SGOTM 04 - Geezers

[Harbourboy]

Nice work, Htadus. We're well underway now. I survived without the internet for another couple of days but broke down and am back online for an hour this afternoon. I'll be back home in a couple of days so just let me know when you want me to take my turn.

Did anyone have that info about the autosave settings? If that is something important then I'd better make sure I am doing it correctly.

Next high level question: what is our general strategy going to be with regards to Great People? Do we have a GP city earmarked yet? Are we keen to get that first Great Engineer from the Pyramids? What other GPs are going to be most useful for us in this game?

 

[Htadus]

Did anyone have that info about the autosave settings? If that is something important then I'd better make sure I am doing it correctly.

Next high level question: what is our general strategy going to be with regards to Great People? Do we have a GP city earmarked yet? Are we keen to get that first Great Engineer from the Pyramids? What other GPs are going to be most useful for us in this game?

Harbourboy, there is a readme file under Civilization4 folder, in my case at

C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4

It can guide you through the process easily. Or
you can find your ini (config) file typically in \My Documents\My Games\Warlords\ folder and edit the values for autosave and flying camera mode. Hope this help.

As for GL question, That new city Gandi popped would be ideal with 3 food sources. But at the moment the capital is the best. But we need the Capitals production capacity. The site to the very north with 2 food sources may be a possibility.

GE would be awsome to build another WWonder such as the GLib. But the GL's we need are Scientists and one Prophet for Islam for Versalli. I hear spiral mineret is a good thing too.

 

[Htadus]

I am thinking out loud.

Do we really want to cripple or take out Kahn?

The way I see this game, we are going to help Gandhi become the number 2 Civ. But we do not want to get rid of any Civ that will do good research. In order to get things going, we need to have all different type of civs reserch their "Flavor" techs. Unless we can not get good 6-8 cities untill mid game, I would like to keep all civs around for tech trading. Once we find laggers we take them out to help us that much stronger. Any thoughts?

We really need to play Gandhi's religion card to the max as far as it won't hurt us. May be we should try to create two blocs of nations that is willing to trade with each other.

 

[Thrallia]

The most important Great People will be Engineers and Scientists, as they will give us the most useful lightbulbed techs, and Scientists are always great for Academies, while Engineers are great for wonder building.

There are only two reasons I can see to take out Khan:
1) To protect Gandhi from a very good warmonger.
2) To gain a new empire South of where we are so that we can eventually allow Gandhi to take our current land to speed his science/production.

The only thing about is whether or not giving Gandhi our land would speed him up or not. There's also no reason to take out Khan to protect Gandhi unless he were to declare war on Gandhi.

The best place I've seen for a GP farm is on the W coast of our continent, with 2 gems and 2 seafood resources surrounded by a ton of grassland.

 

[markh]

@harbourboy : I think I will put you in the roster after me. Depends how fast we advance.

I would like to have a little more intel on Kahn whether we should go for him early, but basically I would like to see him gone rather sooner than later.

Founding a religion with this start would have not been a big problem IMO. The starting spot had good commerce tiles from the beginning to research fast. I'm not surprised that someone tried it. I would have suggested that, too if we would have settled in place. If you spread it quickly it can help research quite well.

 

[markh]

Had a look at the save. Looks good.

I would go ag, sailing or masonry, pottery and then writing. We do not have much use for pottery now. Both cities we have need to connect the corn and then build a lot of mines. There is not much we can cottage there. Not too far ahead we should start the Pyramids if we want to go for it. As we have no stone available we will need some time even with chopping.

 

[Thrallia]

that was my feeling as well, mark. Pottery and cottages are great, and I agree they need to be put up as early as possible, but there's no reason to place them if we won't be working them anytime soon.

 

[Htadus]

I too agree that the need for cotages is not immidiate, however the need for grainary in each city is. With the gold, Nidaros has 7 happy faces and any other connected city has 6.

With a grainary, in Nidros we can start building our goal wonders and couple of turns before the city become unhappy we can start a unit and pop rush for 2 pop count and the city will grow back next turn. We mm city to work most of the mines and grow past 15 turns but nor wait 36 or 37. repeate. We can have twice as many units and have our Wonder needs met during a given period. Idea here is to use all available mines and grow fast after rushing.

