RR13 - Hearts and Minds

[vranasm]

ha! I wanted to advise the spot between wheat and grass cow too

since we go with BW maybe settler size 2 would be the right way to go?

Marble should send us with thoughts towards aesth line...

 

[r_rolo1]

We do not need to go BW. Hunting , for a example, looks a good idea as well. I just slotted BW because of the obvious overpopulation of trees around and the added need to spit a settler out as soon as possible...

 

[lymond]

I took the liberty of making a tentative dot map of the revealed land:

Spoiler :

SB's proximity provides a bit of conundrum and certainly concern about settling our immediate area. RNG will be a factor. Will he settle land away from us or right in our faces? On this difficulty level we may be ok, but on IMM plus it can be very difficulty to get a city out to beat the AI to prime spots when they are this close.

Anyway, I chose site A as I played around with several sites. This site best uses all the land and closes the gap with City B, if we in fact get that city too. 1W of that site will cause a border war which we don't want. 1SW is an option but will leave a gap of land as we can't settle City B any further south without a) losing cow b) border friction. City B looks like a great production city.

Site A could just go on the PH 1 south, but again this creates a gap and we lose the green tiles in the middel. The grass silk is out of play either way and will be taken by SB anyway, although later we will gain culture of course.

Another argument, is maybe we just want to settle more aggressively in the AIs face and I can understand that, but it will be dangerous in the early game to do so. SB has been known to attack weak humans early game.

Site Y1 or Y2 seems obvious. Y1 has a lot of overlap with the cap though and we will arleady have a bit of that from other cities. Presence of seafood will be a factor as well once we explore the area. Y1 gets the wine, but wine could be picked up by a city due north .

Same for Site X. This is more of a question city we can settle later and seafood would adjust it. It has a lot of overlap with the Cap where it is, but makes best use of the land. Seafood down south would adjust the site though.

Note: I labeled these 2 cities X and Y as they may not be C or D. In other words we may find key sites that need to be settled much sooner than these 2.

The key right now though is to get Site A up asap and possibly rush out Site B as well to secure a good amount of neighboring land. We will need to be chop heavy and probably want 2 workers asap as well. Marble can get up quickly for an Oracle>CS push.

edit: X-post with Rolo. I think BW is crucial now to get out settlers/workers asap. Hunting would be good pre-AH with ivory. Then push on to Masonry>PH

 

[lymond]

also, we might consider chopping out 2 settler - 1 at size 2 and 1 at size 3. Warriors in between. Scouting warrior should stay close and fortify site B, that is, scout a bit north and east and then come back to site B.

 

[LKendter]

I agree that AI settlement makes planning tough.

With what I know now I would like to change the following:

Move X one south. Delhi is going to be one of our few large, powerhouse cities. X chokes it too much. I see X as our Maoi city. More water is fine. This time I want to get Maoi built early. This gives us mix production and commerce city quickly.

A & B have a *major* problem. They are 5 tiles apart. Once we start to push on Cahokia we need a city in the center of those two. I propose to move B one north.
Another thought, move B one northwest. We *need* at few cottage cities. I really hate to waste floodplains for potential cottages. A cottage city with decent production is very appealing.

 

[lymond]

LK - we may not have the luxury of settling cities like that. I prefer keep the empire compact. Overlap is not issue and in fact a good thing. Settling B any further west is a poor use of land. Cap can always take back tiles as need, but early it will have more than enough to work.

X is certainly flexible. We have not scouted the coast there. If there is no seafood, I would not build Maoi there. Who knows, maybe Y2 could be Maoi if seafood is over there. Maoi is least of my concerns though. X is a later fit-gap measure anyway.

 

[LKendter]

True, sea food could make another city better for Mali. Either way, we do need more knowledge to agree on X.

As for A / B, my worry is we wind up in a horrid position to put pressure later. Looking back at RR12 I want to make sure we have 3 away options. 4 and 5 tile just take SO long to touch the city.
No matter what, we need some more exploring for the northern option. Something may show up that changes that city location. There are still unknown tiles.

 

[vranasm]

I would really prefer A 1W, we're not creative and having wheat and plains cow in 1st ring is imo stronger play.

I am not that concerned with SB, since in my experience he usually throws some demand, which if you accept, you can be on good terms with him.
he throws this insult everytime even if he is half map away so touching culture wouldn't change much.

As I understand it we want to culture press his cities anyway.

More problematic with SB is that he is one of few AI's which run heavy espionage :-(.

