SGOTM 03 - Peanut

[malekithe]

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/Peanut_SG003_BC3340_01.CivWarlordsSave

We've completed a fair amount of exploration, a warrior, and a workboat. The island is bigger than I had assumed and may even be larger if it continues off to the west. I pulled the scout back for fear of being eaten by a nearby bear. Someone braver than I may wish to venture forth into the great untamed wilds.

I believe Klarius is up next. The path for the next 10-12 turns should be pretty straightforward. After that, we have a few things up in the air; tech to research after BW, what the forest chops are going toward, our medium-term goals. Those things should constitute the bulk of the discussion. There seem to be a wealth of resources nearby, but lots of jungle as well. Still, I don't know if that means we're neccessarily in any hurry to research iron working.

Turn 1 - 4000 BC
- Moved scout E-NE, saw clams fish and stone
- Moved settler NE toward selected city spot on NE plains hill, spotted spices in the formerly unseen spot 2E

Turn 2 - 3970
- Moved scout SW-NW, spotted gems in the jungle to the north
- moved settler onto the targeted plains hill

Turn 3 - 3940
- Moved scout N-NW, spotted fish well off the coast
- Founded Moscow on the plains hill
- Started research on Fishing
- Set Moscow production to a warrior

Turn 4 - 3910
- Scout spots Rice to the N of Moscow

Turn 5 - 3880
- Scout spots more fish in the north

Turn 6 - 3850
- Scout spots Cattle and Gems in the north

Turn 7 - 3820
- Scout spots even more fish off the northern coast of the island

Turn 8 - 3790
- Switch production in Moscow to a worker
- Scout spots 2 more gem tiles on what looks like a northwest peninsula

Turn 10 - 3730
- Peninsula turns out to be a land bridge, spot more clams and rice

Turn 11 - 3700
- Contact with Mao of the Chinese, He has an archer on the land mass to our SE (with the stone)
- Switch Production in Moscow back to a warrior to finish

Turn 12 - 3670
- IBT complete research of fishing, start on Bronze Working
- Complete warrior in Moscow, start work on work boat
- scout spot more gems

Turn 13 - 3640
- see our first wild animals, bears near the scout (but still 2 tiles away)

Turn 17 - 3520
- IBT - Hinduism is founded

Turn 23 - 3340
- IBT - interesting hang encountered; maybe something to do with the 2.08 patch (which I hadn't downloaded till yesterday) and windows vista (and my video driver, apparently)... had to load autoasave
- I'm going to play around with some of the compatibility settings and see if I can't get to the bottom of the hang
- Complete workboat in moscow, switch to worker (which suffered no decay)

Spoiler :

Turn 2, 3940 BC: Moscow has been founded.

Turn 9, 3730 BC: The borders of Moscow have expanded!

Turn 10, 3700 BC: You have discovered Fishing!
Turn 10, 3700 BC: You have trained a Warrior in Moscow. Work has now begun on a Worker.

Turn 15, 3550 BC: Hinduism has been founded in a distant land!

Turn 18, 3460 BC: Buddhism has been founded in a distant land!

Turn 21, 3370 BC: You have trained a Work Boat in Moscow. Work has now begun on a Worker.

 

[DaviddesJ]

We could have viewed a few more tiles by moving the workboat E-SE last turn, and then SW next turn. Not a big deal.

I agree with not risking the scout. If there's another AI on our landmass, we'll find out soon enough (the fact they haven't shown up means they probably aren't there). Doesn't really matter for now what's on the other side of the island. I'd rather keep the scout alive for fogbusting. One less warrior we'll have to build.

We could fortify the warrior on the jungle hill where the scout is now, but, that leaves more land in between that warrior and our territory than a single scout can view. Maybe we'll want a 2nd warrior for fogbusting, plus 1 per city for garrisons.

Given the timetable for BW, klarius's plan of growing to size 2 and then finishing the worker seems most sensible. The next real decision won't come until we get BW and see if/where there is copper. I'm tempted to just go ahead and jump in to play those 12 turns, since they are so uncontroversial.

 

[MailMan]

I think we should grab the great wall.
why?
1. we have stone
2. we are prioritizing masonry anyway
3. we phil which will give us GE twice sooner and most probably the pyramids.
the GE will be helpful for sure even if the pyramids are gone.
4. the wonder itself is useful as we got big chunk of land.