Other cities can also benefit from the same concept. El Do can grow faster to work all 3 gold and 2 forest much faster with a grainary and pigs. With 6 pop it will make 9 hpt. Of course by the time it will grow to 6 we will have learned all these techs from the Science boost we get from just working the first 2 gold mines.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

Summary

Workboat, axe and settler finished in Nidaros. Mine by Nidaros completed. Warrior and worker finished in El Dorado-sala. Gold mine connected to El Do. Khan's land discovered.

Turn 60 - 2200 Bc
Nada.
Turn 61 - 2170 BC
Worker moved to hill by Nidaros.
Turn 62 - 2140 BC
Mysticism -> Pottery. I chose Pottery mainly because it enables granaries which we'll want for and because it's on the path for Writing. El Do grows to two and I switch pigs to Nidaros. Spot barb warrior to south of Nidaros.
Turn 63 - 2110 BC
Nada.
Turn 64 - 2080 BC
Nidaros mine finished.
Turn 65 - 2050 BC
Nidaros grows to 4. Workboat with one turn remaining.
Turn 66 - 2020 BC
Nidars starts axe (1 turn left). Send WB south. Switch pigs back to El Do.
Turn 67 - 1990 BC
Nidaros Axe -> Settler. Move axe to hill south of Nidaros. Worker starts gold mine by El Do.
Turn 68 - 1960 BC
Nada.
Turn 69 - 1930 BC
El Do completes warrior. Put a turn into a Monument whilst waiting for El Do to grow to 3.
Turn 70 - 1900 BC
El Do grows to 3 and I start a worker.
Turn 71 - 1870 BC
Reduce research to 70% as we're running short.
Turn 72 - 1840 BC
Nada.
Turn 73 - 1810 BC
Nada.
Turn 74 - 1780 BC
Pottery -> Masonry. Gold mine finished. Increase research to 80%.
Turn 75 - 1750 BC
Worker starts roading gold mine.
Turn 76 - 1720 BC
Nada.
Turn 77 - 1690 BC
The borders of Nidaros expand to include the horses.
Turn 78 - 1660 BC
WB sees Khan's borders.
Turn 79 - 1630 BC
Gold mine connected to El Do. Worker starts road to pigs.
Turn 80 - 1600 BC
Nidaros finishes the settler. I've selected a granary but no hammers have gone into it. El Do finishes the worker and I've moved him to start another gold mine. El Do continues with queued Monument. MM El Do for hammers.

Handover
A barb warrior has been moving in and out of sight to the south. It is now just south of El Do. There are signs of a barb city to the SW of El Do. Nidaros has one turn left of unhappiness.

The two spoilers contain an overview of the land to the south of us as well as a more detailed view of what we know of Khan's land. It looks as though the WB can continue southwards. There's a risk that it could be blocked in if Khan's borders expand but I think it's probably worth the risk. With luck it can carry on up the western side.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[Jenarie]

I've got the file (omg I'm shaking!) but won't play for 24 hours to let everyone tell me what to do with it. I have to run some errands so I'll post my thoughts this evening and then again a couple hours before playing tomorrow to make sure I've correctly interpreted what everyone has posted.

 

[Sam_Yeager]

With the large amount of unexplored land to the south of us we may find a fair amount of barbs turning up. I certainly noticed another barb warrior whilst heading south.

Should we build a few more more military instead of infrastructure? This is particularly relevant if we start building the Pyramids in Nidaros.

 

[Thrallia]

If we do as Htadus mentioned and whip things with 1-2 turns left in Nidaros and use the overflow on axes, we shouldn't have any shortage of units to deal with the barbs...and they may just found some useful cities for us.

As I see it, we whip the granary near its end, get another axe. Build a worker, whip at the end, get another axe, and then probably start the Pyramids. By then, El Dorado and our third city should be able to provide military support for our empire, if we need it. After all, at that point we'll have at least 3 axes in addition to the city garrisons.

We'll also want a second and possibly a third worker soon to take care of all that infrastructure/chopping that will take place.

As for tech, after Masonry finishes, I think Writing should come next...after that will depend on whether we meet any more civs by that point.

