RPC, The Next Generation: King Midas and the Golden Touch

[madscientist]

Minus for calling Carthage Carthage instead of Pessinus and yourself Mad Scientist instead of King Midas.

.

I realized after the screenshots and tried to alter in the story with the unbelieving citizans!

The capital has been renamed Phrythia (simply because I like the name) and our leader is now the Rich Midas rather than the non-rich MadScientist.

 

[Loki Strikes]

Minus for calling Carthage Carthage instead of Pessinus and yourself Mad Scientist instead of King Midas.

As far as the dotmap goes, you should definitely move the yellow one 1E to make use of the last gems. Additionally, the green dot would need to come 2E to use the fish left by the yellow dot and be your GP farm. If you're going for GLH, I'd make the purple city into 2 cities. One to share clams with Carthage/Pessinus and the other one to claim the pigs and copper.

Yellow 1E and Green 2E wastes a clam, my solution of White 1N of the lake results in NO WASTED RESOURCES with minimalized negatives (2 coastal in bfc, both are workable by other cities though, 2f lake tile instead of 3f lake tile, but both are kinda iffy tiles anyway, and biggest - is off the coast.) however it gains the gems, results in no lost resources, gains a bunch of land tiles, gains freshwater to partly offset coast, making it in my opinioni a good move. Also Yellow 1E puts the corn in the second ring making monument first pretty much a necessity, yellow where it is allows Mad to delay a monument a bit in order to get out some more workers which will be needed. Whether Green where it is or 2E its definitely a GP farm.

 

[Duke Blackstone]

Solution of White 1N of the lake results in NO WASTED RESOURCES with minimalized negatives

QFT.

 

[UWHabs]

I do think it would be a sin for Midas to leave a gem square outside the BFC of a city.

 

[madscientist]

I do think it would be a sin for Midas to leave a gem square outside the BFC of a city.

I was thinking this but I think teh city needs to be landlocked to do it proper. 6 coastals and 1 landlocked is probably OK.

By the way, I agree with teh consensous on placement of city #2.

 

[madscientist]

PS: I take it you've clicked end-turn.

I played out the next segment and will post the update in a bit. Short round as I want to go about this RPC a bit slower to get advice and avoid the Gupta curse!

About this, I take it you may have downloaded the save and ran the next turn!

 

[madscientist]

King Midas and the Golden Touch: Wonderous Expansion!

Let's start this rather interesting segment by going over the techpath

Pottery/Writing/Agriculture/Animal Husbandry/Iron Working.

Yep, took the advice and got the bascis of the economy and worker techs down before Iron Working.

However, on teh very first turn

The next wave of Phrygian settlers were chewed to pieces by viscous panthers. Midas smiles at the rest of his people saying "Too bad, those were the remnants of the loyal Cartheginians who were sent off to start their own city. Pity". Seeing the sneer in Midas' eyes, the Phrygians discarded any remaining Loyalty to Carthage and chanted MIDAS, MIDAS, MIDAS!!!

Meanwhile, the loss of a settler is no trivial matter and sets us back a bit (although it did allow us to tech a bit faster while keeping the treasury afloat). We finished the lighthouse (3 extra food to push out the replacement settler), built another settler, and started the Great Lighthouse.

After hunting down the offending Panther (well, we waited for it to attack our warrior entrenched in a jungle hill) the next settler (still chanting MIDAS, MIDAS) to found Pessinus, a true Phrysian city

A city destined to be great once we flush out the jungle there.

The babylonians decide to open borders

Just in time for us to finish chopping out

Many of you would say RPC over, what's next, but forgive me if I continue this and enjoy some Commerce abuse!

After Animal Husbandry we find

Well danged! Too bad I did not settler the original place, we would have the horses. Ah so is life, that needs to be settled very soon, and if Gilgamesh get's there first we do have copper

We met another AI

The Saner of the Greek brothers. We open borders with him (and Gilgamesh) to work the Trade Route Yields.

