Spl02: Noob-Party

[Morred]

I don't really have time to play and report, but I was taking a little gander in the save.

1. We may want to move the capital city in the future, just to avoid outrageous maintenance costs, Joao blocker and Blue dot are already quite far-spread.
2. The two squares between blue dot and the ocean, we want axemen there (and throughout the 'middle' of our lands [between joao blocker and blue dot]) to stop other civs settling cities there. Settling city b in the future will be useful just for expanding and ocean trade, and the middle city would be a nice stop-gap.
3. The barb city is in a great spot for us. Let's train some axes and bring them around the city, as it's only defended by warriors. While the barb city is there, nobody can settle red dot (due to the two square rule), which will probably make other civs hesitant to settle in an inferior site over there, we might be able to steal it if we raze that barb city after we produce another settler.
4. We probably don't need to worry about our terrible economy too much, destroying that barb city will be an infusion, plus, we could easily turn it off after machinery as once we kill a civilization or two we'll be in no financial shape anyway. Then we just spend a few hundred years rebuilding.

 

[Quotey]

Turn 0 (130)

I can't remember if Beijing was turned on avoid growth was said in a report. There is no way to rearrange tiles properly and I don't want to starve it.

But what! It's not at the happy cap?

:/

Nanjing was working a 2f tile instead of the lake.

Grab an Axeman from Nanjing to go batter the barb city.

Turn 1 (131)

Shangai Axeman -> Axeman. I am not sure if we want a settler or not, to get the... red? dot site from razin the barb city.

Turn 2 (132)

Research Iron Working -> Writing. I thought of going fishing to support Nanjing..

Research Writing -> Fishing

ah. Double or nothing, it has Aluminium.

Zara settles near some Iron- we now cannot set up a gold city.

Red dot is calling for me, oh sweet red dot. Start a settler in Beijing. I don't know if we can afford it, but I know we need it.

Turn 5 (135)

Shangai Axeman to -1 at 40% research, agg. I messed about with tiles in Beijing. :/

A warrior gets deleted. We only need 2 exploring warriors, wolfkiller goes exploring. Breaking even at 40%

This new city wll kill us. Messs about with tiles in Shangai and delete another warrior, +2.

Some recon news: Charlie has at least 3 gold mines, and 2 of them he hasn't even hooked up yet.

Turn 9 (139)

Settler pops out.

Turn 11 (141)

Did I say Iron would pop in plains hill north of Beijing? I meant SW! Oh, my mistake.

Iron pops in beijing, and this makes the settler less important. I stop here to decide what to do.

 

[dawn]

Can you post the save so we can look it over?

 

[Morred]

You might want to change research to Hunting -> Archery so we can pump out the Cho-Ko-Nus from the get-go.

Nice work on popping that iron
Hmm, it may be best if we wait on settling, but then we're going to lose any kind of decent city spot that may expand our empire. It may be time to settle the long forgotten city-b? Red Dot is just going to kill our economy...blah

 

[Quotey]

I only have a save from 2 turns earlier for some reason. I shift entered 2 turns to check if Iron would pop, it did so just play 2 turns on top of it. I might have done but I moved the settler in the last 2 turns and it's better we don't. I could replay them if you wish.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/96111/Spl02_BC-0525.CivBeyondSwordSave

 

[Splime]

OK, I'll play tomorrow or Saturday... You can finish up though Quotey.

I'll likely keep the settler hanging a round for a bit, settling city B later on. We can always grab the other cities with cho-ko-nus. Also, another note: Red dot may be hard to get with our current military, so let's work on military, and then wage war for our cities.

 

[Morred]

Hmm, This could be a nice production city and fills out our lands. With some jungle chopping could crank out the units, hopefully.

 

[Splime]

OK, I shall play in about 2 hours.

 

[Splime]

(Yes, I only started playing after 3 hours later, things came up.)

Turn 140 (500 BC): Shanghai: Axeman -> Axeman
We are tied with Sitting Bull for weakest civ (of those we can see on the demographic screen).
Axe attacks barb city (Avar), at 99.9% odds. We win, but the axe goes down to 2.0/5 health. Avar gets razed, to save our economy.

T141: Fishing is researched:

Research set to Hunting, as it is a prereq for Archery.
Axeman who raze Avar gets promoted to CRII, and gets named RAZR.