Our third city...it is going S just above the gems, right? from that spot it can already work the horses, thanks to Nidaros' culture expansion.

 

[Jenarie]

Feel free to skip this post! There is nothing new here.


When I looked at the save briefly earlier I felt a little lost about why we did some of the things we did so I decided to reread the thread from start to make sure I'm fully understanding the plan so I can carry it out. It is long and mainly for my own use but decided to post it in case it would be helpful to anyone else.

Summary of thread to date:

Checking in.

Some initial thoughts:

Early Game Priorities

• Scouting - Find out if Ghandhi's on our land. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if Gyathaar has placed him on another continent. I've just remembered that Ragnar's UB gives +1 to naval movement so that seems even more likely. Find out who else is on our island/continent.
• Build up our military power - We really want to kill off any aggressive civs that might divert Ghandhi from space. Scientific civs should be left as trading partners (for the time being).
• If we find Ghandhi is on another continent then we need to beeline Optics to find out where he is.
• If Ghandhi is on our continent then we probably want to capture/build(?) some cities near him that he can 'capture' to help him expand.

Middle Game Priorities

• As we can't trade with Ghandhi then we need to find some civs to trade with that we can be fairly certain will also trade with Ghandhi - That way we can help his research.
• To be able to accomplish this we obviously need some decent science of our own. Great Library would be helpful.
• Probably worth building the UN to make sure nobody else does. We obviously need to make sure that that we will be elected SecGen so that we control what resolutions get put forward.

End Game Priorities

• Make sure no other civ will beat Ghandhi. Realistically this means armed force so we will need to have built up military power by this stage.
• Find out where key resources exist, such as aluminium,and liberate them so that Ghandhi can make best use of them.
• If at all feasible it would be convenient if we could build helpful wonders, the space elevator for example, for Ghadhi to 'capture' from us. This means having the odd Great Engineer(s) hanging about to help build them.

General stratergy:

• Protect ourself and India.
• Build several finance cities near india and let Gandhi capture them as the available land become limited during late early game. This should prevent them from razing them and by that time code of Law should be available to help us perhaps relocate.
• Since india will found a religion we should get it and spread it to other civs.
• Build Great Lib in a city to be turned over to India.
• We should deny india the cultural route, so no early gifting of Pyramids;built or captured.
• We should trade (and gift) techs freely.
• We should eliminate any dead beat civ's who are not teching and perhaps Agressive ones.
• Pass UN resolution for no nukes. Maybe after we build a few.

Early game:
Strategy:
Scout around. Build up our strength/power.
First priority is to build up our defense or offense. I rarely go for archery (always trade) but in this game, I am willing to vote for Archery.

Science: Archery or to Mining and Bronze Working. My preferance is BW for needed chops for settlers and follwed by Archery if no copper nearby.

Build: WB,Scout, Worker and WB or WB, worker, Scout and WB. I prefer latter. Since there is no way to get Gandhi to build the oracle, we should do it if we do not have to build many units in a hurry. If stone is near it would be nice to know where on Fractal we are located via SH. I am guessing we are north of EQ.

UN is out. We do not have to worry about it. It is disabled. We just have to keep an eye on the domination limit and that no other AI beats Gandhi in the space race.

[Not including debate on where to put first two cities as they are placed now]

Here's my midterm-longterm thoughts:

Early Game:
Explore land and sea diligently in order to find Gandhi and the other AI
Focus on science and build the Great Library(Pyramids too, if we get a chance)
Establish a number of cities we can simply allow Gandhi to steal once they reach size 2

Midgame:
Get to CS and Machinery early so that we can use our UU to take out the civs we don't want interfering with us or Gandhi(warmongers, science powerhouses that generally arent' good trade partners, irritating leaders-Izzy)
Increase our GPP production to lightbulb critical techs.
Get free GPs from techs
Get Liberalism

Lategame:
Research everything as fast as possible still
Make sure we've got a military capable of holding off a modern Gandhi war machine and remove any competition for Gandhi
Become SecGen to turn off Manhattan Project(wouldn't be good to get nuked every few turns by Gandhi instead of him building that spaceship)
Build Space Elevator and gift to Gandhi
Possibly build Internet and gift to Gandhi if he's hopelessly behind in techs.

