SGOTM 01 - Memphis Blues

[Mad Professor]

OK - here's the rundown of my 20 turns. When I opened the file, we were at 2740 BC with the turn just finished, so I presseed neter to end the turn.

2710BC - HC Adopts slavery!
2680BC - Buddhism founded in a distant land! Not Catherine or HC I don't think since neither of their scores moved. The Russians scouts are now heading north around the eastern border of Thebes' area
2650 BC - nothing happening
2620 BC - settler built in Thebes, started on a barracks as was suggested. Settler moves 1 tile north (forest). Russian scouts now north of Thebes, I moved the warrior in the north 1 tile NW towards proposed city location.
2590 BC - Catherine's score increases from 140 to 147 - population increase? Warrior moves to proposed city location, settler moves 2 tiles, now 1 tile south of the proposed new city location.
2560 BC - settler moves 1N, founds Memphis, started on a barracks, and warrior fortifies in Memphis. Russian scouts disappear to the north towards the silver. Catherine now on 160 points (a new tech?) and HC is now on 143 (pop increase?)
2530 BC - worker finishes quarry, starts on road in same tile
2500 BC - we discover mysticism. Start researching Meditation.
2470 BC - we get a "wealthiest civ list. HC is 2nd, Catherine is 3rd, and we're on the bottom. That's no surprise since we have zero gold!!
2440 BC - worker finishes the road to the quarray - stone is now hooked up! Worker moves to grass hill 1 south of Thebes. The Russian scouts are still missing in the north. Power graph looks ugly - HC and Catherine way ahead.
2410 BC - Worker start mine on grass hill 1 south of Thebes HC goes to 150 points (another pop increase?)
2380 BC - Nothing. Russians scouts still AWOL.
2350 BC - nothing still
2320 BC - Borders of Memphis expand. I now see Russian cultural influence to the south west of Thebes. Looks like Catherine has put a city around about that neck of land there to the SW. The tile I can actually see the Russian cultural influence is at 6 west and 4 south of Thebes.
2290 BC - Russian scouts appear again to the NE of Memphis. Thebes is now size 3 and our score goes ahead of HC.
2260 BC - nothingmuch happening. Scores are Catherine 204, us 163, HC 157.
2230 BC - Memphis now size 2, our score goes to 170. Workers finish mine, move to plains hill to the SW of Thebes. I spot a barbarian warrior 5 tiles west of Thebes. Our finance now at -1 per turn so our science slider will decrease this coming turn.
2200 BC - Barracks are finished in Thebes, start on pyramids, as discussed. Now there's a barbarian warrior SW of Thebes (4 west, 4 south) near the Russian cultural area. It can't be the same warrior as the other one, so there's two of them. The other one has disappeared from sight though. The Russian scouts are going in circles to the NE of Memphis. Worker starts on mine on the plains hill.
2170 BC - Barbarian warrior ro the SW disappears. Good - let Catherine deal with that one.
2140 BC - Barbarian warrior appears 5 west of Thebes again. If it comes our way we'll need to dal with it. We don't want our stone plundered. Science slider is at 90%, we have 6 gold and gaining 2 per turn. Meditation just one turn away. HC has gone to 171 points, just haead of us again - another population increase for him?

Well that's it - nothing very exciting, but a few discussion points for us.

 

[Drogear]

Seems like where r doing good progress!

BTW: This might seem very noobish of me but how do I make a screenshot? And how do I post it here? Just wanting to know this until later.

 

[Drogear]

Radiopill: About trhe sceenhsot, the top "orange" city, are you sure the silver resrouce offsets the cost of that city? It will not make profic for sure, cant see any other resorues it can grow of. But the +1 happy might come in handy

 

[BSouder]

The orange city would pay for itself from the costal squares.

To take the screenshots, hit "Printscreen" then alt-tab to Paint and paste the picture then save it. To post it here you would need to upload it to this site or preferably to a photo hosting sight, such as Photobucket.

 

[Hyfrydle]

We seem to be on the right track and it's nice to see us pulling ahead of the Incans we are still in the early stages of the game and so far we seem to be creating a nice stable platform. We aren't doing too bad compared to the other teams either.

Would have been nice to have some screenshots to update us on the curent situation. Are we ok to download the save to have a look aslong as we don't play?

Turn Order

Hyfrydle
Frederiksberg
Mad Professor (Just Played)
radiopill (Up Next)
BSouder
Drogear
KingdomBrunel
Syntherio

Does anyone feel we should now drop to 10 turns per round?

 

[radiopill]

To take the screenshots, hit "Printscreen" then alt-tab to Paint and paste the picture then save it. To post it here you would need to upload it to this site or preferably to a photo hosting sight, such as Photobucket.

The screenshots are also stored in a file in Program Files/Civ4/Screenshots or something like this (I didn't have a civ access atm...), so you don't need to Alt-Tab all the time...

 

[radiopill]

A little comment on the turnset... You shoul'd have go for Pyr when the stone were hooked... The barracks doesn't needed to be finished atm.