T142: Beijing: Axeman -> Axeman
MM Beijing so that growth occurs: we lose 3 hammers temporarily, but gain one food and one gold.
The extra gold allows us to increase research to 50%, though we are running a small deficit.
One of the warriors from Beijing moves to the site of City B, in order to fogbust.
Get OB w/ Charlemagne in order to explore his lands.

T143: Nada

T144: RAZR is healed, now fogbusts. Otherwise, Nada

T145: Note: Iron has not been popped in SW hill. Settler will now be moved to the red dot. However, I'll save its settling for next turnset.

T146: Nada

T147: Research: Hunting -> Archery
Beijing: Axe -> Axe
Shanghai: Axe -> Worker
We are now close to Zara in power, and past Sitting Bull.

T148: Nada

T149: Guangzhous becomes Jewish. No switch yet.

T150: Joao demands we switch to Judaism, the religion of the two top scores. I say yes, since he's strong.

Our first targets should be to our east.
Meanwhile, in the anarchy, Judaism spreads to Shanghai.

T151: We are mediocre in power, meaning we're in the middle. Zara is above us by one, Charlemagne is below us by one. Joao is at the top (Good thing we're Jews). Sitting Bull is second from last... can you say first target?

Anarchy ends. Settler arrives at destination, ready to settle upon team discussion.

T152: Nada

T153: Beijing: Axe -> Axe (We need to keep Beijing growing)
A warrior is kicked out to fogbust (And, ATM, is still out there, so if you see a random warrior on the roads, fogbusting is his eventual purpose.

T154: Guangzhou: Granary -> Jewish Temple (Guangzhou is losing in its culture war. Whipping will be useful here.)

T155: Research: Archery -> Writing
Situation at Turn 155 (275 BC):

(Sorry for crappy text quality: Too lazy to use my better image editor.)

The settler is ready, and be warned: There is a Portuguese settler party coming, which looks like it will settle on those ruins.

The Save: http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/59830/Spl02_BC-0275.CivBeyondSwordSave

Roster:
1. Splime (just played)
2. Quotey (played just before me)
3. GreyFox (up)
4. Admiral Kutzov (on deck)
5. TheLastOne36
6. Morred
7. dawn

 

[Morred]

=/ It's annoying that we didn't pop the iron, and we *need* it to really take over the next civ. Hmm. I opened up the save to take a gander. Our Great Engineer is due in 8 turns, so during Grey's turnset. At a guess, settling red dot will bring our research down to about 30%. We may want to get all of our workers over the Red Dot to hook up the iron (and connect it to the rest of our cities) as soon as possible to get those units out. If (When) we take out Sitting Bull we should seriously consider moving our capital for maintenance purposes.

 

[GreyFox]

Ok got it. I wouldn't be too concerned abt iron ... one way or other, we would get one.

IMHO, moving capitol, while doable, is more controversial. A simple courthousing or FP will achieve the same thing. So, the decision of moving capitol should only be made based on the bureaucracy bonus.

--

 

[Morred]

I agree, except by the time our research actually gets to CoL we could well be running at a deficit on 0% research, hehe. Perhaps swap Metal Casting for CoL? I don't know the beaker difference, but if it's close I'd be for it to catch up in tech. After Sitting Bull sits forever, of course

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

grey fox has prolly already fixed this stuff since he's way ahead of me, temporically it that a real word or did I just make it up?(clockwise) and game wise.

working plains in shanghai? work the cottage. we need the money.

working spices instead of grass hills in GZhou? work the hills and the temple drops from 39 to 23.

whip the freakin' monument in Nanjing!

work the cottage in beijing.

Shanghai pops borders in 8. Shouldn't we be roading to the iron?

 

[Splime]

grey fox has prolly already fixed this stuff since he's way ahead of me, temporically it that a real word or did I just make it up?(clockwise) and game wise.

working plains in shanghai? work the cottage. we need the money.

working spices instead of grass hills in GZhou? work the hills and the temple drops from 39 to 23.

whip the freakin' monument in Nanjing!

work the cottage in beijing.

Shanghai pops borders in 8. Shouldn't we be roading to the iron?

A lot of this stuff is because I didn't pay attention to those details...

And also, I thought that Shanghai was going to take way longer to pop its borders... But yeah, I should pay more attention to MMing...

