SGOTM 11 - ChokoMisfits

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Once the settler is whipped and we found city #4, make sure we road to it promptly so we will have trade routes to Zara once Sailing comes in. I built a road to StoneCopper during my turnset so it would get some TR income, and to hook up the stone of course.

Excellent idea!

Maybe once the cow at OWCI is improved it will be strong enough to build a settler, so we can let Capital grow and work more cottages? I know we want some axes, but I would like to start growing the Capital more.

Yes, absolutely let the Capital grow and build/work more Cottages!

We should be starting The Pyramids soon, right?

Plan to build 5-6 Universities and Oxford University:

For our Standard Map, do we need 5 or 6 Universities to build Oxford University? I suspect that six Universities is required. Anyone know the correct #? If six, we need to determine where it should be located soon. Planning for Education and Oxford University must be done well before Civil Service is completed, because we will likely bulb three Great Scientists on Paper and Education (and possibly Philosophy if we need to acquire Meditation before bulbing Paper and Education). If we need to bulb Philosophy first, I'd argue for bulbing a fourth Great Scientist, if we can muster a 4th soon enough. We need to get that Great Person Farm up at Happiness maximum ASAP and then generate 3-4 Great Scientists immediately afterwards.

We could bulb Philosophy earlier, so Schwendagon Paya need not be completed so quickly to permit Pacifism. We just need to complete Schwendagon Paya early enough to deny it to any AI Civ. Pacifism will be critical to get our next 3-4 Great Scientists to bulb Philosophy, Paper and Education (completely; I'm not concerned about wasting a few bulbing Beakers - our extremely early Oxford University will make up for it many times over). We also need Literature very early so we can build National Epic in our Great Person Farm ASAP. Needing Aesthetics -> Literature so early may force us to skip Currency (while waiting for an AI to trade Alphabet); We probably need to Research Meditation -> Aesthetics -> Literature in sequence right after Fishing -> Sailing.

We should start thinking about how soon we want a settler for city #5 by the marble.

In any case I'd prefer to get City #5 next to Marble built soon after City #4. Then we need City #6 soon after that for the sixth University; should be a good Hammer site or one with Forests that can be chopped for the Hammers. Since we have the Spiritual trait, we can consider 5 turns of Slavery to help build our six Universities super quick and still use the fifth turn of Slavery to complete Oxford University (assuming we plan for it well; even simulate it in a test game to validate the method, if someone wants to do it). That would be amazing if we could really do that with Forest Chops assisting especially the Oxford University build. To clarify, I envision the six Universities being whipped in turn 1 of the five turns of Slavery and Oxford University being built in turns 2-4 and whipped on turn 5. Can we do it? We can, if we plan for it (meticulously).

Cheap ways to discourage Free Religion or cause Free Religion -> Religion conversion:

If we can really get all the Game requirements and an extremely early UN with GE to help build it, we could Win a DV before any AI even gets Liberalism! That's quite feasible by getting Liberalism before any AI finishes Education; at that point, AIs prefer to trade for Liberalism and they may never get it, because we will never trade it to them. An AI with Free Religion favorite civic may eventually give up on trading for Liberalism and start Researching. However, any AI that has just 1 Religion will not adopt Free Religion even if they have Liberalism and their favorite civic is Free Religion. Thus, we want to avoid the spread of Religions and one way is to found Confucianism and Toaism and keep them to ourselves or spread them to Civs lacking a Religion around 5-10 turns before our estimated DV Win or the last turn where converting to a Religion is what an AI without will still do. We will still have our Spies out in force, in case we must convert an AI out of Free Religion.

BTW: It should be trivial to get Zara Yaqob out of Free Religion by bribing him into his favorite Civic, Theocracy. He will convert to a Religion he has. Can anyone verify this? Hatshepsut will apparently convert to a Religion immediately after being bribed from Free Religion into Organized Religion. I'm not as sure of Zara Yaqob, since he doesn't have the Spirtual trait that would allow switching civics on the same turn as converting to a Religion. Zara Yaqob may convert to a Religion on the following turn.