We did settle a third city, just below the gold (soory, that's still the best spot) just as we finished iron working. We saved here looking to decide what to research next

Metal Casting looks mighty tempting there. 28 turns with perhaps some more commerce with the precious metals and additional cities. Speaking of which we sort of need more than 1 worker, a few more axes (warriors are way too tempting for Babylonian Bowmen), and some additional cities. Right now Phrygia is the only production city as Pessinus is stagnant waiting for it's border pop and defoilagation.

Ah, but what about iron

Folks, we are just gonna have to go out and find that metal, while not precious it's rather important in it's own way

And finally, a peak at our foreign trade commerce income

15 commerce from foreign trade at 1250 BC. Pretty damned good, and that's NOT including the extra commerce from the financial trait!

OK, so what does Midas do next?

Metal Casting or hunting/archery or perhaps alphabet???

Build priority: Workers vs. axes vs. Settlers????

 

[cripp7]

Go MC, you can build axes for defense and after MC go Alpha or trade MC for it. That's a lot of for such an early date.

 

[madscientist]

King Midas and the Golden Touch: Rapid Research!

Another short round here as I plan to do this RPC right!

I decided to research Metal Casting for the additional happiness and of course the Grand Giant Metal Statue!

In the meantime Midas decided to settle more cities and fully leverage that Great Lighthouse

Hierapolis is born! We easily beat out Gilgamesh to that city, and we shall have Numideans aplenty (perfect counter to Summerian Vultures).

In a mere 25 turns we finished Metal Casting and looked at our options

Midas is on a role and those precious metal commerce tiles are starting to come on-line, so we went directly for Compass for the Cothon, an extra trade route and a boost to all other trade routes!

And guess what spread to our lands

Judaism! How fitting for this RPC, we adopted it right away.

Unfortunately the next turn we found

Who is Confuscist and not too happy with us. Looking further into the situation we see.

This is a concern as the Oracle fell a bit ago and it looks like our dreaded Ethiopian leader took metal casting for free.

However, Our production is quite impressive in Phrygia, and the people so in love with shiney metals that soon

SWEET!!!!

We quickly popped out hunting and archery for better defense, teched alphabet, and started Currency when Anthony Van Diemen was Born in Phrygia

What to do with this Great Merchant????? Also note we settled another city to the north, Lydissus which gives us 5.

SO I saved here to think things over and get some opinions on how to proceed with the Great merchant. Do we save him for future corps? A trade mission (we do need a navy of some sort), or settle. Currency is only 8 turns away so I think it's a waste to bulb. Also understand we need to run positive on the gold slider once we get Currency, so a large treasury will not be that useful (the pyramids fell early).

A map

The settler being built in Silbium I think goes onto the eastern penninsula (which is a got spot for the Maori). We need a landlocked city for the gems and cow, plus we should see what we can find further south.

Techs

Waiting to see what cash is available with Currency. I say Midas shoudl accumulate as much gold as possible, limit his trading, and use what treasury he has to upgrade units!

As far as builds, I think beside cothons aplenty, we need some military, navy, settlers, and workers. Libraries can wait, and perhaps , just perhaps we may want to try to play without them at all!

 

[Trystero]

If you want to accumulate gold while limiting trading, you could settle the GM (and maybe any subsequent ones) in Phrygia. I think Sisiutil had some success running a Great Merchant Economy in one of his ALC games.

Alternatively, you could bulb with him, but I can't remember what GMs bulb after Currency.

 

[dalamb]

Take a look at Great People Tech Preferences. If you have Currency, MC, CoL, and Alphabet, and not the prereqs for advanced techs like Constitution, next up are Monarchy and Civil Service.

 

[KeloGBites]

Shall give this a crack, seems interesting.

 

[madscientist]

King Midas and the Golden Tough: THE INSULT!

King Midas is very happy with the lay of his land and decides to settle just a bit more and do some exploration, to find out a little more about Phrygia's Neighbors (and more improtantly their gold).

First we start thinking about settling towards Gilgamesh more, only to find

Hmmm... well we send our warrior westward to scope out the Summerian's lands.

After Currency we checked the tech situation

Not bad there. Nothing worth trading for right now. So Midas decides to get his own techs which went: HBR/COL/CAlender/Construction/Civil Service/Machinery.

