SE 1 - Brennus

[CivilizedTiger]

The Snack Economy series is an attempt at trying to learn a food-oriented type of play, one in which we never build any cottages, but try to use as many specialists in stead, which we will rely on for mainly for research, partly for commerce.

We'll start off with a Monarch Epic game this time around, and our first leader is the great druid chef, Brennus.

Snack Economy 1 - Brennus, the druid Chef​

Our great chef's traits are
Spiritual - a trait useful for diplomacy and war, and we plan to war a lot, so this is a good secondary trait for a SE game
Charismatic - those annoying specialists, despite asking for lots of food in order to work for our empire, also have the nerve to ask for happiness; charismatic means that our specialists will be happier early on; it also means that our soldiers get xp quicker, so all in all, another good secondary SE trait

The map is continents and islands, with both continents and islands being the size of snaky continents. These settings often make for interesting land and offer some importance to navy.

The starting location

Spoiler :

Irrigated rice, quite good, and pigs on a mountain, also a good tile. We also get a few minable hills and start on a river, so we can either make this a good production city, or we can opt to make it our GP farm.

Rules
- no cottages, ever; whenever we capture a city from the AI which has cottages, we will try to pillage them (get some gold out of it), and if we forget, we will avoid working them and take them down as soon as possible
- please use spoilers to keep this easy to read

Rounds (I'm going to shamelessly get inspiration from kossin's rounds in the DR kossin )
Round 0 - settling and initial plan

The next rounds depend on how the game goes and I'll change this as we play this, but some good possible checkpoints if you play this in advance:
- initial expansion
- getting CoL
- various wars
- liberalism
- further wars
- what, you still haven't won?

WB save
Only uploading a scenario for monarch. Please play it at monarch, epic, for better comparisons, if you want to shadow, although I don't mind if you play at other settings. (You might want to change the WB file if you want another difficulty, though)
View attachment SE1 - Brennus.zip

 

[Kadazzle]

For sure SIP unless the Scout shows something interesting to the east. There may be fish on the western coast (which you can see from the picture this is coast by the pigs) but that can be claimed by a second city (hopefully). Lots of green tiles is good too! Brennus starts with Mysticism and Hunting, but I'd avoid early religion and instead REX while teching something like Agriculture -> AH -> Mining -> Bronze/Wheel (No Horses/Horses) -> Writing (with maybe Pottery for Granaries). From there it is easy to get to CoL - which is what I think most people should tech for.

I'll start this game up now and post a response.

 

[UWHabs]

Cottage it up for a great bureaucracy cap.

Oh, wait, ...

A lot of wasted green otherwise. Would be a beast with state property workshops/watermills. What it ends up as will will be determined by whatever land's near it.

 

[vranasm]

i already tried some no cottage games and one of the things I really hate is the almost absurd ammount of micro involved. For example I am used to automatize workers after I have set my core cities with preferred improvements, so this time i will have to do the whole dirty work. And always forgett to check now and there cities for optimizing work.


To the actual game.

I think there is coast, but seems like NW corner, directly to west it's more like river.
Techs could be Ag+AH (rice is irrigated so that's nice). Worker first. Then probably mining (2 unforrested hills).
I am not so sure for beelining BW though... would probably go first writing? but I admit BW is good for whiping libraries and some deforestation.

CoL is important tech so we should tech it ourself. Would somewhere there think about currency, because trade income will be important for us too and building wealth will help with early crash.

A lot will depend on surroundings. Maybe there will be some gems (then IW could get priority as they are usual in jungle), gold etc.

If it's all obvious then sorry for the whole writing ;-).

 

[Metzi]

Good luck .

Remember-
1) Losing is just as informative as winning. If this is for learn, as you say a 'Snack economy', then I hope you will post you're games regardless of victory or nought.
2) Prehaps you should play a 'snack economy' to how they would have played in life (?). For example, Brennus (as I am scottish) would never trade with other European Civs. He would also never adopt Free Religion (The UK is currently in a crap state for religion) (?).
3) When will you be posting? I tried (and failed, but will probily pick it back up later when I get better...alot better ) to start my own series. From what I've learened, DON'T play like there's no tommorow. Give us time to critique/give advise/curse/laugh before you continue. Other wise you and we will be missing out valuable information.

Good luck, and remember....patience....discipline.

 

[stopstopp]

You know the official name is Silly economy.

Although in all seriousness RepFSCSFMPac is a good choice. (I don't think my abbreviation is completely right . I'll have to look it up later)

 

[drlake]

Hmmm, looks interesting and I haven't played Brennus yet. I may give this a go, amongst my other games.