Overall:
Those two early wonders, to me, are very important. As the Library can give us early GS's, and the Pyramids would greatly strengthen our specialist science, along with giving us GE points, something we definitely want to get to ensure we give Gandhi the Space Elevator...the earlier we get it, the easier it will be to ensure we get one.
Additionally, it seems to be that lightbulbing techs with GP will greatly increase our tech speed. It appears GS, GE, and GM are the most important for the techs we'd be interested in. Getting the free ones from techs should be a goal as well.
I agree with everyone else we don't need to bother building the UN, but we should assure ourselves of becoming the SecGen so that we can disable nukes if it looks like Gandhi is interested in building them
Also, we should probably get our Scotland Yard up and running ASAP to build spies and get a picture of what Gandhi is building in his big cities.

Not sure about start tech. We start with Fishing so we could go straight to Sailing but probably not worth it for the first tech. Agriculture is useful to farm the corn if we settle in situ but I think we've got plenty of food anyway although we'll want Pottery soon. We could go direct to Animal Husbandry, Archery or Mining. I think I prefer going the boring Mining route but I'm sure other people will different ideas.

I have been experimenting with Celt WOTM3, and found out the power of BW to make a beliver out of me. Food is not a big issue on this setting. So AH is more valuble to locate horses. With all the food around we can hold off on Pot also.


I have been testing chopping for settlers and building worrior in between. Pretty cool. From what I read it is not an exploit.

BTW on that WOTM3, I was able to get MC from the Oracle, with Ragnar it should be even easier. So we should not ignore it. For all we know we can do even better w/Ragnar. Also I noted that AI like to get Long bows with Oracle. Nasty buisness.

Science for me is Mining, BW, AH, and Masonry.

Thrallia Played: Turn 1: 4000 BC - 2800 BC

As far as our relations with Khan...he's definitely going to be destroyed sooner or later, as we want all warmongers kept unable to bring any harm to Gandhi. It is somewhat mean of Gyathaar to give us such a great area in terms of production AND commerce when we want to lose the game

Finally, I think after we reach AH, Masonry, and possibly Agriculture, we should rush Writing>Alpha>Mathematics and trade everything away to anyone we know. Alphabet first. The tech pace needs to be furious, and since we don't know WHO will be a good trade partner with Gandhi, we need to trade any non-military techs everywhere as fast as we get them. Alphabet is important because it is the #1 most limiting factor in early AI tech advancement. The faster we get it and trade/gift it away, the faster the overall tech pace will increase and the sooner it will do so.

I say Mathematics early as well because without marble or stone we need some heavy chopping to get the Pyramids and Library...if we prechop the forests between tile improvements in our cities, then we should get Math in time to gain +50% on all chops and build the Pyramids before anyone else does.

I think I like to have Khan gone sooner than later, so I think we should plan our first war while he is still in expansion mode. Khan's UU is Keshik ? Should have an eye whether he has horses around.

I think we need a third city as soon as possible too. Even with the jungle, I prefer settling the coastal city to south, next to Gems. It will help us during our campaign to get Kahn out or maginalize him.

Tech wise I vote for Ag, Wheel and Pot before writing. We need to farm, connect copper and gold sooner than later and need to use the food to its max.

Just as much as the wheel we need galleys and Tireames for the narrow divide. Even Gandhi is going to want to claim some fishing nets. So we need to interject it here some where.

How well do we think we are going to be able to trade techs early?

I want to officially say not going to build the oracle is a mistake. (in the second city to get CoL or MC) But I guess we have to plan for the Pyramids. Oh by the way do you guys ever go for WWonders to get cash for 100 percent science in mid game?

I don't think Agriculture is as important as the other two. We need Mysticism for cultural expansion in new cities as well. So my preferred initial tech path would be Wheel, Mysticism and Pottery.

Tech trading could be interesting. IIRC the AI won't trade unless it knows at least two civs. Alphabet needs to be known by at least one civ. Ghandhi won't trade with us anyway. Neither Ghandhi or Kublai know each other yet. It's another reason why we want to know if Ghandhi is sharing his land with anyone else.

I'm not sure exactly where this was said. However if we wanted to go down that route we would need Mysticism -> Meditation -> Priesthood and with the exception of the first that's not on either of our tech paths.