Hope you like the above ideas. In my opinion, they could help place us into Laurel contention. Keep it up and we could take first place!

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sleepless]

just a quick couple of thoughts. The reason I'm so keen on AH is to improve the cow in OWCI. With that tile improved it can take over the settler/worker building from the capital. Although our planned new cities will be great for settler/worker building they will have more important builds before hand.

I'm pretty certain changing civs from free religion to a religious civic means they will automatically adopt a religion as well. At least I'm sure I've noted that in my games.

I have been playing some deity games recently and the difference between the 2 is huge. i.e I wouldn't be surprised if we have to research compass ourselves although it does make good trade fodder.

 

[ianw1610]

I'd like us to get that Settler out for City #5 as soon as possible (the Settler for City #4 is already a foregone conclusion, as previously discussed).

The Settler for City #5 (and likely the Settler for City #6) will come from OWCI. This build will be facilitated by the existence of a Pasture on the OWCI Cow. This is enabled only by completion of Animal Husbandry. Furthermore, the prompt existence of a Pasture on the Pig in City #4 will facilitate the swift growth of that city, into a successful GP farm. Again, this requires Animal Husbandry.

Animal Husbandry takes 5 turns to research, so the question we need to consider, is whether we will gain 5 or more turns on the speed of generating Settlers #5 and #6 from OWCI, by working a Pastured Cow tile, versus the alternative option of generating those Settlers by working an unpastured Cow tile (or other unimproved tile)...

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

To Research or Trade for Animal Husbandry:

just a quick couple of thoughts. The reason I'm so keen on AH is to improve the cow in OWCI. With that tile improved it can take over the settler/worker building from the capital. Although our planned new cities will be great for settler/worker building they will have more important builds before hand.

I'd like us to get that Settler out for City #5 as soon as possible (the Settler for City #4 is already a foregone conclusion, as previously discussed).

The Settler for City #5 (and likely the Settler for City #6) will come from OWCI. This build will be facilitated by the existence of a Pasture on the OWCI Cow. This is enabled only by completion of Animal Husbandry. Furthermore, the prompt existence of a Pasture on the Pig in City #4 will facilitate the swift growth of that city, into a successful GP farm. Again, this requires Animal Husbandry.

Animal Husbandry takes 5 turns to research, so the question we need to consider, is whether we will gain 5 or more turns on the speed of generating Settlers #5 and #6 from OWCI, by working a Pastured Cow tile, versus the alternative option of generating those Settlers by working an unpastured Cow tile (or other unimproved tile)...

Since we have both a Cow and Pig that could be improved and we have no reasonable prospect of trading for Animal Husbandry in the next 5 turns or so, I reluctantly agree that Animal Husbandry should be Researched next, following by Fishing -> Sailing. Sometimes we must sacrifice bleeding edge Research in order to have a critical Worker Technology or other Technology that would otherwise have been a good trading/back fill candidate.

Preparing for Oxford University:

We still need to get our infrastructure in place for Education and Oxford University.

Do we need 6 Universities on a Large Map to build Oxford University?

We need our Great Person Farm up and growing ASAP. We need to be building Schwendagon Paya or bulbing Philosophy to run Pacifism; we may consider building a Road to Zara Yaqob's nearest City or River just to improve the chance of spontaneous Religion or we just depend on getting a Religion from Code of Laws or Philosophy.

Our current Technology path should be:

Animal Husbandry -> Fishing -> Sailing

Meditation -> Aesthetics -> Literature

(Priesthood ->) Code of Laws -> (Polytheism ->) Philosophy (bulb) -> Civil Service (Bureaucracy)

Paper (bulb) -> Education (bulb)

Technologies in parenthesis are likely trades (Priesthood and Polytheism).

To generate the 3-4 Great Scientists for the early bulbs (Philosophy, Paper and Education), we need our Great Scientist Farm running 2 Scientists as it grows. We need to also determine the order of Researching Aesthetics -> Literature and Code of Laws based on how early we need Caste System for working multiple Scientists.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[ianw1610]

It is a Standard map, so 6 Universities unlocks Oxford, 6 Theatres unlocks Globe, etc, etc...

