to cut off their boat access across the passage, however, would have been a good idea. There are fish in the area to feed such a town (and supply people for Slave-based production).


Anyway, we're moving along. My thought about the Copper is that it's probably not enough to change the dotmap. We can pull in the copper by planting a city at Yellow Dot and waiting for its borders to expand to 100 culture. We should consider doing that soon, but it would be good to explore the south shore of our continent to see what seafood may be out there. That could impact our plans in any number of ways.


- Sirian

 

[Garath]

Why are we going for Alphabet? To enable tech trades? Unfortunately for that plan, we only know one AI, and it's Tokugawa, who doesn't trade. I'll have a look once I can get to the save whether something else will advantage us more right now, the great thing about Civ 4 is that switching away won't lose our progress on Alphabet for when we do need it.

From the screenies, we have all but a single tile of our island defogged at the moment, and there's a warrior in place to get that next turn, so I don't have to worry about barbs anymore. Never fear though Sirian, I will build some military. If only to get one unit in each city to help them stay happy.

This is only Noble, so the city upkeep penalties really aren't all that harsh, so we should be able to settle most if not all of our continent in the first expansion push. I'll see what I can do about getting us some more settlers out, therefore. I'll divert the galley, which doesn't appear to be doing anything right now, over to bust the fog south of our island, which it should be able to do before Rosette's settler pops, to get full information on where it should go.

I won't be playing for a few more hours yet, if this happens to intersect with anyone's time zone and they want to comment.

--Garath

 

[Garath]

Inherited Turn:
I send the galley off, and set the worker at Rosette to road the mined hill there. I'm surprised to see that without a road already, not roading hills and forests wastes worker turns far more than flatlands, and I very much doubt there was that much urgency when this was done. Regardless, there isn't much else to do there, so I do that. There seem to be nearly half a dozen such tiles at Paris too, surely they can't all have been so urgent, particularly the one outside the city's radius?

As I said, I don't think Alphabet will do much for us right at the moment since we only know Tokugawa. I could take Mathematics for a run at the Hanging Gardens, but looking at our lands I think we're far more likely to have a happiness shortage than a health, so they don't look so useful. It would still get us closer to Currency and Constuction, though, so not useless. Mysticism might be nice, we ought to try to get some use out this Industrious trait at some point, after all. Iron Working isn't a massively high priority either since we have Copper, and Metal Casting would just take too long. So I set research to Mysticism.

Early:
Paris finishes a worker. Its growth in 4 turns will drop the time to produce a settler by 2-3 turns, so I think it's worth letting it grow out. I decide to put 4 turns of production on a lighthouse, since if we take the Great Lighthouse we'll get a fairly significant commerce bonus, on this map. I start the worker off to connect the horses up for Orleans, painful though it is to see all those unroaded tiles around.

Judaism is founded in a distant land.

Orleans begins its work boat.

Mid:
Mysticism -> Polytheism. I think it's worth taking a run at the Oracle, we should be able to swing something nice from it. Code of Laws, for example.

Stonehenge built in a distant land.

Oracle built in a distant land (850BC). Huh. So much for that, then. I've clearly got a warped estimation of both how slow Noble is and just how many turns have passed so far in this game, I thought there was a fair bit of time left before that was likely to happen.
I think about it for a while, and decide to finish off Polytheism to leave the option of the Parthenon open for later players, we'll have a hell of a GPP factory in Rosette later on if we want it and that would be a significant boost to it.

Late:
Rosette finishes Settler, set to Work Boat for the other fish. Now seems as good a time as any to show you what the galley exploring the waters to the south has found:

There's actually a significant island here in the south, which is something of a pity since it wastes two tiles from Yellow Dot as ice that would otherwise have been far more productive water, and there's a really badly placed crab. Settling Yellow Dot on the original location will make it completely impossible to place a city in a place that will get those crabs.