I am not too sure about the oracle. Pyramids would be nice for sure, but I think most important now is to get two more cities planted.

Next tech should be The Wheel to get the copper connected. Had some bad experience lately building too few military and barbs swarmed all over me and I lost a lot improvements and even one newly built city. I think we will have quite some as there seems nobody in the North and Kahn also seems to be a bit away.

More thoughts on tech:
I think our tech path should be Masonry, Wheel, Mysticism, either Writing or Sailing.

I'd like to get wheel first. We need to hook up that copper and we'll want to hook up gold/gems when we can as well although gems aren't an issue as we won't have them until after we learn Iron Working.

sounds fair, we can't use masonry immediately anyway, so Wheel, Mysticism, Masonry, Writing

We do want Masonry in there so that we can start working on the Pyramids in our capital as soon as possible. Putting Mysticism and Wheel before it should allow us to get the pigs and copper ready, along with a number of hills mines...that shoudl give us at least 20 hammers per turn in the capital, giving us a great production speed on it. We've also got plenty of chopable forests if we want to use them.

Ragnar is Aggressive & Financial. Not getting cottages up and running early strikes me as foolish and not making best use of our civ's traits. I agree that the Wheel and Mysticism need to come next but I feel Pottery should come soon after that.

On the point about waiting until we trade for it this has been the reason why I have been going on about getting a coastal city in the west. Ghandhi won't trade with us. The AI will only trade when they know at least two civs and Kublai hasn't met Ghandhi yet. Even when he does he may not be that helpful. We could be waiting quite a while before we can trade with anybody.

As a proponaent of the Pyramids, I agree with what has been said about its merits. I would prefer to start on it after we have 3 cities total.

Having look at the map made by Jenarie again, I think the City northwest of capital should be moved one tile west to make it a coastal city. It will get 3 land tile on the other side, and will get 2 food resources. We need a coastal city on that side.

I am inclining toward that city as our 3rd city because it will grow faster and give us another food resource and with the river and plains tiles we can have a decent production city. The city to the south may still be an option if we see some land based food resource there. If Kahn settle there we just take it as a planed.

Oh on a side note, I just recently learned on Warlord (not a good thing) that chariots can wreck havock on Axes. So we need to have a at least 1 spear with our Axes for protection. And we need to secure horses.

So for the next 20 turns:

Science: After AH, start on the Wheel followed by Myst.
Build: Switch to Settler and rush with 1 pop, warrior, WB for exploration.
Settle NEXT to gold Edited per Sam_Yeager observation

WB is the better explorer available right now.

Some thing to keep in mind.

The proximity of India and us is not very good after we get to industrial age and beyond when we all have bombers. We are going to need to relocate in order to keep the science going fast with out going into major WW. Usually India would have to relocate but we can not break the back of india in this game . We should somehow plant a third Civ between (Physically) us and india. Even if it is a crippled Khan.

I completely agree with this [Sam's post re pottery]. I also think that a granary in the capital can help speed expansion... with all that food, whipping settlers is a good approach. The dot maps look great, but if we are slow building settlers, we might find our neighbors infringing on the plan.

Not sure why the hurry for Mysticism? Looks like most of the cities on the dot map have key resources in the center square. Exception is the corn in the gold city, but the pigs will do to get that one started. I'm guessing we have plenty of time to come back to mysticism before we need to expand cities.

RE: coastal cities... the UB really doesn't thrill me. I'd rather have extra land tiles and cottages with financial trait.

I too totally agree with the grainary in the capital and for that matter all other cities. Having the ability to whip a unit every 15 turns or a building will only work well with a grainary. And those lowely cottages....got to love em especially if they are next to a river.

We only need a couple good coastal cities and we can build the UB there. In civ3 I would not build any coastal cities if Vikings are around. In civ4, it appear any unit can attack from ships. If the cities are not coastal we can have rapid reaction units stratergically located to provide protection.

As for coastal cities, I have nothing against them if they provide seafood and preferably located on a notch like our capital is. That way we still get the health benefits of a coastal city and plenty of land tiles.