 

[haphazard1]

I agree that we should research AH now, rather than waiting to trade for it. If we do not pursue Alpha ourselves, then we are probably looking at 20-25 turns before it is available from Zara. And that assumes he goes for Alpha immediately after Writing, which may not be the case.

I do not think we can rely on trades for important techs, at least for the next 30 turns or so. We only know one AI (Zara), and unless they come to us we will not meet any others for at least 30 turns or so. So we are relying on multiple AIs to do things which are helpful to us before we can trade any techs -- I think we should assume we get nothing in trade for at least this long. If it happens earlier, good. But we should not count on it.

If we improve the cow, OWCI should be able to produce some settlers. But this would mean not getting axes from it. We can probably live without the axes for a while -- Zara is not a big threat (although not zero), and our fogbusting network is almost complete so no barbs should spawn on our landmass. Our Rahul Dravid needs to move to the marble area to cover that last zone. Then as we settle cities #4 and #5 they will provide coverage and our warriors can become garrison units.

Another issue is workers -- we have 4, but with more cities soon to be settled and lots of cottages needed at the Capital, plus cow at OWCI and farms at StoneCopper, etc. -- we need more workers. Maybe StoneCopper can produce one? If we get the flood plain farmed that will help.

Let's hope we get lucky and a couple AI boats come sailing by soon. I worry that some distant AI could be eliminating another, which would prevent us from achieving a qualifying win.

 

[ianw1610]

I played my turnset – it went well, I think. Great planning, discussion and advice from everyone!!

As planned, I completed construction of the Pyramids on the 4th turn of my turnset (1250BC), thanks to mass chopping!

Big big thanks once again to haphazard1 for the detailed Fast Worker instructions for these chops!!

I switched us to Representation right away, to counter our unhappiness problems.

One other point of note from that very same turn (1250BC)... The Oracle was built in a distant land (in the same city as Stonehenge, as it happens). I think we made a good decision to not invest any energy into attempting any sort of slingshot!!

Next turn – Animal Husbandry is complete.

This was the turn that I renamed our former city, “StoneCopper”, to honour a change to the industry of that city...

...this is now “HorseCopper”...!! (the only source of Horse in our current lands being 1W of that city!!)

I also renamed OasisCowWheatIncense to a simple “OasisWheat”, by the way...

There is another source of Horse to the North of HorseCopper (indeed we could have had 2 Horses in the same city, had we settled differently). As previously speculated, Zara settled Gondar in that chosen position as it is 1 tile away from his only source of Horse.

One of the results of the hammer overflow from the Pyramids meant that the whipped Settler in Capital cost us only 2 pop, not 3 pop as previously projected.

I founded City #4 – called PigFish (despite neither Pig nor Fish being in the first ring!) Started work on a Workboat, which will be a long, long project...

...our Fast Workers were delayed getting to that city, due to the sudden need for a Horse Pasture in our 3rd city, but they are catching up at the moment.

Zara settled his 3rd city – Laibela. It doesn’t capture any squares of importance, and will inevitably face Cultural pressure from our Capital...

We have our first Axeman, also.

As we now have our own source of Cow, I cancelled our deal with Zara or Corn for Cow. Hopefully we can trade our surplus Corn for something more valuable at some point. Zara has a surplus of Clam, but as we will have 3 Clam in our next city, it is probably not worth us trading for it.

Capital has grown back to Size 6, and has a 3rd Riverside Cottage, with a 4th under construction. We can 3-pop whip an Aqueduct this turn, should we wish to move straight onto constructing Hanging Gardens.

OasisWheat is close to producing a Settler, and HorseCopper is close to producing a Fast Worker.

We picked up Mathematics, AH, Fishing and Sailing in this turnset.

Zara is researching Alphabet – he is 11 turns from completion. We can research Aesthetics in 10 turns or Meditation in 3 turns (I’m yet to invest any beakers in either).

