SP6 - Deity Training

[Renata]

[QUOTE

We are now behind by Polytheism to Babylon and Japan.
[/B][/QUOTE]

You mean mysticism, I assume?

Can hardly wait to get home today to take a peek at the save and see what's up. Terrific that we got alphabet before our two neighbors; that seemed to help a lot. Also reassured that build orders and trades so far pretty much match what I would've tried to do.

Is alphabet usually a good tech to research early on this level? If you wind up next to a commercial civ it'll be useless, or course, but with anyone else it seems like it could be a gold mine.

Renata

 

[Matt_G]

As requested.

BTW, I got it.

 

[Sirp]

Yes Renata, Mysticism

It's hard to know what to research first at this level besides pottery. I often go for The Wheel, since only Japan has that, and it's not that expensive. If you have CB, going for Mysticism isn't bad, since other civs don't usually give that high priority (and gee both of my choices would have turned out badly here wouldn't they? )

We are dying for contacts though! Our expansionist trait has turned out awfully so far, with us only having one scout in the field. We need to search north, as well as deep west. We could have made a MUCH bigger killing on alphabet if we had had contact with more civs at the time of discovery. Another couple of civs and we'd probably have pulled out 2 or 3 more techs with it.

Also, these barbs are going to be pretty annoying. We can afford to send settlers out with thin defense, since we can produce settlers so fast, but still, losing one wouldn't be pretty.

-Sirp.

 

[Matt_G]

Edit: nevermind

 

[bewareofgnomes]

interesting start. i will be shadowing this game. good luck.

 

[Matt_G]

Originally posted by Sirp
We are dying for contacts though!-Sirp.

Is one worth all our gold (61) and 2gpt? I could get contact with Hiawa in the preturn for that from Joanie.
Yeah, we have contact with Joanie! The Hammer or Toku must have sold her contact with us on your last turn Sirp.

 

[Sirp]

It might be worth it, but it depends on how easily we can make contact ourselves

It would cut into our research on math though, and since it's unlikely they'd have math yet, it probably wouldn't help our research. So I'd say we'd prefer to try to make contact ourselves if possible.

The real prize though, would be getting contact with a civilization that *doesn't* have contact with other civilizations though, and hopefully doesn't have alphabet, because that would lead to brokering chances. I'm guessing there is a civilization to our north, since there's alot of land up there we haven't explored yet (if there's *not* then even better, lots of land for us to take!), so I suggest trying to send a scout up there, because it's reasonably likely that they'll be isolated.

-Sirp.

 

[GenMarshall]

There is bound to be something that we may bump into within the next few turns or so :s. I just hope that it would be soon.

 

[Matt_G]

Preturn: In checking F4, I notice that we have contact with Joanie. We could get either Mysticism or Contact with Hiawatha for all our gold and 2gpt. I pass. Also check F11 and the ‘blue’ spearman was almost certainly German


Turn 1: 2350 B.C. Moving units. Our scout finds the Babs border in the NW.

Turn 2: 2310 B.C. Looks like plains around that river in the south. Will have a better idea next turn. Washington grows to 6. No adjustment of lux tax needed. Worker finishes the BG Sirp had him on and moves to the BG that NY is using.

Turn 3: 2270 B.C. Bah, no floodplains. I will move the warrior next turn to get a better look at the land. I will make a dotmap before I found a city. Worker is roading the BG at NY. Still running max science on Math, though it has not changed from a 40 turn pace yet. <shrug>

Turn 4: 2230 B.C. Wash. Settler>worker. NY scout>warrior. Move units. Settler just built is moving to my yellow dot. (see dotmap in next post.) Other settler is going to head to my pinkish dot. This has been one of the harder dotmaps I have made.
Don’t have enough military to go around. This farmer’s gambit scares the crap out of me. If we can just get away with it a little while longer……….

IT: Iro’s are building the Oracle

Turn 5: 2190 B.C. Worker finishes road, starts mine. Check F4 and Hiawa knows us now.
He’s up IW, Mystcism and Writing on us. He wants just about everything we have for Myst. or IW. Ditto with Joanie. Ditto with Hammie.
Toku is up IW and Myst. If I could get Writing we might be able to pull a 2 fer or even a 3 fer?, but alas, we cannot.
BTW they all want all our gold and 6gpt for IW, or all our gold and 2gpt for Myst.
Remembered to reset slider to max science just in time, after messing around with it seeing what IW cost.

Turn 6: 2150 B.C. Wash. Worker>worker. Finally the southern settler is in position to found our third city. New worker heads to NY. My plan is to have him chop a forest to expose grass, (hopefully BG). I will build a spear instead of a warrior next cycle to use those shields. With those shields we will get a spear as fast as we would have got a warrior.

