RK14 - Artist's Block

[Meatbuster]

Churchill is envious of his neighbors. Why must they be so Creative? Never mind. Churchill knows they are all EVIL! They are all planning to TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Whether by military force, or cultural oppression, it's all the same!

Settings
Leader: Churchill of England
Map: Standard Hub
Sealevel: Medium
Opponents: 7 creative leaders
Difficulty: Emperor (but see note below on second post)
Speed: Epic
Victory: All enabled, but Churchill is not creative, so he doesn't think he can win via Culture. OR CAN HE?

Ah, the memories. I remember using Churchill way back in RK1. It was still a Prince SG, and we had a jolly good time.

As always, warrior has been moved by me already.

 

[Meatbuster]

Roster:
Lansky ?
Glare Seethe
White Dragon
Meatbuster ?
(open)

*We would prefer recruits who can play fairly well on Emperor. Rival civs are run by Creative leaders, and they are often better than their non-Creative AI counterparts. (Even if on Hub, a rush or AI attack is very difficult.)

Please practice SG etiquette. Sadly I don't have a link or copy of the awesome DM list.
Impatient Man says 24 hours got-it, 48 hours play time. Yeah.

Recommended turnsets:
1: 30-25-20-20-20
2: 15 turns each
3: (1AD+) 10 peace turns each or 5 war turns

Feel free to play more or less turns when you need to stop at a milestone like declaring war, choosing tech or founding a new city.

I'll await for a day or two to see if anyone is interested to join.

 

[Glare Seethe]

We get +1 for settling on the sugar, right? If so I say 1E, worker first, Agr > AH > BW, or even Agr > BW > AH. We gain an extra hill by moving east, plus make use of the fish which from the looks of it might otherwise go to waste (unless there's land south of it but we don't know that and it could be in another hub 'area'). Clam and cows for another city.

The worker will have enough to do farming the corn and the floodplains before BW comes in (if it's our second tech), at which point he can chop a workboat.

 

[Meatbuster]

That's clearly a superior move! I would've settled 1W on the desert myself.

 

[Lansky]

I'm assuming the desert has to have a resource as I've never seen a desert tile in a capital BFC.

Also, I'd be willing to give this a go.

 

[Meatbuster]

This map must be evil for giving us a desert AND a mountain.
Oh and since I'm swamped with SG's recently, may I invite you to take the first turnset, Lansky? I will re-slot myself in the 4th spot.

 

[Lansky]

I'm fine leading off. Will take a better look at the start when I get home from work.

 

[Meatbuster]

Thanks, let's go with Glare's recommendation for capital site then.

 

[Lansky]

Agreed. That is one hell of a specialist capital site. 24 just from working 4 tiles and the city site. Manage to get the NE up in a reasonable time frame and well... hard to say without seeing the AI's land, but this is one heck of a capital.

Need HR!

 

[White Dragon]

I like settling on the sugar as well. I say we skip AH for a little while since with the corn, sugar, fish & FP we will be at our happy cap in no time. We can always mine the piggies after farming the corn until we need them, unless we turn it into a worker/settler farm. That way we can save the forests for more important improvements rather than for a WB. I think BW is key for barb defense on this type of map and the sooner we find and settle copper the better.

 

[Lansky]

I'm in favor of AG > BW > AH not for chopping but for whipping. I'd personally like to hang onto the trees until we have a better idea of what to do with them. All the food and high yield tiles this seems like a settler/worker whipping post. One of the next cities will have to focus on commerce just to keep us afloat at the rate this capital can allow expansion.

I have never played this map type actually, why is copper so much more vital? I'll admit that I very rarely beeline copper or horses in my second city. Tend to just pick the best spot within a reasonable distance and go from there.

 

[White Dragon]

Because in general most civs only expand in their "hub" area for the longest time. I don't want to give to much away but even spawnbusting within our own area barbs are going to be an issue coming from other places. I guess protective, charismatic archers will get the job done just as well. Warrior and chariots, in general, just won't work.

 

[Lansky]

I suppose I will wait until tomorrow then play the round.

Idea is:
Settle sugar
AG > start BW
Worker > Warrior
Pop a lot of very valuable techs from huts

Edit - Looks like I'm in for a funky looking map. Awesome!

 

[DMOC]

I'm assuming the desert has to have a resource as I've never seen a desert tile in a capital BFC.

Also, I'd be willing to give this a go.

Some map scripts (this one and others, like the "Islands" one I believe) don't follow the standard procedure where the map generator removes all "bad" tiles.

 

[Lansky]

Played slightly more than 30 turns, 32 I believe, in order to finish BW and hopefully reveal copper. Well forgot to turn on auto logger so precise dates are a bit iffy but...

Turn 0:

Settle on sugar and reveal a (very very) small peninsula is to the SE with sheep.

From here I scout along the west coast then cut across to the NE coast and finish the set with the initial warrior at 2/2 experience (promo unused, I tend to start with WI) sitting in roughly the center of what appears to be most of our hub's initial land area.

