SGOTM8 - klarius

[Ronald]

My build order for new cities would be:

1st city blue dot
2nd city in our core south
3rd city one of the red dots
4th city black dot or in between existing city and blue dot
5th city the other if still possible

any comments?

 

[Ciceronian]

I'm leaving now and I will play my turn asap tomorrow.

 

[Megalou]

any comments?

According to the 2 tile rule china will not found another city if we choose the northeastern red dot. Otherwise China or someone else can found another town where the black dot is. I agree with the blue dot being priority one. In fact I agree with everything as long as the NE red dot is chosen. It's the key strategy spot.

 

[Northern Pike]

I can start playing now. My first thought is that I might play after Ciceronian, and then simply keep that spot in the rotation. But if anyone prefers the roster as it now exists, just say so, and I'll wait until the sixth slot comes around again.

I agree with the idea which has emerged of getting to Invention as quickly as possible, and then conquering China with longbows (and trebuchets, I would add). We could probably get the Greeks to attack the Chinese at the same time, of course. The terrain in China is so rough that our lack of fast units won't matter much.

I'm not sure that a capital move will ever pay off, though. I think I'd rather make the best of our present core, which isn't awful, and ICS the upper three-fourths of our continent to support as many specialists as possible. With a lot of taxmen generating revenue for rushes, we might be able to go a long way with Klarius's idea of getting beachhead cities in peace treaties. In that connection, it's worth bearing in mind that we don't need to worry about maintaining enough units on a foreign continent to hold cities, since our goal is conquest. One kill stack per land mass should be enough.

 

[klarius]

hi NP.

I would say it's fine to slot you in after Ciceronian so our roster:

klarius just played
Ciceroninian up and playing
Northern Pike on deck
Megalou
Evil_Kanevil
Ronald

BTW NP all nice comments, but I don't think we need trebuchets, at least not in big quantities. It's only emperor, only the capitals will be really well defended. And we should rather build attack units to increase our military rating.

And I also think a capital move is not a good idea. We should rather think of abandoning cities if it gets to dense around the capital. Then we can stiil have semi-productive cities somewhere else (in the north or maybe on other islands). The north of our island is somewhat better than our region, but also not really a powerhouse.

One small thing. After we finish literature (should work in Ciceronians turns), we should research currency. I hope that one of our neighbors will research construction in the meantime (they have the ability to do so for quite some time and it's a high priority tech for the AI). I would hold back republic and literature at least until the currency research. We may get the opportunity to trade for the greek free tech. But very probably Greece and China will start to research republic also soon, so all a little questionable .

 

[Ronald]

Hi NP, good to have you playing, the new roster is fine with me

@klarius: I agree with your research path: literature then currency.

About moving the capitel: I brought it up as alternative right away. As soon as we have really established our core down South, a late move does not make sense to me, since the North is better, but not extremely better.
So for me the options were:
1) Massive archer rush right away, no infrastructure in the South, building the core in the North
2) Develop the South and conquer the continent after that

1 would be a high risk strategy with a highly uncertain pay-off and so far everybody who commented was against it. I am also not sure whether I would have done it in a private game, but at least I would have thought about it. This is why I brought it up at this point.
Going 1 or 2 should be a group decision.

 

[Northern Pike]

I don't think we need trebuchets

I knew you'd say that.

to increase our military rating

Why does this matter to you? So that we can gain more concessions in peace treaties?

I don't reject Ronald's option 1, the immediate archer rush, out of hand. But since the Chinese don't have iron, the possibility of making 4-2 attacks on them rather than 2-2 looks attractive. And a delay will at least preserve us from auto-razing China's southern cities.

 

[Megalou]

I am for a smaller longbow army just to take the Chinese horses and perhaps get an overseas town in a peace treaty. If we want to take on the world before advanced flight we need horses. So a small stack of longbows and the rest infra, that's my 2c.

 

[Ronald]

Hi Ciceronian - any problems with gameplay?

 

[Ciceronian]

Hi everyone,
Sorry, but I didn't even have any time to start up my PC yesterday - was a busy day. However I'm playing right now.
The courthouses are prebuilds for libraries, right?
I think I'll send the next two settlers north, any opinions?
I won't build any archers yet, I think the maintenance would hurt us too much. Besides, longbows are cheap so upgrading archers wouldn't benefit us much anyway.

EDIT: What about the scout, can't we disband him now that we don't need him anymore?

 

[Ronald]

HI Ciceronian,

I would keep the scout and the warrior to block and irritate chineese settlers so they don't settle where we want to build our cities.

Ronald

 

[Ciceronian]

Hello all,
I've finally played my set of turns and uploaded them. Sorry Ronald, but I've already disbanded the scout. Here's the turnlog:

1250 BC - All clear.
1225 BC - Just anarchy. Send warrior / archer pair SE.
1200 BC - Anarchy finished! The Republic of America is born. Luxury slider down to 20%, science up to 60% - Literature in 6 turns, 0 gpt income. 12 dollars in National Bank of America. Warrior / Archer meet barb horseman and fortify. Otherwise some micromanagement.
1175 BC - Damn the RNG! Archer defensive freeshot fails and horseman knocks down our warrior unhurt. Save 2gpt, on the bright side! Send more warriors south, retreat archer.
1150 BC - Washington builds settler, who goes north. New York builds worker. Lux slider to 30% again, to ensure settler factory in Washington works, science to 50%. Lit in 4 turns, -3gpt from a savings of 17g. Have 3 warriors and an archer sitting next to a horseman. Hopefully better luck this time.
1125 BC - Warrior killed, horseman looses 1 HP. Decide to sit tight. Disband scout.
1100 BC - Hurray! Horseman finally killed. Attack other 1 HP horseman with 3 HP archer... who looses. Lux to 20%, science to 40%. Lit in 2 turns, but a whopping 15gpt.
1075 BC - Trouble down south, another horseman charges up and kills a warrior. Now only one warrior left facing two horsemen. Worker B finishes road on the mountain there, but retreats afterwards. Lux up again.
1050 BC - Warrior manages to kill off next horseman attack. Finish literature, start currency at 11 turns with -4gpt, but a bank of 47 gold. Washington builds settler which heads to the rich grassland to the south, Philadelphia builds archer with heads to the problem area southest, and New York builds worker. Change courthouse prebuilds to libraries.
1025 BC - Lone warrior defeats another oncoming horseman, now there are no more in sight. Disaster! Chinese found town N, NW of our planned bluedot city. What's to be done? According to 2-tile rule, the Chinese will not found another city in this area. So I decide to send settler north to blockade remaining area. Currency 10 turns, -3gpt.
1000 BC - Houston founded SW of the mountain to the south of New York. Currency now only 8 turns at +2gpt, 42 gold in bank. End of QSC.