Turn 7: 2110 B.C. Boston founded. It pops a hut on founding and we get Mysticism from it. [dance]
Boston set to build a warrior.

IT: Toku is building the Oracle.

Turn 8: 2070 B.C. Washington, worker>settler. Worker finishes mine at NY. Bah, the shield is lost to waste. He is going to go help our new cities along with the new worker.

Turn 9: 2030 B.C. Philly founded. Set to a warrior (vetoable). It needs culture to pull the cow. There are 2 forests that can help that on the way though. I hope my dotmap isn’t a total bust or these city locations are also. Scout heading north spots a barb, but it isn’t a problem.
NY, warrior>spear. Set to spear since the forest chop is due in 3.

Turn 10: 1990 B.C. Just moving units.

Summary: Settler due in 2 from Washington. Spear due in 9 out of NY though the forest chop will knock 5 turns off of this. The scout in the NW is bogged down in mountains and jungle. We have 3 undefended cities right now.
There is a warrior between NY and Washington that can be there next turn and we can finally drop the lux tax somewhat.

The warrior that escorted the Boston settler is north of the city to provide cover and visibility for our workers, though the southern one is at risk for 1 more turn if a horse showed up. (2 tiles away is in fog)
My intention with those 2 workers was to have them road on their way to their respective cities.

The scout in the north:
He is standing outside of Istanbul (assuming from looking at F11) at this time, but contact can’t be made this turn.
Renata, when you look up there, you will see a barb camp 2 tiles away next to a horse. There are 2 barbs in the camp! 2 tiles SW of the camp (other side of the horse) is another barb who was chasing him.
Edit: I was off by 1 tile. That lone barb is south of the horse, not SW. FWIW

Diplo: Joanie, Toku and Hammie are up IW and Writing. Hiawa has IW, writing and a monopoly on HBR. Crap I just realized that that means that second barb in that camp is probably a horse and our scout is toast if it is and they come after him. I couldn’t have done anything different since I didn’t see the camp until the scout had already moved 1 tile. He had been standing where the lone barb is now, next to the horses. When I moved north is when I saw the camp right next to me. <shrug>

Oh and I will say this again, this farmers gambit is scary as hell!!

Edit: BTW, Math is due in 21.
Good luck Renata!

 

[Matt_G]

Here is the dotmap I made which shows the thought process behind my city placement. I founded Boston on the pink dot and Philly on the yellow.
Edit: Added current screen shot.

Here's the game

 

[Renata]

Cool. Got it (downloaded even!), but will be out tomorrow night so won't play until Sat. morning. Might have some coherent comments to make on dotmap tomorrow.

Renata, sleepy

 

[Sirp]

Good turn Matt_g Your dotmap looks good, and yes the terrain we have makes it VERY hard to do a good dotmap. There's lots of mediocre terrain around the places we want our first ring of cities to go. The jungle to the north-west isn't so bad though, since being industrious we can convert it to grassland nice and quick.

We want lots of workers here guys. Matt didn't finish exploring to the south-east of Washington, and it's possible there is still some floodplains alongside the river there. First priority is to get our first-ring filled in, and then to sieze that attractive lake. The lake area is where our FP will almost certainly go, although that's thinking a little way ahead. Hopefully New York can become strong enough to satisfy our military needs. We might like to consider building a barracks there with the chop. We'll also want a few archers fairly soon, to combat barbs.

We might want to move your yellow dot one tile west Matt, so it can get the cattle immediately. Building a temple there will take a *long* time, although your placing is more 'long-term' optimal. I wouldn't be surprised if that city ends up housing our FP actually.

At last we got a tech from a hut Nice of the Iroquois to buy contact with us. I think that when I saw Mathematics coming in in 36 turns, Washington was size 6 or 7 (it was growing too fast to stop it reaching size 7 at one stage). I should have recorded how much we had to going into science at that stage. Anyhow, it's going to take a good deal of improvement before we can bring it below 40 turns, but I think we should be able to. Maybe not by that much, but I think it's still worth it for the narrowish chance of beating the AI to it. Even if we don't beat the AI outright, there's still a good chance we'll be able to get something for it.

I believe that at least half of all civs have to have horseback riding before barbs get horses, but I'm not sure about this. It'll be doubly painful if our scout dies before making contact with the Ottomans.

We're not doing a complete farmer's gambit Matt, some of our settlers are even being escorted by military units! Things will get better as New York develops a little more, and starts producing some military.

Go get em Renata

-Sirp.