We could either keep the dotmap as planned, using the island White Dot rather than mainland so as to block Tokugawa (potentially significant, I think), and simply forgo those crabs. Or we could shift Yellow Dot three tiles West, where it would retain one of the two deer and get the Copper in range, use the mainland White Dot to avoid wasting the other deer from the original Yellow Dot, and aim to place a city on Ice Island, presumably at Grey Dot. Serious fishing village, only worth it later, but it has the crab tile and would therefore not be entirely useless. White Dot would be the high priority site in the second plan, with three food bonuses.

I'm leaning in favour of keeping the original plan, myself, but since I think both have merits and the settler won't get to any of the above city sites on my turn, it's Sirian's choice. I'll send him off to the Yellow options, but he could equally be put on the Galley that will reach there about the same time as he does and sent to White. I'd think the one being built in Paris would be better for that, though.

Turn 10 (750BC):
Polytheism finishes. I choose Iron Working both to see if we have Iron and for the Compass line to get off this icy rock, but no beakers have been put in yet. I know it's a bit of a cop-out, but I've left the settler unmoved, currently sitting on the western option for Yellow Dot, and the warrior to his NE as either MP for the new city or to return to his fog-watching duties. The galley's in place so that you can get the settler on it next turn if you want.

The pasture on the horses has just finished, I've sacrificed growth in Orleans in order to work it and get the Work Boat out faster, for better growth in the long run.

Rosette has reached happiness limit, so will probably want to go back to workers/settlers once it finishes the work boat; it'll be really good at them with three food bonuses and a mined hill. Whipping will be in order if you do anything else.

Save in separate post due to being on a different computer to this report. Have fun!

 

[Garath]

And here's the save, 750BC. (blast, the image links in the above post do not appear to have worked. Rereading Sirian's explanation...)

EDIT: Fixed them. All done.

 

[Sirian]

The upload server is slow and finicky at the moment. Hope that clears up later.

Anyway, there -is- a way to get our boat out of there, of course.

And since we drew the xenophobe as neighbor, what the heck.

I'll be back with the rest of my second round when the upload server is more cooperative.


- Sirian

 

[Garath]

You really do get a buzz out of leaving people hanging, don't you, Sirian? But of course, our glorious military of what, four? No, a whole Five Warriors, I think, couldn't possibly fail to be enough in such awesome hands as yours, right? Right?

I don't think it would have been particularly wise for me to do that on my turns, since I didn't have the ability to whip chariots in case of Tokugawa actually having Sailing already that you do, but I still wish I'd thought of it.
The Annals of the Five Warrior War shall go down in history!

Should be fun! Especially for the guy following you in the order... how you feeling Arhiss?

And I certainly do hope the Uploads server starts working again soon. The sooner this gets moving again, the better my odds of getting another round in before I go home for Christmas.

--Garath

PS on a completely unrelated note, do you find that good relations are a little easier to achieve on Archipelago maps, since there's far less likelihood of major penalties for close borders?

 

[Arhiss]

You really do get a buzz out of leaving people hanging, don't you, Sirian? But of course, our glorious military of what, four? No, a whole Five Warriors, I think, couldn't possibly fail to be enough in such awesome hands as yours, right? Right?

[snip]

Should be fun! Especially for the guy following you in the order... how you feeling Arhiss?

The man is positively sadistic I say! As far as how I feel?

EDIT -- I managed to fix my images in my earlier posts for those who care

 

[Sirian]

IT 750BC: We have no army.

So of course, that's the perfect time to declare war.

Got to keep you people on your toes, don't you know.


Seriously, though. Getting a work boat trapped on the far side of the moon wasn't part of the original idea. That work boat was supposed to explore a little bit, then BE IN PLACE by the time borders expanded at Pink Dot(TM) to begin working one of the Fish immediately.

The idea behind skipping the archers was that we'd build some Chariots. But instead of the second city cranking settlers, we built THREE (and a half) of them out of the capital and the capital hasn't even maxed its population yet? Wow.

'Tis OK, though. That's why we're playing on Noble, so there is room to spare. The team did a number of good things. We did get the cities moving well. We did settle in good locations. We did adapt the dotmap when a surprise turned up. We did suppress barbarian appearance by stationing guards.