In GDP, we have a significant lead over our opponents already:

Top Cities as follows... There is obviously one bigtime Religious leader out there somewhere... We know it can’t be Gandhi this time, as we are Gandhi!!!

Our Score got a major boost in this turnset with the Pyramids, 4 techs and 4th city... (Also, our Score improved greatly in relation to the other SGOTM teams).

I’ve dot-mapped a further 6 suggested city sites... for discussion!!

Sleepless up next!!


Here is your Session Turn Log from 1350 BC to 1075 BC:

Spoiler :

Turn 106, 1350 BC: You have discovered Mathematics!

Turn 109, 1275 BC: Gandhi has completed The Pyramids!
Turn 109, 1275 BC: The Oracle has been built in a far away land!

Turn 110, 1250 BC: Gandhi adopts Representation!
Turn 110, 1250 BC: You have discovered Animal Husbandry!

Turn 112, 1200 BC: You have discovered Fishing!

Turn 115, 1125 BC: PigFish has been founded.

Turn 116, 1100 BC: You have discovered Sailing!

Turn 117, 1075 BC: Capital has grown to size 6.
Turn 117, 1075 BC: Capital can hurry Aqueduct for 3? with 23? overflow and +1? for 34 turns.
Turn 117, 1075 BC: Deal Canceled: Corn to Zara Yaqob for Cow

 

[JerichoHill]

Wow. What great fortune, luck, and skills. Extra Horses, validation of not going for the oracle, a future city flip, and Yara is totally boxed in.

My initial thought is we will need a few axes for sentry duty...when we box in an AI, they tend to get antsy. Trading smartly with Yara to move him to friendly will help with this.

We're clearly unique in getting the mids...many teams apparently went for earlier wonders, the tdr..sfgksgdkhsoi whatever may have done something similiar

Wow, that spike is going to serve notice to teams that we're not just coasting

 

[Sleepless]

Everything looking rosy there. Nice turnset ianw1610. Been a very hot day here in Southampton so spent most of it drinking and not non-alcoholic beverages so I will have to wait for tomorrow (possibility Saturday will be the same as well) and my hangover to go before examing the save, putting up my comments.

No problem with the Oracle going, at least we didn't waste any time on it. Pleased to say I was right with Zara going for Alpha and as that is one of the monpoloy techs the AI will trade we should be able to get that quite easily. Hopefully we will be able to trade math + bit of research for it but I think that is the next likely tech for Zara to go for.

 

[haphazard1]

Very nice turnset, ianw1610!

AH pays off even more than I had hoped, as we get strong tiles for both OW and HC. This will help a lot, as we can get more production out of both while growing the Capital and our GP farm.

On trading with Zara, I would have kept the corn/cow deal going. We should look at trading our spare corn to him for clam, or just gifting it outright. It takes 50 "resource-turns" of supplying resources to get +1 diplo, then another 50 for +2 diplo. Trading/gifting our spare corn does not cost us anything right now, but it helps build up those turns. Stopping trading means the resource-turn counter starts to decay. We may need those +diplo later, especially as border pressure at Zara's new city starts hurting our relations.

Oracle goes at 1250 BC...not too surprising at Emperor difficulty. Same city as Stonehenge is definitely a religious powerhouse. Possibly Industrious? Or maybe they have stone and marble? Or just a really good hammer city, maybe.

I am disappointed that we have not seen any religious spread from Zara to our cities. We need a border pop at our GP farm to get the stronger tiles in play. We should consider a monument there -- whipping it as soon as we reach size 2 would get the borders popped by the time we regrew and could work more tiles. I hate to spend the pop/hammers on a monument, but the city needs the stronger tiles and it will take many turns even after we whip it.

Dot-mapping...can someone give me clear instructions on how to use the dot-mapping functionality in the BUFFY mod? It is probably really obvious and I just totally missed how it is supposed to work, but I have not been able to figure it out.

I think things are looking pretty good for our civ.

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

Dot-mapping...can someone give me clear instructions on how to use the dot-mapping functionality in the BUFFY mod? It is probably really obvious and I just totally missed how it is supposed to work, but I have not been able to figure it out.