 

[Matt_G]

Matt didn't finish exploring to the south-east of Washington, and it's possible there is still some floodplains alongside the river there.

I don't think so. You can see the delta of the river going into coast and the tile in the fog is plains.

We might want to move your yellow dot one tile west Matt, so it can get the cattle immediately.

I ur...uhm..cough.....already built it. That's Philly. I will edit the post with my dotmap and add a current screen shot.

I think that when I saw Mathematics coming in in 36 turns, Washington was size 6 or 7 (it was growing too fast to stop it reaching size 7 at one stage). I should have recorded how much we had to going into science at that stage. Anyhow, it's going to take a good deal of improvement before we can bring it below 40 turns, but I think we should be able to.

It's due in 21.

I believe that at least half of all civs have to have horseback riding before barbs get horses, but I'm not sure about this.

I hope your right. Losing him would be real bad, and incredibly unlucky to have that happen to us twice.

 

[Sirp]

Matt: Oh ok, I can see the situation a little better now (yes I'm at work at the moment, very boring blah blah blah). Philadelphia's city placement isn't too bad, we'll live Once you get a worker down there, you can cut forest while building a temple, to get it fast. Then we'll rush the temple. We also want to cut the forest on the game around Boston, probably using the lumber to finance a granary. Boston can be our second breadbasket city, and will probably tend to churn out workers while Washington builds settlers.

I am thinking that we want to make getting that ivory a priority. In a game like this, having that much ivory should present us with huge trading opportunities, and we don't want to take any risks of the Japanese getting there first.

Hopefully contact with the Ottomans will present us with some good trading opportunities.

-Sirp.

 

[Sirp]

Matt: I've now managed to look at the save, and we do have contact with the Ottomans in the save. A similiar thing happened on the end of my turn with the Iroquois. I was pretty sure that I hadn't made contact with them at the end of my turn, but when you said we did have contact I assumed I must have been

However now I'm thinking that maybe the game does something to re-evaluate contacts when you load the game, and so in each instance, from loading the game we got contact. Do you have the auto-save from a turn before? If we had that, we could test it and see.

Anyhow, we now have a very interesting brokering situation on our hands!

I would encourage all players of the game (and other interested parties) to download the save, and try to see how well they can do brokering. Note however, that once you actually try brokering, you won't be allowed to make comments on how it went until after Renata plays her turn.

---

My analysis is that France will give us Writing in exchange for contact with the Ottomans and a small lump sum of gold. Then we should be able to trade Writing or contacts with someone for Iron Working.

Then we'll be able to trade contacts around and get everyone's gold. We'll be at tech parity for everything we know of except HBR.

However, we could trade HBR from the Iroquois for Contact + 51 gold + 5 gpt. This is essentially 151 gold. With contact and HBR, we'll likely be able to get Writing and Iron Working no problem.HBR for Writing straight should do it, HBR + Contact if necessary. Then HBR and/or Writing to the Ottomans for IW.

We should also be able to clean up the gold situation with everyone but the Iroquois and maybe France pretty well, giving us around 80 gold to make up for the 151 we spent. This'll leave us losing around 70 gold out of the arrangement, but making up all techs.

We'll probably make around 100 gold instead of losing 70 if we go for the no-HBR approach. As such I suggest trying to get everything.

EDIT: Oh, and the Ottomans can sell contacts with the Germans, which will possibly lead to even *more* brokering opportunities. This is where the power of being expansionist really comes in!

-Sirp.

 

[Matt_G]

Originally posted by Sirp
Matt: I've now managed to look at the save, and we do have contact with the Ottomans in the save. -Sirp.

This is really wierd. I just loaded the save again and I do not have contact with the Ottomans! I have no clue as to WTH is going on here. Very strange.........

 

[Borealis]

Sirp, this probably won't affect my place in the turn order, but if the turns move faster than I expected, feel free to swap me as necessary: I'll be out of town from next Tuesday afternoon until Thursday afternoon, and won't be able to access Civ during that time. I might be able to access the forum, but I'm not sure.

 

[Matt_G]

Hey Team;

Well my trip is a go. In fact I will be leaving here in 3 or 4 hours.
This time tomorrow I will be in Vegas, baby!! Then on to San Diego. Should be back in a week exactly (give or take a few hours)
I might be back 1 day earlier but that's not for sure.
I am going to take my laptop so I should be able to check the thread and tell you all how my craps system worked out in Las Vegas.

the AI!!

 

[Renata]

Have fun, and don't lose all your money.

Renata

 

[Stormrider]

Matt,

I'd let you borrow my lucky Hut RNG, but you might need some $ to get home

Stormrider