Htadus Played: Turn 2: 2800 BC - 2200 BC

I've had a look at the save. My thoughts and queries for the next turnset are as follows:

• Grow El Dorado to 2
• Switch pig to Nidaros so it can grow to 4. MM Nidaros as necessary until whip unhappiness gone. Perhaps I should just let it grow and whip the WB?
• Finish mine by Nidaros.
• I'm inclined to whip the warrior in El Dorado when possible and then start the worker. We might then send the warrior to find Khan?
• Presumably I should send the WB exploring to the south?
• What tech should I research after Mysticism? We could go Agriculture for the corn or Sailing for our UB. Personally I think we should go for Pottery on the way to Writing.

I think when Nidaros grow it can work the new mine and complete all the builds fast, but if we rush it, the city will grow back a little faster and we will have two useful units. Both options are good. Your call. Once we have a grainary there (Rushed) the choice is obvious.

I would not whip the warrior in El Dorado. We need the gold from there fast as possible and we need a worker from there fast too.

Yes let WB find Kahn and who ever else. So we do need another WB to go north. Good point.

Pottery is my vote followed by Sailing and Ag.

Are we going to do any worker steals? If I feel confident that I will take and keep cities of a civ, I usually do not and let them build all the improvements. Settlers on the other hand is fair game. Since we are going to go monger early at least with Kahn, I would like to wait until we have Alphabet to get the most out of the campaign.

Looks good, my preferred tech order is Pottery>Writing>Alpha.
Agri and Sailing could be picked up from Khan and anyone else we meet. I'm sure Khan will meet Gandhi quickly allowing us to trade with him.

The next city should be placed along the coast next to the gems...It will have access to Horses shortly after, along with giving us a head start on cutting off Khan.

I don't think we want to do worker steals, as they slow down the AI...our goal is to speed of Gandhi, which requires we speed up most of the AIs as well.

Next high level question: what is our general strategy going to be with regards to Great People? Do we have a GP city earmarked yet? Are we keen to get that first Great Engineer from the Pyramids? What other GPs are going to be most useful for us in this game?

I am thinking out loud.

Do we really want to cripple or take out Kahn?

The way I see this game, we are going to help Gandhi become the number 2 Civ. But we do not want to get rid of any Civ that will do good research. In order to get things going, we need to have all different type of civs reserch their "Flavor" techs. Unless we can not get good 6-8 cities untill mid game, I would like to keep all civs around for tech trading. Once we find laggers we take them out to help us that much stronger. Any thoughts?

We really need to play Gandhi's religion card to the max as far as it won't hurt us. May be we should try to create two blocs of nations that is willing to trade with each other.

The most important Great People will be Engineers and Scientists, as they will give us the most useful lightbulbed techs, and Scientists are always great for Academies, while Engineers are great for wonder building.

There are only two reasons I can see to take out Khan:
1) To protect Gandhi from a very good warmonger.
2) To gain a new empire South of where we are so that we can eventually allow Gandhi to take our current land to speed his science/production.

The only thing about is whether or not giving Gandhi our land would speed him up or not. There's also no reason to take out Khan to protect Gandhi unless he were to declare war on Gandhi.

The best place I've seen for a GP farm is on the W coast of our continent, with 2 gems and 2 seafood resources surrounded by a ton of grassland.

I would like to have a little more intel on Kahn whether we should go for him early, but basically I would like to see him gone rather sooner than later.

I would go ag, sailing or masonry, pottery and then writing. We do not have much use for pottery now. Both cities we have need to connect the corn and then build a lot of mines. There is not much we can cottage there. Not too far ahead we should start the Pyramids if we want to go for it. As we have no stone available we will need some time even with chopping.

that was my feeling as well, mark. Pottery and cottages are great, and I agree they need to be put up as early as possible, but there's no reason to place them if we won't be working them anytime soon.

I too agree that the need for cotages is not immidiate, however the need for grainary in each city is. With the gold, Nidaros has 7 happy faces and any other connected city has 6.

With a grainary, in Nidros we can start building our goal wonders and couple of turns before the city become unhappy we can start a unit and pop rush for 2 pop count and the city will grow back next turn. We mm city to work most of the mines and grow past 15 turns but nor wait 36 or 37. repeate. We can have twice as many units and have our Wonder needs met during a given period. Idea here is to use all available mines and grow fast after rushing.