 

[malekithe]

Actually, I find those are better arguments in favor of building the pyramids.

By building the pyramids (as opposed to the great wall):
- we get a GE sooner
- we don't need to spend that great engineer on the pyramids; he could maybe get something like the great lighthouse or metal casting (for trade bait) instead
- we are much more likely to be able to obtain the pyramids
- the benefit of the wonder we'd actually be building is much higher. Honestly, there's not that much territory; it would only take 2-3 more units to see the whole island and prevent the emergence of any barbarians. Plus, the power of representation when combined with philosophical is remarkably potent.

I believe those advantages more than offset the extra cost (it'll take at least 25-30 turns to build, as opposed to around 15).

Keep in mind that in warlords 2.08 the Great Wall gives only 1 point/turn (2 for us with philosophical). If it still gave 2/turn, I think that route would be getting a lot more support.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Since we all seemed to agree on the next 11 turns, I just went ahead and played those. Hope no one objects to that. We grew to size 2, produced a worker, discovered Bronze Working. There is no copper visible in our explored area. We also spotted Alexander on the SE island (same landmass as Mao).

3010 BC save: http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm3/Peanut_SG003_BC3010_01.CivWarlordsSave

Events:

3310 BC: Improve fish, work fish, switch to workboat.

3220 BC: Grow to size 2, work fish and stone, switch to worker.

3160 BC: Met Alexander on SE island.

3010 BC: Discover Bronze Working, build worker in Moscow.

We have 6 hammers in the workboat. IMHO the natural thing to do is to spend the next 6 turns building workboat, completing it with a forest chop. Put the carryover into a settler. Then finish growing to size 3, before working on settler.

But klarius should take those (more interesting) turns.

 

[klarius]

I got it.
I'm on travel for the next 18 hours and will try to play on the airplane.
Shouldn't be many decisions. I will complete work boat, settler and probably a warrior and hand over then.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Maybe it would make sense to build 3rd workboat before the settler? We could use the workboat for a small amount of exploring, and then time it so that it can reach the SW clams at the same time as our settler is ready to build the 2nd city. That way our new city will grow quickly right from the beginning. Also, this lets Moscow grow while building the workboat.

 

[civ_steve]

What a lot of Gems! We'll certainly have a lot of resources to trade ... eventually.

Plans sound good; I'll look for klarius' save in a couple of days.

 

[ainwood]

What a lot of Gems! We'll certainly have a lot of resources to trade ... eventually.

And a nice site for a science or commerce city.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Where do you intend to put the science city? There's only one location that works 3 gems. I'm not sure if it's a good place to put a city, or not. The 3-gem city wouldn't have very much food.

I see at least two viable ways to build out the continent. One is shown in the dotmap below. The other would have alternative city sites A, B, and C.

 

[klarius]

Well I played. The save.

I built work boat, warrior and settler. Settler is in the capital ready to move.

There is copper on our island but far away over land, so we should again consider to move sailing up.

Our first warrior survived a bear attack, but then got eaten by a panther.

Masonry and wheel are researched and science set to pottery.

I think we should consider to settle the third city on the nearby gems as recommended by the blue circle, to get gems into play w/o need for IW.

We should complete pottery and all new cities should pop-rush a granary as soon as they grow to size 2.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I think we should build cities in the locations I've labeled A, B, and C. All three of these will be good, long-term cities. And city C can work the copper.

We can also put a city on the gems near Moscow, if we want. That city will have no long-term value; all of the resources available to it would be worked by other, more important cities. Its only purpose would be to get +1 happiness in Moscow and the 2nd city, before we connect up another gems resource. I don't think this is worth the cost of the settler, really.

I wonder if we should think of building Stonehenge. It's not very expensive with stone, and several of our city sites will require cultural expansion to be productive. If we get an early GP and settle it, that's not so bad.

If we don't want to build Stonehenge, we might still want to research Mysticism and partially build Stonehenge, so we can get an infusion of gold when someone else builds it.

The loss of the warrior is unfortunate, that's going to have to be replaced. I still think we're going to want a warrior on the jungle hill near B; it can kill some barbs and get experience, while we don't have to put fogbusters on the western part of the island right away.

 

[ainwood]

Where do you intend to put the science city? There's only one location that works 3 gems. I'm not sure if it's a good place to put a city, or not. The 3-gem city wouldn't have very much food.