 

[GreyFox]

I did indeed made some corrections on the pop assignment, but I disagree on some. Whips I am gonna to hang on until we are ready to overflow to crossbows. Working on mines must be weighed against commerce and growth. I normally focus more on growth before a city reaches its happy cap. I also moved all fog busters back into our border. Useless. They are fog busting something which are already fogbusted by nearby city's border.

The admiral did note the same thing I noticed as well: iron.

This got me thinking. (usually, I will not bored readers with my thinking process , but playing in a noob party probably means I should explain things a bit more). We could ignore settling the north iron site, and get iron from Shanghai in 8 turns. However, someone could settle next to the iron and snatch away our iron from shanghai. So, I stick to the plan of settling the north. Good to have two source of irons in case one get pillaged, esp considering we don't have any spears.

But I waited for Joao to go to his intended site, before settling Xian:

Immediately, those settlers wanted to join Sitting Bull.

Our economy also takes some hit, but fortunately, the barb city provided us with a ripe cottage for plucking in the northwest.

Sure enough, Joao moves his settling party back west and settled one tile away from Shanghai's iron.

But, too bad for him, we got the cultural pop next turn.

Noticed also Zara's kind settling of city b for us.

Noticed yet also the engineer ... and the moment you've been waiting for:

Our gold reserve did dwindle down, but remember the barb city? Yeah, they build another cottage while my warrior wanders off.

Unfortunately for the barbs, he's back ...

The barbarians in the city must be thinking "These thieving barbarians!!!"

sweet turn around.

Status of the world:

We should probably make some trades:

Now I think we may want to get some spears out prior to war, since there have been chariots and horse archers running around.

 

[Splime]

I also moved all fog busters back into our border. Useless. They are fog busting something which are already fogbusted by nearby city's border.

Well, they were useful when I put them there, and half of them were outdated warriors with nothing better to do...

Good turnset, and it's good to get that Machinery. Sailing will be important now, as it will hook up iron faster, if we hook up the iron near Xian. (EDIT: Of course, we may be able to trade for Sailing...)

Also, Zara's placement of City B is his own deathwish. We should be sure to get CKNs and axes ready to take it, once our economy is in any decent shape.

Roster:
1. Splime (realizing multiple times he sucks at Civ4... )
2. Quotey
3. GreyFox (just played)
4. Admiral Kutzov (up)
5. TheLastOne36 (on-deck)
6. Morred
7. dawn

 

[Quotey]

How far do we intend to go with the CKNs?

I have no doubt that we could have the entire continent, but I'm not sur eif we want to do that. We could destroy 1, 2 or them all (no use in leaving 1). I certainly want Jaoaoao out, and would have to face anything promoted from Sitting Bull's Crossbowmen. If we decide to take the entire continent, taking Aksum will mean no barb troubles so we can expand at our leisure.

 

[GreyFox]

@Splime: iron is already hooked up and roaded at Xian, no need sailing.

@Qoutey: let's take things one step at a time: which Civ should we take out first? Ethiopia or Native Americans? Without sieges, things are gonna get a bit bloody.

Also, abt Joao, he has quite a bit of swords stationed outside shanghai. Be careful there ... you might get your wish granted ... centuries earlier.

@Admiral: I was cottaging the wine at beijing. SO if we traded for monarchy, you may either stop the worker and change it to a winery, or continue cottaging and wine the source to the east instead.

@all: If you haven't noticed, I have been less vocal than I usually am in an SG. You guys are doing the discussion very well, so I plan to only take part if I think something is very wrong

 

[Morred]

@all: If you haven't noticed, I have been less vocal than I usually am in an SG. You guys are doing the discussion very well, so I plan to only take part if I think something is very wrong

Good to know that we seem to be doing the right thing.

I'm going to vote that we have a quick strike at sitting bull. For starters, look at his score, and last I checked he didn't have any friends that would take offense at our invasion. By the look of the continent he probably only has 3-4 cities anyway and Zara just dominated him while settling.

My idea is that we could quickly chuck a stack or so at Sitting Bull while building up a bigger army to take out Zara once we finish off Sitting Bull. Also, don't bother building too many Swords/Axes against Sitting Bull as his UU is the Dog Soldier.

 

[dawn]

Definitely looking good.

We'll need to keep Shanghai doing well culturally to maintain that iron.
And workers. We only have three for our five cities.
Sitting Bull has only two cities showing in the diplo screen. Taking him out gives us access to Phants (with Construction).