Other cities can also benefit from the same concept. El Do can grow faster to work all 3 gold and 2 forest much faster with a grainary and pigs. With 6 pop it will make 9 hpt. Of course by the time it will grow to 6 we will have learned all these techs from the Science boost we get from just working the first 2 gold mines.

Sam Played: Turn 3: 2200 BC - 1600 BC

 

[Jenarie]

Question: How do I get rid of all those signs? I am looking at the save and they are distracting especially since some are outdated and don't apply anymore. Btw I love the idea of using signs but want to remove old ones.

Edit: Found it! In case anyone else is wondering, go to world view and it is the left option. You can even draw lines here if you want to make your dotmap in game although then you only get one color.

 

[Harbourboy]

I am in favour of crippling / destroying Khan. My main reason for this is that he is right next to us. This means that:

a) he is relatively easy to take out compared to someone on another continent where we'd have to navy it up.
b) he is bound to end up causing us problems which will distract us from the main priorities. In other words, we will constantly be having to either defend against him or placate him
c) we could make use of his land - which we might not be able to do as easily for a distant opponent.

 

[Jenarie]

Question 1: Where does that settler go? People have mentioned both red and light blue as city 3.

I would favor red except that we don't have iron working yet and it doesn't seem to be coming soon since most people are talking about going alphabet. Red would be completely useless if we can't clear jungle so I'm thinking light blue next then red fourth? I really would like to get a city south soon but the jungle makes it look not so great to me atm.

Edit: Looking at it again, there is the horses to work plus several trees so maybe not as bad as I thought.

Note that Gandhi's culture (bright pink lines) is already taking up quite a bit of proposed orange city and will probably get worse so that city may not be worth founding. And of course the entire thing could change several times before we get that many cities.

There is barb culture showing where we want to place yellow city. Depending where they settled we may be able to save building a settler by letting that grow to 2 + then taking it.


Question 2: Tech path?

We have:

Fishing
Hunting
Mining
Bronze Working
Animal Husbandry
Wheel
Mysticism
Pottery

Can Research:

Masonry (4) (Partially researched)
Agriculture (8)
Sailing (12)
Archery (7)
Meditation (9)
Polytheism (12)
Writing (12)
Iron Working (23)
Horseback Riding (28)
Metal Casting (51)

We have two workers and corn that isn't yet hooked up... would it be worth swapping in Agriculture first and then finishing Masonry? It depends how soon we want to start pyramid build but if we aren't going to start pyramids for 12 turns anyway then I'd prefer to swap and get the corn hooked up.

I'm thinking tech for my turns would be:
Masonry (4)
Agriculture (8) - possibly first
Writing (12)

which would put writing finishing near the beginning of the next turnset (although research times should improve with the second gold hookup so maybe sooner).

Question 3: Builds?

I'm not sure why a monument in El Dorado? I'd probably build a granary or even a barracks there over a monument. We want to work that corn but everything else we'll need for the near future is already in culture. IF we decide not to get agriculture next then I think cancel the monument since we won't use those tiles for anything until agriculture anyway. If the decision is to go with agriculture then the build makes sense to me to leave.

 

[Thrallia]

The reason for the Monument is because we need it to produce culture. Once it is completed, it will then take 16 turns for the borders to expand. We want to get them expanded ASAP so that we can farm the corn, freeing up the pigs for Nidaros again.

I'll post more in a bit...I'm gonna make me a dotmap

 

[Thrallia]

Here's my dotmaps...I couldn't get our entire known land into one, so I split it into North and the rest:

I propose the horse city is founded next, everything else depends on what else we find out about our surroundings, although I think either the Yellow city, or the Northern Green city should come after that.

 

[Thrallia]

This method gives no overlap, and gains a lot of resources for each city. ALong with giving us more coastal cities, something we do want at least at first...more importantly, it gives us coastal cities that have a lot of land tiles for use later on...the Green city, in particular, has a lot of cottagable land.

As far as Khan is concerned...he's far away from us to the south. I don't think we should mess with him for awhile. If no one else is around, we need him for tech trading between us and Gandhi...plus it appears he has some good land, giving us a fall back position for down the road, if needed.