Ctrl-X toggles showing/hiding of the Dot Maps.

Alt-X toggles Dot Map Edit Mode. A Color Pallet Window pops up where you can the Color of the Next Dot Map. When in Edit mode, you can only set and clear Dot Maps:

Set: Just click on a Tile without a Dot Map centered on it to place one there.

Clear: Just click on a Tile with a Dot Map centered on it to remove it.

Just remember to press Alt-X to get out of Dot Map Edit mode.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

I played my turnset – it went well, I think. Great planning, discussion and advice from everyone!!

Best turn set yet! Fantastic execution and turn set report, ianw1610!

Zara settled his 3rd city – Laibela. It doesn’t capture any squares of importance, and will inevitably face Cultural pressure from our Capital...

Let's get The Hanging Gardens started. That ought to really put Cultural pressure on Zara' new City.

Capital has grown back to Size 6, and has a 3rd Riverside Cottage, with a 4th under construction. We can 3-pop whip an Aqueduct this turn, should we wish to move straight onto constructing Hanging Gardens.

Let's build Aqueduct slowly, so our Capital can grow to Happiness Cap (It can immediately grow to Pop 7; by that time +1 Unhappiness should be wearing off and we can grow to 8 and eventually 9). We can grow at lot of Cottages at Pop 9!

OasisWheat is close to producing a Settler, and HorseCopper is close to producing a Fast Worker.

We need more Workers, but we also need to let the Cities building Settlers and Workers to grow more to make use of the +3 Happiness of Representation which should affect at least our 5 Largest Cities.

We should build a Granary and maybe a Barracks in each City. Some Cities need a Monument to pop Borders. Some Cities need a Library to start working Scientists.

Zara is researching Alphabet – he is 11 turns from completion. We can research Aesthetics in 10 turns or Meditation in 3 turns (I’m yet to invest any beakers in either).

We don't need Meditation until we are ready to GS bulb Philosophy; my mistake - I think I had Meditation and Polytheism flipped in a previous post.

We should Research Aesthetics next. Then we can research Alphabet until Zara agrees to a trade of Mathematics + <whatever he doesn't have excluding Aesthetics> for Alphabet.

My initial thought is we will need a few axes for sentry duty...when we box in an AI, they tend to get antsy. Trading smartly with Yara to move him to friendly will help with this.

Yes, we should build few more Axes where we have a Barracks or build a Barracks and some Axemen in HorseCopper. Zara will also become mad about losing his new City to our Capital's Culture. With Horse connected, we could build a few Chariots; they would be better for protecting our Workers as they can move faster than Axemen.

No problem with the Oracle going, at least we didn't waste any time on it. Pleased to say I was right with Zara going for Alpha and as that is one of the monpoloy techs the AI will trade we should be able to get that quite easily. Hopefully we will be able to trade math + bit of research for it but I think that is the next likely tech for Zara to go for.

Agree 100% on Zara and Sleepless' plan for trading Mathematics for partially researched Alphabet.

On trading with Zara, I would have kept the corn/cow deal going. We should look at trading our spare corn to him for clam, or just gifting it outright. It takes 50 "resource-turns" of supplying resources to get +1 diplo, then another 50 for +2 diplo. Trading/gifting our spare corn does not cost us anything right now, but it helps build up those turns. Stopping trading means the resource-turn counter starts to decay. We may need those +diplo later, especially as border pressure at Zara's new city starts hurting our relations.

I'm glad your on our team. While I knew one could get +1 Diplomatic bonus for trading a Resource to an AI, I didn't realize that it required 50t and that another 50t provides +2 Diplomacy.

I am disappointed that we have not seen any religious spread from Zara to our cities. We need a border pop at our GP farm to get the stronger tiles in play. We should consider a monument there -- whipping it as soon as we reach size 2 would get the borders popped by the time we regrew and could work more tiles. I hate to spend the pop/hammers on a monument, but the city needs the stronger tiles and it will take many turns even after we whip it.