 

[Serdoa]

Maybe I am wrong but it seems for me you have worldbuildered it at bit. If yes you should, in my opinion, inform about that upfront rather then let the people find out after the put already some time into the game.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Round 0
Settling and initial techs

Spoiler :

Moved scout 1E, then 1N, and hill offered no compelling reason to go east. I did see that settling in place would close a lot of coastal tiles, so if there were any sea food north, I'd miss it by settling in place. Still... I went ahead and settled in place. (I think it might have been a mistake, since food is rather important for us and food seems to be scarce in our surrounding area, so next time, scout checks the coast)

The first two techs were pretty straight-forward, agriculture, followed by animal husbandry.
The first build order was for a worker who was ready a few turns after researching agriculture, so he immediately started farming the rice, after which he was sent to build a pasture on the pigs.

The next tech I went for was mining, because I'll want at least another improvement and it can only be on a hill.

A few turns into the game, we meet our first neighbour:

Spoiler :

This looks like trouble, unfortunately, since Ragnar seems to like to attack rather early and doesn't seem to care much for distance to target. I hope I can afford rushing him.

A few turns later, the first religion is founded, and we take advantage of the situation to talk about our capital, since I've forgotten to take other screenies of it.

Spoiler :

Christianity being the first religion to be founded means that there's a chance we'll meet Justinian or Isabella, although the leaders whose religions aren't in the game seem to pick one at random, so we can't know for certain.

About the capital: we have decent food, some hills, lot of green land. I'd very much like to make this a production city, and at some point, it might even be great for the riverside ironworks thingy, if the game lasts that long. Unfortunately, seeing the remaining land, it doesn't seem like we have too much food, so we might have to compromise and use the capital for GP early on, although I hope Ragnar's capital might be more rich in snacks.

Plan for the second city and questions on what to research next

Spoiler :

A good news for us is that we have horses in the capital BFC, so we have something to use to rush Ragnar. The problem is that both Brennus and Ragnar start with hunting, so barbarian spearmen will appear for certain at some point, making chariots most inadequate.

My plan is to settle this city, right in Ragnar's face, and to connect it with the production heavy capital, train 8-10 chariots, and get Nidaros.


This city is 7 tiles away from capital, city tiles not counted.

The dilemma I have is whether I should research bronze working, which is important anyway, for the civic and for allowing chops, or the wheel, which will allow me to get the settler in place sooner and to connect the two cities, along with making the training of chariots possible.

If I go for the wheel, I will have enough of the road ready when the settler is done, but there will be no chops to finish the settler earlier, and no whips. It will also mean that I don't know where bronze is when I settle the second city, although at this point I think the copper thing is a low priority.

If I go for BW, the settler will take more time to get into position and there's a good chance to lose the intended city spot to Ragnar.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Maybe I am wrong but it seems for me you have worldbuildered it at bit. If yes you should, in my opinion, inform about that upfront rather then let the people find out after the put already some time into the game.

What do you mean? I have saved it as a woldbuilder scenario so that people can play it themselves with their own mods, but the only things I've modified are that:

1. all the other leaders are unplayable by the human
2. speed isn't fixed in the file

These are rather standard modifications when you want to host a game, and they're fewer than the modifications one would normally do, considering that we're trying to play the same difficulty (and speed)

Anyway, if there's something else which feels modified, please let us know, but if it reveals something about the map, please put it in spoilers, since I haven't seen the map. (If what you want to say contains spoilers, I won't look at them, so I won't answer, but maybe someone who knows about maps might be willing to double check )

 

[stopstopp]

Personally I think you should go animal husbandry, as you have resources for it and it reveals horse.

Move capital to a production heavy site for an awesome production bureaucracy capital

 

[TCMIV]

Just a note about our nearest neighbor . . .

Spoiler :

Holy crap, was that capital worldbuildered in just to make us take it? I can run a FEW specialists there.

 

[vranasm]

Spoiler :

Well it's a dilemma, but I would go with wheel. you need connection to your cap for building chariots and the cap is not so heavy in forrests, the 2nd city is not forrested much too (there are those 2 unforested hills so with food it's 4 tiles that can be worked without BW).
Whipping is usefull after you finish preparation of rush for the next few units. And I think you should have enough time to get BW before that phase. We are not Spi and 1 turn of anarchy would delay us.

So that's how i see it... wheel first, BW second.