Techs
Finish out Masonry, then go Agri>Writing>Alpha
Beakers can decay over time, and there's no urgent need to switch to Agri immediately. As far as IW is concerned, Jenarie, it is likely that Khan and/or Gandhi will have researched it by the time we get to Alphabet, meaning we could trade for it quickly.

Builds
The monument in El Dorado should finish, possibly with a pop rush with 1-2 turns left, and the overflow put into either a Granary or an axe. Regardless, a granary should be built there afterward.

In Nidaros, If the unhappiness from the previous whip is gone, whip the last turn of the Granary and put it into an Axe. Then I'd suggest starting a worker next there, we'll need more than just one by then and will probably need a third soon after...but not from Nidaros. After the worker, I envision Nidaros beginning work on the Pyramids.

Settler
Haithabu, the default name for the third city, I think should be founded where we've discussed along the coast, with gems, sugar(or silk, I can never remember) and the horses. We need to start moving south, and even before IW, this will be a productive site.

Miscellaneous
We should either send the axe, or one of the warriors garrisoned in El Dorado toward the barbs to check out the city location and do some land exploration again.

 

[Htadus]

Question 1: Where does that settler go? People have mentioned both red and light blue as city 3.
....
Edit: Looking at it again, there is the horses to work plus several trees so maybe not as bad as I thought.

There is barb culture showing where we want to place yellow city. Depending where they settled we may be able to save building a settler by letting that grow to 2 + then taking it.

I vote for the Gem City (Red). We are going to pasture and road it as soon as we have a worker available, so might as well as build it there and use the 4 hpt to crank out a warrior and a grainary. It will have them both done in 28 turns before the city grow.

Question 2: Tech path?.....
We have two workers and corn that isn't yet hooked up... would it be worth swapping in Agriculture first and then finishing Masonry? It depends how soon we want to start pyramid build but if we aren't going to start pyramids for 12 turns anyway then I'd prefer to swap and get the corn hooked up.

I'm thinking tech for my turns would be:
Masonry (4)
Agriculture (8) - possibly first
Writing (12)

which would put writing finishing near the beginning of the next turnset (although research times should improve with the second gold hookup so maybe sooner).

We need to build 2 mines for ElDo and a few more mines for Nidaros, connect two cities, pasture the horses and connect new city. That is a lot of work for 2 workers. So Ag can wait a bit. Writing would be preferable. As far as the need goes. IW will be the most valuble. At 100% Science it can be done in 17 turns. So if we use both workers to mine another gold, we might be able to finish Masonry, and start and almost complete Iron Works during your turn set. The reason for Iron works is the jungle factor on the gems and IRON. When we settle the new city, our economy is going to get hit hard and once we have iron works, we will be able to mine the gem for that city and it will not be a burden.

I vote for Masonry and IW at the moment for the above reasons.

Question 3: Builds?

I'm not sure why a monument in El Dorado? I'd probably build a granary or even a barracks there over a monument. We want to work that corn but everything else we'll need for the near future is already in culture. IF we decide not to get agriculture next then I think cancel the monument since we won't use those tiles for anything until agriculture anyway. If the decision is to go with agriculture then the build makes sense to me to leave.

Since Thrallia covered the monument need well, let me add that even if we do not go for agriculture, I would keep the monument build going just to get the border expansion as soon as possible. Since it is a sort of a Stone age early warning system. Once we have the next gold mine done, we get another hammer and build will speed up.

Here is the two options I see and like:

1. On the last turn of the Monument, rush it and mm the city to grow next turn. (as of now growth is at 11 and build is at 9) The overflow can be put into a grainary and continue using the 2 gold mines.
2. Switch to Grainary and rush it with one pop some turns after the city grow. Start the monument. We might loose 2 shields but we may get it back soon after the build is done through fast growth.

The most important thing about El Do is we need to keep it working at the happiness limit as long as and soon as possible with 3 gold income. Once the two builds are done, we need another worker from ElDo.

New City: Warrior and Grainary.

Cap: Rush grainary on the last turn before the city grow and start the Pyramids. As the city is about to grow beyond happiness limit start a unit for a turn and rush it with 2 pop. We can not wait too long to start that.

Worker action: Second mine for ElDo, Horse pasture, grasland mine for cap and connect cities. That is alot.