In 3250BC we meet the only leader of this set.

Rather uneventful other than that. Huts gave a total of 149g. No events of any sort. Buddhism and Judaism founded, which confused the hell out of me until I remembered that choose religion was on.

AG is in 3675BC
BW is in 3150BC

So now the drum roll. . .

SHOW ME COPPER!

*depressing brass horn sound goes here*

 

[Lansky]

The pluses are
-a lot of food/health resources - 3/3 seafood and 2/3 grains.
-Offshore marble to the NE - we have a potential island to explore though the marble alone is great to find.
-Small initial land area (west not fully scouted but can fog gaze a lot of coast so its probably not much more) so barbs can be controlled in the initial area with ease.

Cons would be
-1 luxury metal and 1 calendar happy.
-Very light on rivers and FW in general.
-Natural production also leaves quite a bit to be desired.



soooooooooooooo.......

Need to do a bit more scouting but initial thoughts:
-Revolt to slavery.
-Get out workboat and a few more warriors while researching AH - hope for horses.
-I still say the desert tile in the capital should have something just for my own sanity; hopefully iron but oil eventually isn't bad either.
-Spawn bust small island area so most barb problems will funnel from the northern isthmus, making them much more manageable. Entire area, including barb galley protection should take 4-5 total after the 2nd city goes down.
-Lots of food and coastline. Low on happy resources. Almost all good tiles can be worked from coastal cities. Great Lighthouse + FE looks strong
-Cram together lots of cities with CS irrigation, and draft Churchill powered Redcoats to crush the world

Getting ahead of myself with the redcoats part but the rest is genuine thinking. We can bulb really deep into the initial tech tree given this start, especially if that is our island marble to lose and not a nearby enemy hub.




Edit - 2nd warrior finished same turn BW was researched. Ended up putting a WB on queue in London I think, but I am not entirely sure what is best. Could chop out a WB and mine the grass hill while waiting for AH, or just mine the desert hill and slow build a few spawnbusting warriors. Whip out a settler after AH and put the overflow into a WB. Have not properly looked into it.

 

[White Dragon]

I am really glad I started playing these SG's. I would have quit this map about this time based on lack of production and happy resources but your bulbing powered economy plus Churchill powered redcoats comment really made this interesting. I suppose if we had a different leader this would be a much less desirable map.

There is one production city I see 1N of the peak by the cows and gems. Is has 3 FP's to work the gems and 3 grassland hills. Not the greatest but post chemistry workshops would work there well.

We have Elephants. Isn't that all we need to conquer the world?

 

[Lansky]

Well the one thing I keep rolling around in my head is the map script. I see there is ice to the north but the terrain says nothing else and I do not think we are in a "north pole" type region. If hub means all civilizations get a similar land area and are connected via these isthmuses then I feel fairly good. Similar land area is always going to favor the human player.

off the top of my head we will easily attain
Base happy - 5
Charismatic - 2
resources - 3
Can likely trade for 1-2 more minimum as we have 5 duplicate resources (corn, cows, sheep, clams, gems)

So early happy cap of 10 plus trades.

We lack natural production, but whipping is king at smaller city sizes anyway. Great Lighthouse early on benefits from lots of small city spam, especially if we can get a couple otherwise questionable cities on small islands (e.g. just to sit on the marble and not even grow ) The biggest kink in my thinking is once again the map. We NEED foreign trade routes for income and resource trades - not to mention a religion. If we are truly as far apart in road distance as it seems then an early work boat just to scout shore lines along with early sailing seems very prudent. It could also mean even a "land" war would be more easily done via galley. Epic speed will help but it took a scout from Kublai around 30 turns to stumble into us. Has me wondering about the effectiveness of an early war or even any war with 1 units.

 

[White Dragon]

I just finished playing a "hub" with Churchill with disastrous results. Then again, I am not the best player in the world either. Started with about same happy cap and had same production issues. Set up just one GS farm and bulbed away. Had two trading/religion partners, one friendly the other pleased. Won Liberalism Race and was able to take steel. Was 8 turns from rifling when I got dogpiled by four enemies. Just didn't have the number of cities/production needed to have a large enough force to suppress them, let alone attack and take land.

Yes, the middle area is all iceland and in general every hub has similar characteristics. This is a typical look.

It is my bad suggesting this map. I want another SG like RK-13 that seemed to keep everyone, well just 3 of us, interested from start to finish.

I totally agree with your point about the 1 and the naval attack. But that means we need an inland production city and a coastal one and per your wise and powerful comments, we just don't have them.

 

[Meatbuster]

Map is still unique. There is some land war in the far future when we rail up the center of the world. But right now, galleys are in vogue. We can tech in peace until nationalism and redcoats then send galleys (OH MY GOD GALLEYS) full of Redcoats (OMG GALLEYS... FULL OF REDCOATS) to the next-door neighbor. Alternatively, earlier in teh game we can attack with jumbos and cats by land to get a "beachhead" and then sooner have a couple of galleys to reinforce troops to the first city we take.