SGOTM 04 - Trash Team

[pigswill]

Our valiant and star-blessed scout adopts the name of Rupert after skinning and eating the bear (yum yum, grizzlyburgers). Westward he heads after healing, he meets Clarence the Cross Eyed Lion and after a quick tussle disposes of the poor beast.

After another short break he continues his mission. 'Indians . What's that strange looking hut to the north? Let's go check it out'.

Its a hut full of encyclopedias on hunting and advanced reconnaisance. Given that Rupert can't read its a good job that they're full of pictures and diagrams. What experience shall he obtain? Maybe first aid?

Meanwhile back at the ranch the thralls have been busy building a workboat and harvesting the fruits of the sea, hoping they avoid food poisoning in the process. The skalds have been pondering the mysteries of earth and metal, they discover a deposit of copper to the north east of Nidaros!

Chaos and anarchy ensue. Bronze means chains, chains means slaves, everyone is deliriously happy (apart from the slaves ).

The skalds consider attaching sails to the fishing boats, maybe extending them a bit, carve dragonheads on the bows etc etc but maybe when they sober up they'll consider agriculture or maybe even animal husbandry

http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/civ4sgotm4/Trash_Team_SG004_BC3190_01.CivWarlordsSave

 

[Cam_H]

everyone is deliriously happy

Well I know I am deliriously happy! A super start! Good work Cap'n!

We sure are going to have some busy Workers!

I agree with Patagonia - the Fish-Pigs-Gold-Gold-Gold spot looks 'oresome'

Great fortune with the Copper - could easily have not got it by settling at 4000AD. The Colossus is one step closer.

Great fortune also with the Bear and the Scout!

Nice to see Gandhi's got some high- tiles too. There's hope for him yet.

Best of luck Remco!

 

[cabert]

i vote for agri > AH, while building a warrior then a worker, then a settler.
We can start building axes and kill India! hum no better not .
No one else in sight = more exploration needed = 1 more wb to build.

 

[pigswill]

We also need to fit in the wheel sooner rather than later; not much point in having an unattached copper mine.

Let's spend a day or so pondering over our strategy in view of what's been revealed so far (and also what hasn't been revealed (horses, iron, other neighbours, other lands etc.)).

 

[remconius]

Got it, will review later and post a plan.

How many turns should I play? The coming turns will be rather uneventful, so we could have largish turnsets until stuff starts to happen. Or should I play until the next milestone (like, settler completed?)

 

[stuge]

at Gandhi's capital. Wanna wanna axe-rush...

Let's give the scout woodsman promos, as he'll be heading south to the jungle now.

Here are my thoughts on city placement.

Blue dot is patagonia's suggestion. It incurs lower maintenance costs and can share the piggies for faster growth. Red dot is an alternative. Maintenance will be higher but long-term there's more food available for the city and Nidaros.

As for the north, blue dot looks like a good site to build the colossus in. It has a nice amount of forests and a decent number of hills.

Red dot could be a commerce city, or a GP farm if we farm the grasslands.

 

[Cam_H]

In terms of dot maps, I like the Pigs-Fish-Gold-Gold-Gold spot for our second city. It's a shame about the overlap, but Nidaros will have ample food with the Corn and Clams plus an irrigatable Grassland (more post- Civil Service).

In terms of technology, I'm inclined to go with;

• Sailing (Trading Post) > The Wheel (Hook up Copper) > Animal Husbandry (Pig Pasture, Horsies?) > Pottery (Granary) > Agriculture (Corn Farm) > Writing (Libraries)

A Trading Post adds food to key tiles without requiring a Worker, allowing Nidaros to continue to grow. I'm nervous about defending our empire with Warriors for too long, and pillaging Barbarians will probably be a real pain once we start getting our Mines up given no close neighbours - so the hooked-up Copper mine would be my first Worker action.

 

[pigswill]

I think we need to nab the gold asap. It would also be nice to see if we've got horses around because chariots are better axe-bashers than axes. While we won't need them for a while it would be good to have a city placed to access them.

My thoughts would be build warrior, worker, warrior, settler. Research wheel, AH, agric. Worker builds mine, connects copper, pasturises pig (maybe a chop thrown in to speed settler?).

At the moment a second city is more important than a trading post so I think that sailing can wait for the next set.