The thing we probably failed the worst at is the tech. Seems like each player who came along had a different plan, and the net result is that I pick up my turn and our strategy is in disarray.

* We could have gone for the Great Lighthouse, but that would have meant doing something other than using Paris for settler production for 2000 years.

* We could have gone for the Great Library, but Alphabet got vetoed in mid stream.

* We could have targetted some very early forest chops, but we stopped building workers.

* We researched Writing early but drew a dud neighbor and then didn't use forest chops to get a quick Library going.

* The Oracle plan might have worked (any of these plans might have worked) but folks didn't start it early enough.


Civ4 has lots and lots of valid paths from which to choose, but the game can flounder if a team's house is divided. Civ3 allowed for more moving all around the board, so to speak, since you could change build orders at will, and teams weren't conducting research: they'd sit on the cash and buy or steal their techs on the spur of the moment, when a good n-fer trade came along.

Civ4 succession games, I think, will involve a bit more art than that. Even if you think the previous guy's efforts went in a direction other than you would choose, you have to figure out when it's better to keep going on what he started than it would be to start over on something else.

That's what I get when I look at this save. It feels like people kept starting over. ... Not a big deal, but something to ponder. The one thing that doesn't work very well in Civ4 is indecision. There are many strategies and many more short term strategical moves, but they all require some degree of focus to be successful.

Finding a good balance between correcting course if the previous momentum is not heading in an ideal direction, and following through on the existing momentum, is what will make Civ4 SG-ing a stronger experience than with Civ3. It will also, I believe, make it more of a challenge. Teams will have to work well together to thrive.


We have NO BARRACKS, none started, four cities to defend, and a grand total of five unpromoted Warriors. We are the penultimate paper tiger. Even without the war with Tokugawa, this must be fixed. Even though we are on an island, we're inviting trouble not to build some decent military.

MILITARY IS CHEAP. Military is so riduculously cheap that you can build a barracks and train five veteran swordsmen to go take two cities from somebody cheaper than you can train two settlers and two single, unpromoted archers to go along with them.

None of you guys is going to survive on Monarch if this is the kind of military you are fielding at 750BC. Just giving you the straight story on that point.


So here are my goals for this round.

1. Rescue the Lost Fishermen(TM) from the far side of the moon.

2. Poke Tokugawa in the eye and say, "Neener neener."

3. Build a barracks.

4. Connect the Copper.

5. Research Archery, then try to make something good from the techs we have on hand.


As for our "brave" work boat crews, I order them to scout out the Japanese capital.

"Feeling lucky today, punks?"

Woops. Guess not.

 

[Sirian]

Oh One More Thing(TM)...

On the question of "how much military is enough"... You guys all read RB1. You may recall that at several points earlier in the game, Sulla remarked on how much military we had. "I thought we had enough." "We've got enough." "Why does Sirian want more?" ... Then the war came.

So here's a good rule of thumb. If you've got enough military around that Sulla thinks you've got too much... THEN you know you're getting warm.

And guys... this situation is Kinetically Challenged(R).

Brrr.


- Sirian

 

[Sirian]

IBT 750BC: I press next turn, and...

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

Look at them. The so-called "mighty Japanese navy", cowering in port.

That's right. We bad. Uh huh.

pH34r the MIGHT of our unbeatable navy. You know you don't want a piece of this.


725BC: Our Work Boat stares death in the face, then calmly rows away.

Too bad the Japanese Navy weren't those kind of pansies in real life.
I think the Battle of Midway is one of the ultimate examples of "lucky than good".

Lyons founded on the south shore.


675BC: Rosette.

Note that the anger is the SAME for whipping multiple pop points as for a single.
Thus you WANT to whip multiple points when you can, at super-food cities!
Get a higher food-to-shields conversion rate within the same anger management course.


650BC: Here's our situation at home.

FIVE REGULAR WARRIORS. No barracks.
All three new cities need to get granary and lighthouse in place before doing too much else.
That leaves Paris for training a few troops.

Forest is being chopped at Pink Bullseye.
If you found a city on a forest, the forest goes to waste.
So chopping it before the settler arrives will pull free shields to a city!
Both of these sites should be chopped first. Shields are in short supply!