My idea is to head towards the UU and Macemen/cats since we still do not have iron.

Eucarpia was founded on the western penninsula before Gilgamesh got his sights on it.

Our warrior did an excellent job of scouting Summeria

Unfortunately, there is no iron there. Still land is land and on an archeopelago map I prefer to have my home island to myself. But that is a bit more involved.

But what about the Great Merchant you ask??? We I decided to do what any gold obsessed good leader would do

Over load the treasury, especially with the slider at plus gold now! I found all that gold useful to upgrade units, warriors to spears/axes, axes to maces, archers to longbows!

But I am getting a littel ahead of myself, first we started making trades

MAth leads to 2 improtant techs here, Construction and calander. Important because

So Zara has some land on our continent! I am getting a little displeased with our Ethiopian neighbor who considers us his worse enemy. He is confuscious (so is Gilgamesh if you haven't noticed) and I think a holy war is on the horizon, a war of gold!

Anticipating this I decided to alter eps

Meanwhile, in our ever important search for iron we found

MORE GOLD TO THE NORTH. No iron, but who cares. we must settle it before the Summerains get's his dirty hands on it.

The Greek comes around with a good trade

Unfortunately there is a complication here that you will see later.

Prymnessus is settled to collect the gold

You may want to call it a useless city, but it's an off-shore city with access to gold! It will suffice for now although potentially difficult to defend from Gilgamesh.

I have established excellent relation with Hammurabi and Perciles leading to more trades

Trading away a bit of gold, but that's OK. I have decided for now to not focus on hording the gold, but more avoiding libraries for the moment. Military, lighthouses, Cothons, and markets for now.

With Civil Service we adjust civics

I am hoping the shared favorite civic with Gilgamesh will keep him off our back in the future, especially considering my plans for Zara.

Once I got civil service I decided to trade it away to bolster our defenses

Then the turning point of this RPC occurred, THE INSULT!

King Midas now "Has Enough On His Hands" and he ain't targeting the Summerian!

King Midas finds there is more out there in the world

We open borders and wait for the shared HR civic to take hold here. I see no reason to antaginize the Portugese (yet).

However, there is one sticking point in our planned diplomacy

Perciles has Gold which we need! Well, if that's all he get's perhaps we can acquire it late in the game. Still Midas looks towards Greek lands with a greedy look!

We finished

well, we cannot build Crossbows, but we can build maces, and Zara has only archers.

So we saved here, with some choices

OK, Zara is getting pushy and time to be wiped out or at least pushed back. Just waiting for a few more maces and some spies, next Segment it's WAR!

As far as techs, I guess we should target liberalism, however optics and astronomy right away may be a wiser move here. We have no iron so Knights and pikes are out (thus Guilds and Engineering can wait).

A view of the land

I say we hit Zara hard while keeping that key junction well defended in case Gilgamesh piles on.

A peak at the power graphs.

well, the devil with power numbers. I say Phrygia is strong and we take down Zara. With the Charasmatically promoted units we can then turn on Gilgamesh and clear the land. Then we shall see where we are.

 

[dalamb]

Is there anyone who might trade iron to you? Or do AIs never trade strategic metals?

 

[Grey Fox]

Aww man, raze Massawa and settle a city 1W of the river on that jungle tile before Sumeria's cultural borders expand!

 

[madscientist]

I don't really have much to trade for except an extra copper. I refuse to depart with any precious metals though, so I think the best option is simply to take what I need.

Massawa is a decent enough city although not the bext placed. Another coastal city for Midas with the Great Lighthouse and cothons, no I don't think I'll be razing much.

 

[dalamb]

I haven't really learned how to handle resource trades well, so this may be a dumb question, but can't you trade resource-plus-cash or -plus-cash-per-turn for a resource?

 

[Silu]

Wonder if King Midas ever takes a bath or is he scared that it would wash precious gold dust away. In the first diplo picture Gilga seems to be suffering from some offensive B.O.

 

[bestsss]

Silu, the money doesn't smell, neither does the gold. Right!

 

[dalamb]

Hey, haven't you ever heard of "filthy lucre"!