In terms of Wonders I reckon we can give Colossus a miss and go for Great Lib. Three gold mines will give us good commerce. If we're going for astronomy using GS to lightbulb I'd rather not have GM points muddying the pool.

We'll probably need mysticism for monumental border pops. Longer term maybe go for agric, sailing, writing, IW then argue about MC vs alphabet.

In regard to length of sets I reckon we don't need to be too rigid at the start. So maybe remconius plays until next two techs are in then see where we are regarding exploration and resources.

 

[MrMahk]

First of all, great turns Pigswill (and gj Rupert the scout)!

Here are my thoughts on technology and what to build (I haven't looked at research times or anything so these are estimates):

If we had a worker right now (which we don't), he could mine the copper and the hills and chop the forests. That is plenty for him to do, so there is really no need to research worker technologies for that sole purpose. I think we should go for sailing while finishing that warrior, and when the warrior is finished, build a worker. When the worker's done, we could build a trading post; which would give us 1 more for the clam tile, and the 3, 3 lake tile, not to mention +1 movement for a scouting WB/galley that we will build later. When sailing is done, I think wheel/animal husbandry would be good objectives, because our worker would probably be done/almost finished with mining the copper tile and would then be able to road that and move on to his next project- and eventually pasture the pigs (or horses! )

Overall, this would give us plenty of time for our capital to grow, and give us more improved, food-rich tiles for when we would build our first settler. There is really no need to get that settler out earlier anyway, because there is a lot of open space between us and Gandhi.

I think pigs/fish/gold should be our next site too, because of what has already been mentioned and that it is also on a river.

 

[cabert]

nidaros is size 3 right now.
Let's grow it to size 4 and whip a worker. Then grow back while building a warrior or 2 (we're at war!) and go settler.
The 2 WB is due for exploration and should be finished asap, it can hopefully find a way to the fish of our 2nd city.

techwise, i'd go agri> AH>wheel>sailing>pottery

 

[remconius]

Had a look at the save and the posts so far. I roughly grouped views into two plans. These plans are not set in stone and we could go for variants.

Plan A: (Exploration)
Tech: Sailing > wheel > AH
Build: Warrior > Worker > Trading Post > Galley > Settler/Galley

Plan B: (Expansion/defense)
Tech: Agriculture > AH > wheel
Build: Warrior > Warrior > Worker > Settler

It's not a matter of picking one, but more of which one to do first. Do we use our naval advantages immediately to build navigation I galleys and get extra food from lake/clams. Or do we build a second city first and then build boats.

Currently it is 3 for plan A (Me, Cam_H, MrMahk) and 2 for plan B (Pigswill, Cabert).

I'll play tomorrow. About 20 hours from now.

 

[pigswill]

We know that Gandhi is somewhat detached from us (unless its a very strange map). We know that we haven't met any other explorers yet. We don't know that its just us and Gandhi on this island. So more exploration south with the scout should help on that.

There's no real race for exploration but there is a potential race for settling prime sites so that's why I'm keen on that. Also the sooner we start working gold mines the sooner we improve our commerce for faster teching. Building a tradepost and a galley/trireme next doesn't really help us develop.

Edit: We're also awaiting views from patagonia and stuge.

 

[patagonia]

Based on the map we can see now, I favour fish, pigs, 3 gold for city number 2 still. I don't think we should worry too much about overlap if we're considering a nomad strategy as we're unlikely to grow our cities big enough to work all their tiles before persuading Gandhi to take possession of them.

Since we already have copper as a military resource and have a prime second city location already identified, I'd be inclined to follow plan B in the post from remconius above. Agri > AH > wheel (possibly with wheel inserted earlier depending on the timing of worker and mine) is the most beaker-efficient way of getting those techs, and I think that settling city 2 and growing it so that it can work a goldmine will give a greater payoff than using our initial production on a trading post and scouting vessel. Nidaros could get busy with those once a settler and axe or two are built.

The proposed side for city 2 will be able to work pigs plus 2 gold before a border pop, but we'll definitely want Mysticism sooner rather than later.

If we're thinking GLib for GS generation, stuge's northern blue dot looks a good location: forests to chop for the wonder and a large food surplus for running as many scientists as possible.