We now need to hook the horses, and start pumping Warhorses, as Cathy is already starting to grab OUR land...

 

[Drogear]

A little comment on the turnset... You shoul'd have go for Pyr when the stone were hooked... The barracks doesn't needed to be finished atm.

We now need to hook the horses, and start pumping Warhorses, as Cathy is already starting to grab OUR land...

Im with you radiopill

Are we buildning barracks at this early stage? just let me ask WHY? When we now got stone Pyr is very importen, will give +2happy an letting execially the capital with all the floodplains to grow.

 

[Syntherio]

radiopill, could you provide us some Screenshots please? Especially from the south-western region and from Memphis.

Research:
We need BW, it seems to me that Catherine will become our second enemy.
After that priesthood.

Worker duty:
Improve the horses as soon as possible! We need something better then warriors...

Production:
How long will Theben work on the pyramids?
Memphis should build another warrior as guard for Thebens fatcross. I tought we have one warrior left for scouting-duty, but that seems to be wrong.

Longtime strategy:
I suggest this techpath: Meditation, Bronzeworking, Priesthood, Writing, Code of Law.
We need another worker and at least two war chariots. What then? Another settler or axemen? Should we build a third city, or should we grab it from Catherine? Do we still want the Oracle build by a Great Engineer?

 

[Frederiksberg]

Im with you radiopill

Are we buildning barracks at this early stage? just let me ask WHY? When we now got stone Pyr is very importen, will give +2happy an letting execially the capital with all the floodplains to grow.

Well, the idea we discussed was to put some hammers into barracks and switch to Pyramids as soon as stone was hooked up. I guess Mad Professor jus forgot to switch or maybe it was not clear from the discussion that this was the intention. Anyway, we get Pyramids 8 turns later and probably still fast enough to beat the other civs. In that case it doesn't matter that much. But maybe we should have gone for an extra warrior. When we send a warrior to defend our quarry we must have another warrior in Thebes otherwise we could risk loosing the city We might be forced to switch from Pyramids to warrior right away.

 

[BSouder]

Are we ok to download the save to have a look aslong as we don't play?

That was mentioned in the Maintenance thread before the game was started and the answer is Yes. Any of us can download the game and look around as long as we do nothing to give ourselves "extra" knowledge; like hitting the end turn button or moving people, etc.

Does anyone feel we should now drop to 10 turns per round?

It might not be a bad idea; at least after we finish the first full round if not before.

 

[Drogear]

Well, the idea we discussed was to put some hammers into barracks and switch to Pyramids as soon as stone was hooked up. I guess Mad Professor jus forgot to switch or maybe it was not clear from the discussion that this was the intention. Anyway, we get Pyramids 8 turns later and probably still fast enough to beat the other civs. In that case it doesn't matter that much. But maybe we should have gone for an extra warrior. When we send a warrior to defend our quarry we must have another warrior in Thebes otherwise we could risk loosing the city We might be forced to switch from Pyramids to warrior right away.

yea a extra warrior instead of a barrack seemed the better option at the intial turns.

 

[KingdomBrunel]

Originally posted by Syntherio:

Research:
We need BW, it seems to me that Catherine will become our second enemy.
After that priesthood.

Worker duty:
Improve the horses as soon as possible! We need something better then warriors...

Production:
How long will Theben work on the pyramids?
Memphis should build another warrior as guard for Thebens fatcross. I tought we have one warrior left for scouting-duty, but that seems to be wrong.

Longtime strategy:
I suggest this techpath: Meditation, Bronzeworking, Priesthood, Writing, Code of Law.
We need another worker and at least two war chariots. What then? Another settler or axemen? Should we build a third city, or should we grab it from Catherine? Do we still want the Oracle build by a Great Engineer?

Pretty much agree with this - I think we want BW next too, and if that doesn't give us copper, I think we should look for IW soon too. Syntherio's longtime tech path looks good. I'd like to include fishing at some point to find out what's on the other side of the mountains, but there's no particular hurry.

I'm worried that we're too light militarily, and think we need another unit ASAP. If we're to stop Catherine expanding I guess we're going to need another settler soonish too. I think we should have some spare time for the Pyramids - is it worth diverting production to knock out another warrior now?

In terms of next city, should we settle on the brown city location on radiopill's post? That's west and should give us enough cultural boundaries to block the east off from Catherine.

 

[KingdomBrunel]

Radiopill - we were going to swap. Is this still OK with you? I'll assume it is and pick up the save about 8:00 European Time this evening unless you say otherwise.

 

[Hyfrydle]

Here are some screenshots of our current position:

The South West Corner

The North

Our Lands So Far

Latest Demographics

Hope this helps out.

 

[Syntherio]

Thanks for the screenshots, Hyfrydle.

In terms of next city, should we settle on the brown city location on radiopill's post? That's west and should give us enough cultural boundaries to block the east off from Catherine.