I agree, we should build a Monument in PigFish via Whipping as soon as it grows to Pop 2.

Hopefully, we will get Religion spread from Zara Yaqob soon. It will be a long wait for Code of Laws to found Confucianism and especially long for Philosophy to found Taoism.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the explanation of the dotmapping in BUFFY, Sun Tzu Wu! I will try it next time I have Civ open.

I like the plan for trading Math for partially researched Alpha. But we should look at all the options available once Zara finishes Alpha -- there may be other techs we can give or get. We know Zara has Iron Working, for instance. We don't need Alpha to trade with Zara as long as he has it, and we have not met anyone else yet. Let's not foreclose any options for now.

On building units in OW and HC, note that OW already has both a granary and a barracks. HC has at least some hammers into a granary from my turnset, not sure how far along it is without checking the save. If we have a choice, let's build military in OW and workers/settlers from HC. We may not be able to stick to that 100%, but keep the barracks in mind.

I am a big fan of resource trades, both to get resources and for diplo purposes. You usually do not have to give up much -- an extra health does not benefit the AI much, especially early when most cities are happy limited much more than they are health limited. And those extra couple points of diplo can make a significant difference.

On the resource "counter", note that it is measured as "resource turns" -- if I am trading 3 resources to a particular civ, I get credit for three "resource turns" each turn. So it is possible to build up the diplo quickly -- I once had a game where I met an AI late (about 1200 AD) and immediately traded him 8 resources. Six of them were just gifted, but I got the +2 diplo in just 13 turns and then cancelled all but one trade. Once you reach 100 resource turns, you only need to trade 1 resource to keep the counter from decaying.

 

[ianw1610]

Zara already has a +2 hidden Diplomatic modifier, so the resource trading bonuses will likely be more important with other leaders than with him... but having said that, it would make sense to gift him our spare Corn for now.

The Granary already completed in HorseCopper - I then moved onto starting a Fast Worker. If that city grows a bit more, there are still a couple of useful unworked tiles.

We have a spare Fast Worker near OasisWheat who may want to assist with the Cow Pasture down in PigFish... as PigFish is a bit hammer-limited at present.

We are already paying 9 gpt in City Maintenance, which will increase dramatically with the proposed location of our distant City #5, so Code of Laws and Courthouses need to be on our immediate agenda.

Capital's Culture will expand in 18 turns... that will put BIG Cultural pressure on Laibela...

Any comments about my dotmapped City proposals??

PS - the previously-deceased Sachin Tendulkar appears to have been resurrected (the naming mod enables such things...)

 

[JerichoHill]

Eh, he's Hindu, so its expected he would be resurrected.

The dot-map looked fine by my standards. Proceed!

I agree with slow building the Gardens. No need to pressure yet, and even trading Math for Alpha, we don't have any issue with Zara beating us to it. Plus, we're going to get a free city. Oh how nice of a neighbor that guy is.

OW can function as our military producer in the next turnset, let HC finish the granary and then they both can share.

Strategically, we should now be looking at getting exploration of the world as an increasing priority.

Let's get coastal in here...nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah (black eyed peas style)

look, its 8AM in Wash DC and I haven't had coffee.

 

[haphazard1]

The dot map looks good, ianw1610. I wish there was a way to avoid wasting a flood plains tile with city #7, but I just don't see one. I think your proposed order of settlement is also good -- focus on the cities with the most available food/resources first and get them growing.

A question: why do we have a worker building a road 1NE of PigFish's cow? That road will not be enough to connect the city, and he could help us get the cow done 3 turns sooner. He should be stopped immediately and next turn move to help pasture the cow. The sooner PigFish gets a strong tile, the faster it will develop.

Lalibela will not be under direct culture pressure even after Capital pops its borders again. We will grab a bunch of its tiles, but the city center tile will not be in our culture until two border pops from now...which is a long time. So Zara will keep it. But he will have a hard time getting back even the first ring tiles on our side, even with his cultural trait. If we get the Hanging Gardens in Capital, it will become almost impossible unless he builds tons of culture buildings (theater, library, monastery, etc.). Still, it is not like he really had anywhere else to go.

