RBD19 - The Return of Big Brother

[Speaker]

IT- Draw up a tentative dotmap as follows:

As a food rich city, I choose not to overlap beyond three squares in Beijing. Red dot will be the first city founded to claim the Iron and get the furs online, and Blue dot will be second. I anticipate our capital being moved to red dot at some point, hopefully not to far in the future. This will allow us to make a much expanded core. Pink dot can be shifted one tile northeast if so desired. It loses 5 tiles to overlap where it is, but can quickly bring the two BG squares into use. Depending on how the next bunch of turns end up, this dotmap can be expanded upon.

2130BC (1) Beijing builds Settler which heads toward Red Dot. Warrior called up between Settlers. Cathy has Mysticism, and I trade her Alphabet and Iron Working for it and 10 gold. If I don't give these to her, our little brother will. I trade Tokugawa Pottery for 20 gold. I offer Mysticism to our little brother and he offers 20 of his 23 gold for it. Aww, how nice of him. He is annoyed with us for reasons unknown. I now run science at 90%, with a deficit of -1, Horseback Riding due in 16 turns.

2070BC (2) Shanghai Spearman => Warrior.

2030BC (3) Beijing Warrior => Settler. Japan starts Pyramids.

1990BC (4) Joanie's borders spotted northeast of Russia. Nanking founded on Red Dot and starts on worker (can be vetoed if so desired, but since we are industrious, I suggest we take advantage of this trait and get roads built.

1950BC (5) Furs come online. We are now able to run at 90% science and 10% luxuries, with a loss of 1gpt, Horseback Riding due in 8 turns. MM Beijing to grow and build Settler in 2 turns.

1910BC (6) Move worker toward our next city site. We really need more workers.

1870BC (7) Beijing Settler => Warrior. Right now, it is possible to get a Settler and Warrior out of Beijing in 6 turns, oscillating from size 6 to size 4. The next player might want to check if Beijing can switch from size 7 to size 5, and produce the Settler without the Warrior in-between. This should help our gold as well. French start Pyramids.

1830BC (8) Russians start Pyramids. Contact made with Bis to our east. Naturally, he is annoyed. He has 4 cities other than Berlin to our 3 (4th due in three turns), and 18 gold. He is behind us by Alphabet and is the current score leader with 179. We are in last with 143 and our little bro X-Man is in second to last with 157. This seems a little curious to me. Most curious, however, is that everyone seems to have Contact with Bis. Am I expected to believe that on the last turn, he moved a unit next to every single Civ? I am fairly certain that you can trade contact before writing. Am I wrong here?

1790BC (9) Beijing Warrior => Settler. I decide to trade Bis Alphabet for 18 gold. We will have a monopoly on Horseback Riding very soon (and then will have to share with our loving little brother) and nothing to trade it for, so hopefully Bis can develop something new soon. The tech pace has slowed down dramatically.

1750BC (10) Canton Worker => Temple. I anticipate some forestry operations here, so the time to build the temple will be reduced and I don't want to waste shields building another worker. This can be vetoed if so desired. Worker moves onto spices to bring them online. Next turn, Beijing should have one of its mined grassland tiles switched to a river forest tile, and the Settler will be finished in 2 more turns right as the city grows. Horseback Riding is finished in 4 turns. The Settler should found where he is. For his birthday, I give X-Man a lavish gift of 11 virgins (or gold). He upgrades to Cautious.

Conclusion- The spearman is currently fogbusting in the south, for lack of anything better to do. I might have sent a Warrior instead, but the Spearman will hold up better against Warrior attacks in the wild. We should probably try to find Persia at some point, just to know where they are. I would recommend upgrading the tiles around the city founded next turn before moving onto a new city site. With 2 BG nearby, this city can become quite productive for us very fast. It might also be a good idea to send the Warrior who is right there into the for in the north to push it back and make sure there are no Barbarian camps. I haven't seen a single Barbarian, so I don't know if they are turned on, but in any event, it will be a good idea to push back that fog. Continue to expand rapidly Sulla!

RBD19 - 1750BC

 

[Speaker]

Oh, I just realized that this game is Emperor and not Deity. This makes a whole lot of sense. That extra Settler really gives the AI a HUGE advantage.

 

[Sullla]

Hoo boy, we got lots of room to expand here! I expect things to get pretty darn "interesting" in the Middle Ages though once the land grab gets done. Between refusing all tribute demands and having to aid X-Man in his wars, this might not be too peaceful of a game. "Got it" and will play tomorrow morning; hopefully I won't get hit with turns for this and RBE6 at the same time. We'll see.

 

[ukrneal]

I've got a lurker question - not a criticism, just a question. I've been watching along and I am not sure why this dotmap is best. Before seeing this one, I would have put the blue dot one space directly south. The same with the red and pink. I do see that my way puts cities on cleared land, and yours clears two jungle. IS this just a matter of personal preference?

The black zones may also show that one way was better than another, but we don't know that now and can't plan on anything. Can someone comment? Thanks!

 

[Sullla]

(0) 1750BC Change nothing, looks good.