Yes, I think the brown location is okay as a bordercity, but the place itself isn´t really good... No fresh water, a few hills, a few forests. This is not a place for a specialized city and I am not sure if the sugar is worthy. Maybe we will have no alternative later, but in the moment?
Maybe one tile left of the pink spot is a better position?

 

[Frederiksberg]

Pretty much agree with this - I think we want BW next too, and if that doesn't give us copper, I think we should look for IW soon too. Syntherio's longtime tech path looks good. I'd like to include fishing at some point to find out what's on the other side of the mountains, but there's no particular hurry.

I'm worried that we're too light militarily, and think we need another unit ASAP. If we're to stop Catherine expanding I guess we're going to need another settler soonish too. I think we should have some spare time for the Pyramids - is it worth diverting production to knock out another warrior now?

In terms of next city, should we settle on the brown city location on radiopill's post? That's west and should give us enough cultural boundaries to block the east off from Catherine.

I agree that we should consider fishing at some point shortly before we want to start working on a fishing boat. That fish tile within the fat cross of Memphis can produce up to 6 food with a lighthouse in Memphis. But right now I suppose we should go for some War Charriots in Memphis. We really need those before we start seing barbarian archers

Right now we probably need to build a warrior ASAP in Thebes as you mention. We need two warriors: One to guard Thebes and one to guard the stone quarry. Building a Settler is less important in my view. We allready have two good locations (red and blue on Radiopills map) that the Russians can't get to and if they keep pumping out Settlers their military will suffer and we can easily capture a couple of cities from them. Only problem is if we don't have bronze.

Maybe we should even switch production to warrior in Memphis as well. We could need this unit to protect the worker while he is hooking up the horses. You never know when those barbarians are going to show up! Later on these extra warriors can be used for cheap happyness if we change government civic to HR.

 

[Frederiksberg]

Thanks for the screenshots, Hyfrydle.



Yes, I think the brown location is okay as a bordercity, but the place itself isn´t really good... No fresh water, a few hills, a few forests. This is not a place for a specialized city and I am not sure if the sugar is worthy. Maybe we will have no alternative later, but in the moment?
Maybe one tile left of the pink spot is a better position?

We first need to see what is in the water south of the brown location. Anyway I would be in favor of a coastal placement - having many water tiles within the fat cross is not so good if you are not able to build a lighthouse and get the extra food. I normally grab any luxury ressource I can get near, but this may only be an old habit from my civ 3 days .

 

[KingdomBrunel]

Sounds good. The pictures help a lot actually (thanks Hyfrydle) - didn't realise that we'd already blocked off the east.

In terms of city placement - it would be good to know what's across the water below the sugar - that's potentially in a FAT cross. Can't see us finding out for a little while though...

Edit: started typing before I saw Frederiksberg's last post.

 

[radiopill]

Well, the idea we discussed was to put some hammers into barracks and switch to Pyramids as soon as stone was hooked up. I guess Mad Professor jus forgot to switch or maybe it was not clear from the discussion that this was the intention.

I know, It wasn't in my intention to be rude.

Research:
We need BW, it seems to me that Catherine will become our second enemy.
After that priesthood.

Worker duty:
Improve the horses as soon as possible! We need something better then warriors...

Production:
How long will Theben work on the pyramids?
Memphis should build another warrior as guard for Thebens fatcross. I tought we have one warrior left for scouting-duty, but that seems to be wrong.

Longtime strategy:
I suggest this techpath: Meditation, Bronzeworking, Priesthood, Writing, Code of Law.
We need another worker and at least two war chariots. What then? Another settler or axemen? Should we build a third city, or should we grab it from Catherine? Do we still want the Oracle build by a Great Engineer?

I completely agree... Cathy must be wiped out asap, so we need to know where is the copper, before she did... and if she already have some we need where to go for unhooking it...
For Memphis, we should change immediately barracks to another warrior before we have some trouble with all the barbarians. I think, that once this 2 barbarians are killed, 2 warriors for fogbusting (1 in the N, and 1 in the W) should be enough...

For the worker... we need horses now, they must be hooked right after this mining, thebes cannot support atm all its hill mined...

For the tech, as it was already sayed, we could search fishing before CoL, it's a pretty cheap tech...

Radiopill - we were going to swap. Is this still OK with you? I'll assume it is and pick up the save about 8:00 European Time this evening unless you say otherwise.

I'm still OK with that.

Yes, I think the brown location is okay as a bordercity, but the place itself isn´t really good... No fresh water, a few hills, a few forests. This is not a place for a specialized city and I am not sure if the sugar is worthy. Maybe we will have no alternative later, but in the moment?
Maybe one tile left of the pink spot is a better position?

Here is another dot map, I put on it Cathy city (she's creative so she must be the civ n°1 for land area) in orange. I also put the suggestion of Syntherio in Green, and another suggestion of myself (the pink one) It could be better as it have fresh water, sea access, and founded on a hill, plus the cows...