He might try to grab the silver/whales site, although the marked site will in our culture after the next Capital border pop. He might try for the southern silver tile. But that site is useless really until Optics, so even if he does who cares? Unless he can settle overseas, Zara is boxed.

Our next several city sites are all pretty good, so we should keep building settlers steadily. Our city maintenance costs will go up, so we need to find time for Currency and CoL in the not too distant future. We will want them anyway as our path to CS, so this is good.

Other techs which would be useful but are off the direct path are Calendar and Construction. We have incense so Calendar would give us one more happy everywhere, plus allow the MoM if we wanted it. We have marble so it would not be very expensive, and we might get a golden age or two or three depending on our GP production and perhaps Taj. Construction opens colosseums for another happy, but this can probably wait until it is available by trade.

At Capital, I would like to see that other river grass hill mined. Mostly we will want to work cottages to grow them, but having the option of a higher hammer configuration will be useful for key builds. As well as possible emergency military production. Not a big priority, but let's not forget.

 

[ianw1610]

Yes, I didn't notice that PigFish already got connected to the rest of our empire upon completion of Sailing. So that road is not essential, and the Cow should be improved. Also the free Fast Worker near OW can help with this.

 

[Sleepless]

Some initial thoughts.

Well my turnset will basicially building a couple of settlers and teching aesthetics.

Now we have trade routes with zara it is important we find the Ai he knows which will open up overseas trade routes. This will help offset the cost of settling more cities. To that end as soon as fish/pig grows to size 2 I will whip a wb and send it East. Then if we haven't had any religion spread I think we will need a monument in that city. Followed by wb/wb granary/library. There is a good possibility that the island to the West is quite large. If you go down a couple of tiles from what we can see there is some coastal colouring. So third wb to go that way.

OW. I would finish the settler there with a whip once it gets to a 1 pop whip and then start another one immediately for site 6. As we don't have 8 tiles adjacent to Zara we are not a dagger (think thats the term) target so should be safe from him. We can see if he goes WHEEOH and a quick whip of some defenders but I honestly can't see any probs with Zara so I think we have enough mil for now.

Capital. Slow build aqua. Then onto HG. Watching out for unhappiness then I will swap to mines/scientists to slow/stop growth.

Horse/Copper. Finish worker then? We need a monument for border pops or de we wait for caste/religion spread? Ditto really for other cities.

Religion. If it spreads to us I would adopt Bud straight away. Hopefully it will be somewhere we don't have a monument.

S.Paya when we have the required techs I would build in OW. I think the GLib will have to go in the the cap. I can't see the other 2 big food sites having the hammers/chops available to build it. Especially if we want the Nat Epic in Pig/Fish.

So to start SP we need Med, Lit we need Poly. Note when we have the marble hooked up it might be worth putting some hammers into the Parth assuming we don't want it ourselves. Although for once the artist points aren't to much of a problem.

Noted to stop the road to pig/fish and start the cow next turn. Worker in OW will go back to mine the other gh in Capital.

Tech path I prefer atm although we need to discuss if it worth going for Music still.

Aesth/Med/Poly/Lit trade Alpha with Zara - Currency - CoL - CS etc.

Just some initial thoughts all feedback welcomed.

 

[ianw1610]

On the Tech path, we want Alphabet ASAP from Zara, without giving him Aesthetics.

So... after Zara gets Alphabet, we go to him and propose Maths (plus whatever else we have but he doesn't, but not Aesthetics) in exchange for Alphabet...

...if he says no, we Research Alphabet for 1 turn, and then go back to him with the same proposal...

...rinse and repeat each turn until he says yes!!

 

[Sleepless]

Quick afterthought. I still think we should go for Music as the AI don't usually go for it very quickly but after CS. If a lot of our techs will come from bulbs I think we can afford the detour.

Other early techs the AI don't like trading which we do need. Cal until the MOM is built and Constr. Although a friendly Zara will trade both.