 

[Cam_H]

[Edit] Image removed [/Edit]

Tech' Order

I am not so keen on Agriculture immediately because really it will be good for only one tile, essentially taking the Corn from 3 to 6 with the effort of a Worker that we don't have, and who I think should get Copper on-line as a priority anyway. If we didn't already have the Clams being worked with the Fishing Boat I would be more keen on a high- tile, but the Clams and the Lake with a Trading Post to my mind will deliver more and more quickly. Obviously we'll get a +1 movement bonus for our navy with the Trading Post, so exploration will be a smidge quicker.

Building a Trading Post will still allow us to queue swap with useful builds, so we can whip out Workers and a Settler while growing with the Trading Post ... admittedly this queue swapping can also be done with Barracks.

I think that we could use Libraries for border pops?

Second City (Part I)

I would really like to get that Gold city up quickly too, so I guess that I would deviate a little from 'Plan A' in that I wouldn't prioritise the first Galley before the Settler, but it would depend to some extent on where we were with the population and our capacity to whip out the Settler in an optimal fashion.

Exploring the Coast

I can very much appreciate where Cabert's coming from with regard to getting out a Work Boat to scratch around a bit, but we've got a load of competing priorities and I think a Worker and a second city will do more for our capacity to influence the game than bumping into the borders of our rivals when we can't do anything other than declare war on them. I too want a Boat out there, but not as much as getting our Gold city up.

The Colossus

I also hear what Pigswill's saying about the 'muddied' pool, although I would really like The Colossus. Perhaps we put it in the Gold city if the risk of popping a Great Merchant is considered to be too disadvantageous?

Second City (Part II)

I am not necessarily advocating the dot map below, but we could split the Golds across two cities, with the 'Z' city also picking up Gems and a lot of river tiles, while 'Y' city would leave Nidaros with the Pigs (both on Plains Hills):

 

[cabert]

agri is a prereq for AH
that's why I favour agri>ah over ah>agri

I don't like splitting the gold.
At size 4, a fish gold gold gold could work the 3 gold and being stagnant (requires trading post)

 

[Cam_H]

Agriculture or Hunting for Animal Husbandry.

Agriculture is the weakest of our four immediate 'priority' technologies in my humble opinion. Its benefit is to improve the Corn - as before, I think there are better choices.

I am OK if the team verdict is not to split the gold, but I think that it's an option that should be debated. "Y" will give us the extra and allow a Plains River tile to be worked, which is not a bad option. If we move "Y" back to our agreed sweet-spot, we can still do "Z", but there will be loads of overlap or shift "Z" to the west.

btw ... I'm not wanting to disregard Stuges's proposals - just throwing extras in the mix.

 

[cabert]

Agriculture or Hunting for Animal Husbandry.

Agriculture is the weakest of our four immediate 'priority' technologies in my humble opinion. Its benefit is to improve the Corn - as before, I think there are better choices.

I am OK if the team verdict is not to split the gold, but I think that it's an option that should be debated. "Y" will give us the extra and allow a Plains River tile to be worked, which is not a bad option. If we move "Y" back to our agreed sweet-spot, we can still do "Z", but there will be loads of overlap or shift "Z" to the west.

btw ... I'm not wanting to disregard Stuges's proposals - just throwing extras in the mix.

Z is too low on food IMHO.
It would be good in 1700 AD

 

[Cam_H]

Well you're the one so keen on Agriculture , there are two immediately irrigatable Grassland tiles there already, which covers one Gold Mine, and that's before we start knocking over the River Jungle. It's 'Commerce Heaven'!

 

[stuge]

I'd rather have the Colossus than the Great library, the reason being, we can achieve G.lib's effect by running 4 scientists under caste system, whereas the Colossus allows us to totally forgo cottages and gives our GNP a big jolt if we're planning on going all coastal. Besides, we've got copper, but ain't got marble.

I'd go agri ->AH next, allowing us to see one more strategic resource and letting us grow rapidly. Exploration is important, but now we should expand. As for the jungle choise sites, settling them requires IW, which is still ways off.

And as for the expansion, we've got a couple of good sites in the north, so let's not settle in the jungle.
It takes an awful lot of worker turns to get such cities up and running. If there's another civ down there,
it's much more efficient to capture cities they settle.

 

[Cam_H]

to Agriculture until someone can give me a good reason why ...

... or I'll 'spit the dummy' ...

... again!

I'm a fan of The Colossus too ... it's on our Astronomy bee-line apart from anything else.

[Edit:] Image removed of tech' choices. [/Edit]