(1) 1725BC Between turns Xerxes demands 22g from us. Our beloved Little Brother is flexing his muscles! We lovingly hand over the gold that he requests, hoping that this will be the start of even greater relations between our two nations. "We accept your gift. You shall live," is the response from Little Brother. He's so cute!

Tsingtao founded in the recommended spot, goes to work on granary (we've got plenty of settling still to do).

(3) 1675BC Settler produced from Beijing, it heads north since there is some pretty nice land up there. France has Writing and Communication with 2 more civs this turn; we will get Horseback Riding in 2 more turns ourselves and should then be able to make some kind of a deal.

(4) 1650BC Find Persia's borders to the south. Not entirely fair, because I did know where that starting position was located, but we would have found them sooner or later. Just like when Sirian plays a shadow epic, you cannot make yourself "forget" spoiler information.

(5) 1625BC Horseback Riding discovered. Joanie isn't willing to part with Writing at those monopoly prices, so I trade them Horseback Riding for Contact with Egypt and Babylon. Normall I wouldn't give up our monopoly on HR, but we are going to lose the monopoly anyway when we trade the tech to Little Brother. Egypt and Babylon are both backwards. We then end our turn by offering Horseback Riding to Little Brother; what's that? You'll offer 30 of your 36g for a tech @3rd civ price? That sounds fair to us! We love you, Xerxes! Max research on Polytheism; 27 turns at 0gpt.

(7) 1575BC Since Shanghai is high shields, low food, I set it to a barracks with the plan for it to provide defense for our cities in the near future. Little Brother, in his scientific genius, has discovered Writing this turn! And since he lacks contact with so many other civs, we will be happy, nay OVERJOYED to learn the secrets of Writing from Little Brother for Contact with the Russians and 90g (his offer, not mine naturally). Then we offer Little Brother contact wit Egypt - what, you'll pay 40g? Anything you say, Little Brother! How about contact with Japan? 20g is fine with us! And for contact with Joanie? 18g is more than enough. We are so overjoyed to be dealing with Little Brother instead of these vile other nations that we give him a 5g present for his research efforts. Little Brother goes to polite and thanks us for the gift!

(8) 1550BC Something I forgot last turn; we spend 42g to build an embassy with Little Brother. He has 2 spears in Persepolis, no luxuries , the city is size 2 and working on the Oracle (45 turns). At least Little Brother is researching something at 100% rate! We see no need to establish embassies with any of the other nations at this point.

(9) 1525BC Xinjian founded in the north, getting us both horses and iron. Another settler produced in Beijing, which heads east to found in an as-yet unidentified spot.

(10) 1500BC Nothing significant happened this turn, except the borders of all AI capitals expanded, trapping our exporing spear in the borders of Little Brother. Xerxes gets a gift of 11g to end my turn, since we had 51g and we want to take that to a nice even number.

Easy expansion game for the moment, just keep it nice and easy and continue to feed Little Brother techs. I'm going to make a dotmap for our large open territory and post it right beneath this.

RBD19 1500BC

 

[Sullla]

I placed a bunch of cities on this map, T-Hawk should feel free to revise as desired. Xinjian would make a good FP location if we adhere to this dotmap. The black "x" are wasted tiles on this map; it generally follows a very nice 21-tile spacing except where considerations of bonus food tiles and freshwater come in. The black dot in the northeast was a mistake and should be ignored.

 

[Ridgelake]

[Lurking] Looks like you guys have a fun game going here. If you all need another player at some point, I would be interested in joining if you would have me.

Sulla, hope all is well with you. If you recall, I was part of your emporer traning game this past summer. I got away from C3 for awhile, but am re-addicted now.

I will be out of town next week, but will be following along with interest as best I may. [/Lurking}

 

[T-hawk]

Got it, will play shortly.

Quite an ambitious dotmap; we'll see how far we can push it

 

[Sullla]

I figured I might as well draw it up out to cover a lot of ground, and then we can see how much of that we get. Fortune favors the bold, after all.

Originally posted by Ridgelake
Sulla, hope all is well with you. If you recall, I was part of your emporer traning game this past summer. I got away from C3 for awhile, but am re-addicted now.

Ridgelake! Glad to see that you are back, and no I haven't forgotten anyone who was on the team in the good ol' days of SUL4. I hope that you have been well, and that you'll stick around as long as this game continues to be entertaining for you.

 

[Sirp]

Looks great guys. The dotmap is ambitious, but I think we should be able to manage something pretty close to it.

ukrneal: in answer to your question, dotmaps are largely a matter of playing style, however Speaker's dotmap does have much going for it: the blue dot being to the south would have meant it was in the middle of the jungle, unable to be productive until workers arrived in the region, or its borders expanded.

The red dot could go well in either position: both locations are on fresh water, the major consideration here.

As for the pink dot, moving it one space south would put it on a bonus grassland. Unless there are much bigger fish to fry (i.e. there's cattle, wheat, fresh water etc in the area), I would really avoid founding a city so as to lose a bonus grassland. Additionally, founding on the coast (even the coast of an inland sea) is an advantage to founding inland.

-Sirp.