I was thinking the purple site you drew. Long term, rather than short-term, we can actually chain irrigation up to go through a fair chunk of the continent.

I can't remember, and can't pick it out from the map you posted - are any of those gems on hills?

I see at least two viable ways to build out the continent. One is shown in the dotmap below. The other would have alternative city sites A, B, and C.

With the extra info from klarius, A, B & C look good.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I was thinking the purple site you drew. Long term, rather than short-term, we can actually chain irrigation up to go through a fair chunk of the continent.

I can't remember, and can't pick it out from the map you posted - are any of those gems on hills?

The gems NE of B are on a hill. So no irrigation on the west side of the island. I agree we can chain irrigation up the east side. But, in the A/B/C plan, city A already has a lot of food, and chaining irrigation won't help B or C.

 

[ainwood]

Current status

malekithe
DaviddesJ
Klarius -> Just played.
civ_steve -> Up now.
ainwood
MailMan
DaviddesJ
Phabuk

 

[civ_steve]

OK, I'll post a 'got-it'. Probably play tomorrow, and look at the save later tonight or early tomorrow.

I think I liked the A-B-C locations better of the two options DaviddesJ has proposed. I'd definitely like to settle strong, long-term cities. Since Copper is across the 'bay' from us, I'm inclined to go for Sailing soon, perhaps after Writing, or better yet, after Alphabet and we see if we can trade for it first.

Stonehenge - I think I can support that.

I believe we are agreed to settle City#2 on the original floodplains starting location (2nd blue circle in klarius' picture) ?

 

[malekithe]

On the topic of stonehenge, I can see some benefit. I'm not sure it's worth delaying the pyramids for, though. One thing it will definitely help us with is grabbing a few of the religions. I think it will be fairly important to grab most of the later religions in order to reduce the number of factions present later in the game. If we can limit the number of religions spread to the AI to 2-3, it will be much easier to build a powerful coalition. With that in mind, maybe building stonhenge is a good first step. My question is, though, how much does it interfere with getting the pyramids?

 

[klarius]

Our long term settling projects are a nice topic, but we should think also how to proceed immediately.
We need the work boat currently under construction for sure. Then I think we need urgently another worker (or 2).
One more work boat for scouting wouldn't be bad and a couple of warriors over time will also be needed.
The biggest boost to our tiny empire would be the pyramids as early as possible, so I'm now questioning if we should build another settler at all out of our capital before it (noting all the above needed things).
If we build another settler soon, I still think the gems site to be worth it. Not only for the boost to other cities, but this town will also have enough tiles to work w/o need to hack a lot of jungle. It doesn't contradict the A,B,C settling and in fact can help C (by lending the fish), if it has culture expansion by then.
I'm not convinced that stonehenge will do us much good. Especially the great prophet points which might give us several GP, when we would like to have GS or GE.

 

[civ_steve]

I think we either 1.) settle the Gems location as 3rd city, per klarius' thoughts, or 2.) don't settle a 3rd city until we have Sailing, and go get the copper (location 'C' IIRC) first. The other sites require a lot of hacking to become useful so they should wait until after IW, whether it's us directly or we trade.

Agree that several Workboat's are in our future - not only to help city#2 but to scout with. Perhaps there's a great city site nearby that we want to grab before getting our machetes out. Workers are good, too; and keep the pop down.

And just because I can support Stonehenge doesn't mean it's the best choice! If we want to focus on Pyramids, we can probably start on that soon.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I don't think we need another settler immediately. If we settle on the gems and we want to develop that city, we would need to build yet another workboat, for the fish. If we build a 4th workboat, I'd rather send it to make more contacts for when we get Alphabet.

I also don't think we need another worker right away. I guess we could chop forests and build cottages. That's ok, but not urgent.

I think we need two more workboats (one for the clams and one for exploration), and at least two warriors (one for Moscow and one for fogbusting/patrolling in the jungle). After that, I would be ready to build Stonehenge or Pyramids.

Stonehenge costs 180, and Moscow can easily generate 13 hpt (x2 for stone), so that's only 7 turns to build.

I don't think that getting GPs is so terrible---they are pretty good for settling as super specialists (2 hpt and 5 gpt), and we can use those extra hammers to build wonders as well as other things we need. But I'm also perfectly happy with skipping Stonehenge and going straight for Pyramids.