Of course I regularly traded maps with China and Greece. They have no new techs so we are ahead of them by Republic and Literature.

Here's the general situation:

This is our core at the moment:

And here's the evil Chinese who ruined our plans up north. We must rediscuss to see what to do. If we assume the Chinese will not settle in the area again because of the 2-tile rule, we should let the settler head further north to blockade the Chinese there. Problem is, what if oneo of the two cities either side of the dyes gets a cultural expansion? That would make building a city there impossible for us.

On to Northern Pike then. The save is here: http://gotm.civfanatics.net/saves/sgotm8/klarius_SG008_BC1000_01.SAV

 

[Megalou]

Nice write-up, Ciceronian. No mistakes either as far as I can tell. There is really no safe solution to the Chinese situation although I don't think it's likely that either of the 2 towns will expand. It's more likely that they will get place another town in the one area that is still available to them, between Tsingtao, Shanghai and Hangchow. On the other hand, if we get there first it's a precarious town to defend in case of attack. I would keep the first settler walking to Shanghai though, then place the next settler 1 spot NE of the current settler to claim the grassland tile.

 

[Ronald]

Well, I have to say, that I'm not so impressed.

1) I thought and still think that it would have been easy to divert the chinese settler with scout and warrior.
2) Why is the archer fortified near Seattle? It should destroy the barbs. (though RNG first time this time should be better)
3) There is no worker working towards the gems. We need luxuries in Republic.
4) Why is the grassland near Boston irrigated? We have more than enough food and not enough production.
5) we don't have enough workers at least one of our food rich towns should build workers instead of a library
6) The whole MM of the cities New York, Miami and Philadelphia is not optimal (having the city where we want the FP on a specialist can't be the best solution)


I don't want to be too critical, I only want to point out what I find problematic. I also think without telling mistakes there is no way to improve. (please let me know when I make mistakes as well)

 

[Ciceronian]

Yes Megalou, my line of thought about the settlers aswell. One more city should go in our core, but I think we should deviate from klarius' initial plan and settle one tile NE of his planned city. That would be 2 tiles NW of New York.
The other crucial matter is the barb area in the SE. Has anyone registered an uprising there yet? We should probably try to destroy the camp soon, before an uprising occurs, and so the gems are secure. We're spending a lot on luxuries and linking up the dyes and gems would really boost our science. Our financial situation has improved though thanks to me.

 

[Ronald]

My proposal for city placement would be:

1) blue
2) red (if still possible)
3) black

red - blue - black could be better, but is more risky (we need dyes)

Any comments?

 

[Ciceronian]

Well, glad you're not being complacent Ronald, but I find some of the criticisms unjustified.

1. Nobody pointed that out to me before I played. I'd already played when you posted the advice.
2. The warrior is fortified, waiting for the archer. The archer just went down there this very turn and is not fortified.
3. That was because the barbs were pressing me very hard, as I described. I retreated the worker because there was only one lone warrior defending against two horsemen at one point. The warrior could just as easily have been killed, and our worker would also have been dead. The horsemen only disappeard last turn, so it would have been impossbile to have the worker building a road.
4. Klarius irrigated the grassland, not me. Nevertheless I think he was correct because then we can work the forest there, which I did.
5. I built another worker (or two), but decided we had enough for the moment. Our core was quite well developed. After the workers were built I changed to library, but the next player could still build a worker there if he wanted. I also built an archer because our only one got killed by barbs down south.

It's good to point out mistakes and give advice if you can, but in this case I think everything was OK (except the chinese settlement) and the criticism wasn't justified.

 

[Ronald]

Hi Ciceronian,

Ad1) I thought that was standard gameplay. I didn't think that you were planning to abandon the scout. As soon as you mentioned I commented, but unfortunately too late.

AD2) Sorry, my mistake, I thought both were fortified
AD3) since there was no archer for support, it's OK

AD4) Different people, different opinions, oucome depending on bonus grassland yes or no

AD5) I am really sure that we will need more workers, but as you said, so far no harm done, can easily be changed.

Sorry about my points 2 and 3, sice the archer just arrived you were absolutely right about it

Ronald

 

[Megalou]

Blue dot is fine with me to start with. Glad to see the discussion picking up. A scout and a warrior could indeed protect the 4 tiles now left for China to settle.

Re the three workers that are roading the same jungle: This is fine since it will give a little speed for the next settler, but generally avoid roading jungle tiles that will soon be settled. (As you can deduce from this, I would not approve of the black dot. Placing it where the workers are now would give room for another town.)

 

[Ciceronian]

Originally we were planning to settle north of the black dot, so I was merely getting a road to that point asap, without chopping first. Then roading the dyes would have linked them up immediately.
I'm not sure about the next town, either red or blue dot. Let's see what the others say.