 

[T-hawk]

Inherited turn:

Any particular reason we're researching Polytheism at max? We should be speeding up the Republic branch! We're not religious, so Monarchy won't be worth anything for us. But I can't bring myself to waste five turns of max research (~100 gold value), and there is a fair shot we'll get it first, assuming Mysticism hadn't been around for long before Sulla bought it from Cathy on his first turn. Research increased from 90% to 100%; if we're going to go for this we should GO for it.

Beijing swapped to a barracks and MMed to finish it in two with growth also in 2. If it's going to build military between settlers, and it looks like it has to since it can't do better than 6 turns per settler but can produce much more than 30 shields in 6 turns, it may as well build veteran military.

====

Little happened. In 1350 BC, Chengdu was founded on Dirt-Colored Dot to the far east. It's next to a forest-game, and should build a worker, chop the forest, then build a granary. This city will have to be a settler producer for this area. (Too bad it'd take forever to get irrigation over to the game - this lake is NOT fresh water.)

10 gold is all we can afford to give X for his birthday.

I sent a worker south to build a road over to Persia. He'll take a while, but it's a project that needs to be done eventually, and it'll also help settlers that go down that way. Xerxes might not have any coastal cities, so we can't count on a harbor trade route for some time. Go due south with the road, right over the mountain (we are industrious.)

The settler in the north should settle Yellow Dot, just east of that cow. Then the two workers there should get irrigation over to the cow.

Japan has a monopoly on Mathematics. We can probably trade Polytheism for it when we get it in 5 turns.

Shanghai needs MM attention to complete its granary just before it grows (switch it from forest to plains eventually.) Xinjian should be allowed to grow to size 3 before completing the granary.

I wsa thinking about trying the Pyramids, considering how many cities we're going to have, but it's probably too late with five other capitals already building them.

http://www.civfanatics.net/uploads3/rbd19-1250bc.zip

 

[Sullla]

In answer to your question, we're researching Polytheism so we can trade it for other techs. There's no way to tell which of the pre-Republic techs the AI civs would have gone for, and I was trying to research one that they would ignore. I guess I'm too used to Deity games where you let the AI civs do all the researching for you. Sorry that I didn't head immediately for Republic, I know that government is your big thing.

And by the way, now that you have finished you turn here, you are up in RBE6 T-Hawk. Maybe we should shuffle the turn order around some; it is strange passing off to the same person in two different games at the same time.

 

[Speaker]

Looks like I was too slow to defend myself, but I think Sirp stated my thinking as well as I could have. Nice job so far guys. Keep it up! One point I'd like to make though: it seems to me that the worker making a road to Persia is being wasted. We only have 4 workers total, and a ton of city sites that we should get roads to as soon as possible. I don't know if we can afford to spare 25 percent of our workforce at the moment. Is it because we need to trade him luxuries as per the variant rules?

 

[Speaker]

Have Voodoocat and I changed places permanently, or was it just for the first round? Sulla, since you are the captain of the game, it's your call.

 

[T-hawk]

Bah, getting to Republic sooner is worth the possibility that you'll have no competitive commerce advantage to show for your research efforts. I like going for Philosophy, since the AI usually picks Code of Laws first.

I'm fine with the turn orders where they are; it's easier for me to keep track of things following you in both games

 

[Sirp]

got it!

Speaker: I will investigate the thing with the worker and make a judgement call.

-Sirp.

 

[T-hawk]

We'll get more workers. Our first-ring cities are finishing their granaries, and then they can build whatever workers they need.

Sending a worker to Persia might help more than you think in this unique game. The sooner he gets supplied with our MANY luxuries, the faster he can pull ahead in tech. It's not required by the variant rules, but I think it's a good idea - and it definitely fits with the spirit of the game. Also, the road will connect us with Babylon and whoever else is down there.

This game isn't about us. It's about our darling Little Brother! We do what HE needs!

 

[Sirp]

Early: Ok, I decide to modify our dotmap in the north a little. It'll waste some tiles, but I can't resist having a city on fresh water, with three bonus food tiles in range.

Tientsin founded in the south, Hangchow in the north.

Middle: We discover Polytheism, trade around for tech parity, give it to our little brother. Also trade for world maps, but we can't get our little brother's

Japan threatens us. We don't bow to threats! They back off.

Later: Russia threatens us. We still don't bow to threats! They declare war! Crazy Cathy strikes again. Production shifted towards mixed: some troops, still some settlers/workers.

Our warrior up north pillages a wheat tile near Moscow.

The French discover Philosophy, which we're researching, on my last turn.

I give our little brother 14 gold for his birthday.

I think if we hold out a little against the Russians they'll be willing to talk terms of peace. I guess I did push the northern expansion rather aggressively.

-Sirp.

The Game

 

[Sullla]

At war with Russia? Things become interesting already! Building a road to Persia is not mandated by the variant rules, but I like the idea behind it. Little Brother has no native luxuries and we want to supply him with some EVER so badly!

The switch between Speaker and voodoocat was intended to be a one time thing, although I certainly understand your reason for asking. We'll keep to the original roster posted:

T-Hawk
Sirp
Speaker <<< UP NOW
voodoocat <<< on deck
Sullla

 

[Speaker]

Okay, got it. Will play this afternoon.