SQ2: Schizophrenic Shaka

[Mirc]

Nooooo, it would be less confusing!!!

Playing right now.....

 

[choxorn]

Whatever, if you mean my ideas. I guess we can just let Tupac use those, and we can call them Blue Zulu, Green Zulu, Yellow Zulu, and Pink Zulu. Unless you have a better idea, that is.

 

[Mirc]

I have some problems uploading the file... Did anyone else experience this?

 

[Sima Qian]

@Tupac - After reading your comments, I think that I was being a rather illogical with the early wonders plan. Yeah, the benefit from those (aside from culture) will actually be rather minimal. And even if I wanted to make the culture argument, it would probably be more worthwhile to build 2 new cities and stick a temple in each; that will add up to the 4 culture from pyramids.

I mainly got a false impression that we had very good terrain and might get away with a wonder or two, but from a strategic point of view that probably is not a good idea. Like you said, building some military would be better.

However, I am going to maintain that early culture is important. This is because after the AI starts building up culture, practically *ANY* of our cities except for the capital can flip because the AI is Zulu and our citizens are also Zulu. It's still too early to see any of that happen, but I guarantee there will be some nasty cultural surprises by the middle ages.

That's why I'm going to suggest Alphabet -> Writing -> Lit, because even if we cannot get the Great Library, early libs will also make a difference - probably an even greater one than early temples.

As for the RCP comment, I was mainly emphasizing that terrain considerations should take precedence over blindly following some kind of RCP pattern. That's why I suggested the red dot for our second city, even though that would not fall in well with a RCP plan. If you think you can build cities in good locations that are also RCP, please go ahead and do so.

 

[Mirc]

It tells me: "No file selected" .

BTW Sima, you changed your user title! It suits you.

 

[Sima Qian]

Mirc, are you using "Easy Upload" from the Quick Links or trying to add an attachment?

 

[Mirc]

I'm using "Upload File" at the bottom of the page.

 

[Mirc]

I managed to upload it.

Not much happened. I contacted Light Blue Zulus, I micromanaged my workers.....

I intentionally didn't move the Settler (with it's escort). It's up to the next player where he wants to settle. You can try Sima's variant, case when you just have to hit b and settle, because it is right on spot, or, I have another idea. I will make a dot map. It will include both the cattle and the iron, but better placed. Anyway Sima Qian's suggestion wasn't on a ring with the other city. I'll post the dot map (soon).

The save

 

[Mirc]

I would build instead of the pink dot of Sima (so instead of settling on the tile the warrior is now), I would settle on the pink and orange dot. The red dot is more a mistake, but also a possibility. I think you should settle on the orange dot. Also don't forget expanding south.

I made a much more detailed dot map (with ~27 cities, so a big part of all the cities we will get), but my father needs the computer right now and I can't post it.

 

[Whomp]

Now I remember the benefits of RCP.

Call me weird but if we're going to need culture to our south shouldn't we build our next city on the plains river (also can capture the whale with expansion) and lock off the Zulus's's's's's from our north? This would allow us to focus on building the ring with comfort and allow us to head south to pop rush culture faster in those new cities.

 

[The 777 Hoax]

Looks good so far!

 

[Mirc]

What Zulus in our north?

 

[Whomp]

Maybe I wasn't clear. My bad.
There aren't any Zulus to our north but if we settle a city SE then they'd have to cross our borders or take a boat to settle to our north. My point is our northern land can wait versus pushing south and creating early culture.

 

[Mirc]

That's exactly what I would do! (really, I thought of this too).

That's in fact why I made that blue dot at the southwest. Because the Yellow Zulus are much closer to us than the Green Zulus, we have to block their acces to our north before blocking the green ones, which are further to us.

 

[Whomp]

I can't play this tonight will attempt a "got it" tomorrow night.

 

[Sima Qian]

I don't have civ installed on this computer, but I checked the save with crprings and this is what I'm seeing: a fairly strong position at RCP5 and as opposed to RCP4. On the other hand, I think an argument can still be made for RCP4 because squeezing more cities into the map means more opportunites to build culture.

Counting Schizobane, we can get a total of 8 cities built at RCP5, 6 of them on rivers. The RCP9 in the pic is only for reference, I think we'll be better off going with RCP8 for second ring, or even abandoning the idea of RCP altogether by that point.

- The red dot can become settler factory #2 after cultural expansion, it can claim a deer and a cow.
- The green dot can claim whales and a river mouth, but I'm actually in favor of settling on the light blue dot first, to grab the gems while also blocking the AI from the south.
- The orange dot is in a pretty weird spot but I didn't want to crowd the other RCP5 cities so that's where I put it. It can still get some decent food and shields after cultural expansion, although it won't grow very large until railroads.
- The yellow dot can claim the cows after expansion phase, and use it to support the shield-producing tiles around it.
- The purple and dark blue dots are included just for completeness sake, I don't really have much to say about them.

Oh, and if you think I was kidding about the culture flips, MapStat has this to say about it:

Not a single foreign border nearby, but the flip chance is already there.

 

[SimpleMonkey]

Okay, now I understand why culture flips are going to go off the charts. I was kinda confused before. Sounds like rampant razing is going to have to go on the menu. Not that I have a problem with that.

My only other question is this: how is this varient handling city names? Is the AI generating 6 or 7 different cities all named Holbane?

 

[Mirc]

About the city names: no, they will get first "New Hlobane" then "Hlobane 2", "Hlobane 3" and so on. It depends on who build first the city with that name. Then the others will add "New" or a number to the city name.

I have a question: are we going to stick to RCP? I agree to go with it anyway, but if we aren't, I made a dot map with a lot of good city locations. If we are going to RCP, nothing of it is good

 

[Sima Qian]

@SimpleMonkey - Actually, I would argue the opposite. Rampant razing will hurt the AI attitudes toward us, which would make it harder for a UN win. Also, whenever we capture an AI city, I don't think we will even have resistance, since all the citizens will be Zulu nationality.

@Mirc - Depends on what people think of the most recent RCP dotmap I put up. I have yet to hear any comments on that yet...

 

[Mirc]

Ok, I'll wait and see what the others think.