As for the Marble... marble is usually non-factor for Oracle mostly due to the problem with teching masonry which throws off your tech path and delays you more then helps.

oracle -> CS without cheap commerce is risky. I would not think we could achieve this on this start. It woud probably involve bulbing math while teching CoL after writing...
We would need to decide right now and go with AH->writing and build library asap and run 2 scientists and still could be late to the party...

Stonehenge date can be helpful with the decision what to bulb with Oracle.

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Got it. Will take a look at the save and give some ideas later on.
But I too think we need to settle more aggressively towards SB. At the moment we'd need 4 borderpops to get the first culture into Cahokia. And with the purposed dotmap we won't be able to settle a city closer to him..

 

[r_rolo1]

I don't like the A spot. It is not a bad spot in it self, but it is in a awful place to put culture in Cahokia ... remember that to put culture in a city via espionage, we need to have some pre-existent culture in there. I would prefer to put it 1 NW of A, to be honest ... it would even get a autolink to the cap due to the river network On the others ... there is too much fog to say, but I think that maybe B would be better 1 NW as well ...

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

OK, I'd purpose to go on with BW.. We need to chop and whip out the settlers as fast as possible.. Afterwards Hunting or AH than Masonry for GW.
Builds should be 2 warriors while growing.. Afterwards 2 settlers.
The worker should farm the corn followed by the corn while finishing BW. Afterwards we should start a mine on one of the hills putting the chop into the first settler.
Meanwhile scouting as much as possible..

 

[UncleJJ]

Lurking again.

Hard luck with the last game finishing like that. I am glad to see your determination to win has caused you to start another

I agree with the long term suggestion of eventually having many small cities with espionage buildings and running spy specialists. Those small cities can build all the spies you need or build wealth so you can raise the EP slider. I still think you were using too many units in that last game and hence paying too much maintenance. This sort of game is really a battle of economies rather than militaries, so everything you can do to improve the economy has an effect on the end date.

Good luck and I'll drop in from time to time to see how you're doing

 

[Thy_Spellcraft]

Ok played at least 15 turns.. Nothing really worth to tell you but these few notes:

Out warrior headded towards the hut NE and found some XPs. The turn after he also met two panthers so he got Woody II and hid himself in the nearby jungle. He got attacked over the river and went down to 0.4. Three turns later he met a lion while healing in a hill-jungle and some bloody bones was all that was left of them!
So no scouting..
Besided hindu got founded in 3280 and there's no copper around!
Played until 3000BC but nothing more to tell about..
Here's at least a pic from the "scouted" north:

Spoiler :

 

[LKendter]

r_rolo1 - just played
Thy_Spellcraft -
nocho - UP
lymond - on deck
LKendter - waiting for his first turn.
vranasm

 

[LKendter]

The lost scout hurts. Going to be ages before we can afford to replace him.

No obvious bronze really sucks. Of course, it could be one tile away in the fog. We do need archery now. The only question is when.

Next tech - I vote animal husbandry. 3 food, 3 hammers from the cow is a nice tile.

Looks like warrior, warrior, settler at this point. Secure the cow wheat spot before NA gets it.

 

[r_rolo1]

Hum, too bad on the warrior

I'm not sure on the archers, but being so close of someone that can do resourceless axes is not a reassuring proposal. Anyway, never before AH ( I agree with LK ) ... we might even luck on horses :/

And yes, warrior->warrior->settler ( chopped ... remember to change queues to settler in the turn the worker ends the mine ) is the best idea. On techs ... maybe AH->archery(?)-> ... well, we can go either masonry ( for the GW ) or wheel->Pottery. Not sure of what is best.

 

[LKendter]

I suspect Great Wall will fall before we can pull of the other builds. Point-blank range to another civ is really limiting our early options. We have no choice but to settler spam quickly before losing our good spots.

We are trapped at the south of the map. We really need to get some cities moving north before NA blocks us. We don't know the map yet, but north is already very clear as a priority.

 

[r_rolo1]

Indeed, we need to expand north and west. it is clear that, besides SB, there is no one very close of us, so we have a lot of space to expand... and probably we should expand a lot

 

[vranasm]

^^ I have almost nothing to add since it seems that you already covered everything ;-)

Are we sold on Oracle->CoL->CH->GSpy gambit if we expect to fail on GW?

 

[LKendter]

Are we sold on Oracle->CoL->CH->GSpy gambit if we expect to fail on GW?

To early to call at this point. We need to get those settlers out there. Our early cities will need to be the high production / economy cities. That is one of the reason I want an early Maoi (decent in both). All those river mean a lot more commerce, and production eventually with levee.

Later filler / border push cities can become our spy sources. Phase one of the game is still natural expansion. The more we can get naturally, the less we have to flip.