 

[NihilZero]

Spoiler :

Just started this on Immortal. Initial thoughts - not much in the way of food to snack on other than plains cows and unirritaged rice, and damn few rivers for irrigation. It's not looking good. Also, we seem to be in semi-iso with Ragnar, so tech trading is not an option.

It doesn't bode well. if I don't post again, assume I have resigned.

 

[NihilZero]

Spoiler :

...and Ragnar attacked and destroyed me in 500BC.

edit - maybe he didn't destroy me, I might survive it yet.

 

[Kadazzle]

Gah! I lost my 3000BC write up and it had a lot of useful info that got deleted. I'll post all my updates passed 3000BC, so we haven't missed much, but it still sucks : /

 

[Kadazzle]

Break Down of my Lost 3000BC Post

Spoiler :

Pictures you missed in my deleted first round (Beginning -> 3000BC):







Quick break down of my lost post:

Broke down why I was going to expand and not go Religious or SH route, due to the fact that a) Missionaries cost more than Monuments (same outcome +1 happines +1 culture, Charismatic) b) Didn't want to anger other AIs, c) We need to get to more important techs not down the priesthood line (currently). No SH due to rex + slavery is amazing. Going to be in slavery most of the time. Micro'd tiles working commerce and hammers for quick worker and quicker techs/warriors (2 Warriors 2 turns after hitting Size 3). I went Agriculture -> Animal Husbandry (due to amount of Pasture/Farm resources) -> The Wheel (popped 2 Horses in the immediate area), and was about to go Mining. Was at size 3. Build order was Worker -> Warrior -> Warrior until 3000BC (4 turns for warrior, 2 turns for population growth) then I'm going to build a Settler at size 3. Plan is to block off the east by settling west quickly. Sent 1st warrior down to fogbust (1W of southernmost Silk). Worker went Farmed Irrigated Rice -> Pastured Horse -> Began roading to Capital then was going to Pasture the Pigs. We also needed Bronze Working to get into Slavery as that is the highest means of production until Caste + SP Workshops/Drafting/Rushbuy (With Kremlin).. I think I covered everything.

Glad it is No Huts/No Events (yeah?). I hate them both.

Save:

 

[budweiser]

Today's special:

Spoiler :

PAIN!

 

[michmbk]

Ok, I'm out of practice from not playing much these days, and never was much for economies without cottages, but fine, I gave it a go on monarch epic. To 1 AD - whenever i'm rusty, I do dumb things - this was no different.

Spoiler :

Starting techs were AG-AH, obviously. Upon finding horse in our BFC, and Rags' capital, the obvious first move was this:





Dumb move #1 at this point was keeping an awful city he had over there. Dumb move #2 was not teching sailing early on to enable trading. Dumb move #3 was not building a galley to explore. Didn't meet Liz until much later, and at 1 AD, still haven't met anyone else.

So my economy crashed with 5 cities due to the distance - I used this to help recover:



But usually by now I've built tons of cottages - in a normal game, that's what I would have done and I'd be vaulting back much more quickly than I am. Anyway, at 1 AD, I had the economy sort of ok, and had these 7 cities settled:



About to settle an 8th city near the stone. Dumb move #4 was not teching calendar or monarchy, as happiness is limiting me. Dumb move #5 was not prioritizing currency like I usually do, so I'm still behind where I'd like to be at this point. Not that I'm in terrible shape, as I just started great library, and have academies in two important cities, but a lot tougher doing this without cottages. Builds so far:



Didn't really need more workers as the cities were staggered enough that I could develop them ok. Next steps are currency and calendar to help me keep advancing tech rate. Civil service also important to chain farms, and drama to get globe in Ragnar's ridiculous capital. If this was a normal game with no restrictions, I'd be starting to take off right about now.

 

[michmbk]

1 AD to liberalism:

Spoiler :

Started this round by failing on mids, which was fine – gold was useful to get to currency/calendar faster.

Finished this to help tech rate:



Was building this for failgold, but not a bad consolation prize to actually build it, with all the specialists I’m running.



Another attempt at failgold, but I finished it:



Then, continuing to expand while heading to lib - note I was watching liz the whole way, and it was close:



Now I have to figure out how to win this game. Haven't really thought about that yet. Tech rate for everyone else is pretty slow, so not too worried about getting out-teched. Definitely sucks not building cottages, because I have two great cottage sites that I can't do anything about. Anyway, just building Taj & my universities while heading towards constitution - I assume with rep my tech rate will get silly. Production still sucks, as I finally got metal casting recently to start building some workshops/forges.