600BC: No sign of Tokugawa. He's ignoring our war declaration as a phony.
The AI will no longer automatically drop its own plans if favor of beelining at you.
They won't go on offense unless they have enough forces to threaten to make real gains.

DON'T BE LULLED. If we do see them, they will come with a couple of shiploads.
We need enough units to deal with them. We have time, though.
Also, with passage of time, they may accept peace at some point.
Or more likely, if we fight them and kill a few units, then they'll want peace.


550BC: The mine at Lyons is about to complete.

It helped that I converged our two workers on the site.
This is literally all our workers have been doing for my whole round!


525BC: The new worker from Rosette is chopping the forest at Pink Bullseye.

These shields should NOT go to yet another worker or settler.
That city is long on food and short on shields.
Most of the chop will carry over to the next item.
So make it a granary or a barracks, please. (Either is good!)

 

[Sirian]

500BC: Just like that, my round is over. Wow, that wen't quick.

* Paris made it to size 6 and finished its barracks.

* The copper is connected.

* Trained a Work Boat and whipped a Granary at Orleans.

* Trained a Work Boat and whipped a Lighthouse at Rosette.

* Trained a Worker at Rosette and almost another. Set up a forest chop.

* Sent our galley to pester the Japanese


Here's the new normal back home:

Green Box, there's a worker building a road.
Make SURE that the road finishes on your first turn, before you send the other worker to the Deer.

Red Boxes are wasted tiles, meaning those yellow forests are ripe for plucking.
Get the Deer hooked up first, though!
Need to chop White Dot, too.

One of the things you often have to realize is that settlers slow you down!
You can choose wonders or settlers, but not both at the same time.
Sometimes the extra settlers are what needs to wait!
I doubt we will get the Great Lighthouse.
However, we SHOULD try for Colossus and/or Great Library!
You have to bite the bullet for either, though, and research some pricey techs!

If you've been paying attention to the screenies... (You have, right? ... Right?)
...then you have seen my research choices.

Happiness is in short supply, and previous player spent our research on the religion branch.
Before that, someone spent research on Writing.
It was just a hop from there to go for Confucianism.
Even if we don't get it, the courthouses will help.
It seemed like something useful to do while we wait on our civ to build stuff we already have access to!


As for the West... two options.

Plan A: settle in a way that tries to extend our reach westward, island hopping style.

It would have to be Orange Dot.
Red X is hopeless, and Red Dot need 100 culture to expand far enough to open the way.
Settling ON the sheep is a gamble, a bet that there is a passage to the west.
If there isn't, then we'll have sacrificed city quality on a failed gambit.

Plan B: forget trying to advance to the west, and make the most of the area.

Settle Green Dot and leave the red zone unsettled until later in the game, when we can fund a crappy city.


Plans A and B are both valid. One's a big gambit, the other is the conservative move.

We don't have to choose for a little while, but it won't be too long.
Rosette is a powerful settler/worker producer!

We don't want to squander the half-built settler at Paris.
But it's a fairly safe bet that that's the last settler it should make for a while!
I put some military units in line ahead of the settler.
You can click on the items to remove them from the queue if desired.


The Japanese have built a Lighthouse at Tokyo. You can literally see it on the map!

Our ship should park on the Gray Dot and dare them to remove us.
Blockade their city for as long as we remain at war!
(Or until they send enough ships to move us out of there!)


RB6 ROSTER:

Sirian
Arhiss --- UP NOW!
Zagaz
Sadan
Garath

Alternates:
* weakciv
* rabhison

Retired:
* Jkaen
* Anjinsan (missing in action)


- Sirian


EDIT: Rosette whipped seven or eight turns ago. It will be ready to whip again shortly.
Need one turn of production in on an item to whip the rest at non-ripoff prices.

Best deal would be to start a granary or barracks, with the forest chop carry-over,
then SWITCH to the other item, put one turn in on that, WHIP two pop points!
Then let the half-built item finish.
Up to you, though.

 

[Arhiss]

Got it, doing turns now