Squatting on another civ's spawn area

[AnotherPacifist]

Through some divine revelation, Ragnar was able to sense that Rome was going to be much tougher to capture in this alternate universe. (He had a vague intimation that in a previous life he captured Rome in the early 700's with axemen). So instead of founding his capital in Angleland, he decided to go to Normandy and become a French lord so as to have a better land route to Rome. Of course the Britons have to be contained so he also founded Dublin. He was very surprised at the amount of culture Bordeaux had when the French spawned, but he was greatly pleased that because he founded Birka on where Paris was supposed to be, the French had lost all memory of their previous learning, including mining, mysticism, monarchy, etc.! So the French offered to be his vassals after he gifted them the knowledge of writing, and they researched aesthetics and drama for the crude Normans.

Ragnar was also very displeased that Optics needed guilds now, which means that he cannot build just plain caravels or galleons and hope to dominate the seas. He therefore discovered chemistry and steel but was able to sink 27 ships at the end of the 16th century before he built his first ironclad.

Just for the principle, he captured Rome and Venice and was voted Apostolic Palace resident and had the pope under his thumb.

 

[Virdrago]

These are hilarious! Keep 'em coming.

My computer died so I may have to restart everything, and I'm stuck on a very old laptop (it began its life around the millenium). This has helped cheer me up.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Having conquered the French, Ragnar next turned his attention to his traditional enemies, the Germans. (well, if not in real life, in game play) He read his history books and discovered that Vikings had settled in Prus, Lithuania, and the Rus' states. The Black Sea also found itself to be pirated by Vikings. There's also that little Sicilian kingdom that held out for a long time. The Varangian Guard of the Byzantine Empire was instrumental in making the fortunes of several emperors. (he also vaguely remembered playing Harald Hadrada in AOE II's Viking campaign...)

So he decided to sit on Danzig's future site and build his capital there. Took a while to get there (5 turns!), but in the end it was worth it, since the HRE was limited to Copenhagen, Hamburg and Frankfurt, and eventually collapsed. Just like in history, Denmark/Copenhagen joined him, while Hamburg flipped to the Dutch and Frankfurt was captured by the French. He expanded eastward and settled in Livonia and Ukraine, basically limiting Russia's expansion (just like in history).

Unfortunately, German lands were not so full of economic resources like Francia and Briton, so he had to build cottages all over the landscape. Also, the process of building privateers and killing ships took a long time since the Netherlands had their East Indiamen and they're right in the way. Eventually he sunk 28 ships and won prematurely, just barely prevented from founding his Sicilian kingdom.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I can think of multiple other squatting sequences that would be good:

1. Greece founding Rome or Carthage first and another city in Epirus (and not founding any cities in Greece proper)
2. England founding Amsterdam or Danzig (would help if some of their settlers were preloaded)
3. Carthage founding Lisbon or Toledo (much better for future circumnavigation/colonization, since Spain is typically hostile and won't open borders)
4. Maya founding any on Aztec/Incan sites or even Washington
5. France building a capital further east of the Rhine (Bona Mansio of course needs to be razed soon thereafter )

The problem with these is that, unlike the Arabians, Vikings and Japanese, they do not start with their workers, and if the capital isn't founded within 2-3 moves, you don't get workers. Why can't these civs get their workers to start?

 

[Heathcliff]

I think the capital should be prebuilt when they spawn so it always comes on it's historical location. Maybe that will make some UVH's like Egypts harder though.

 

[chococid]

Egypt gets to squat on Ethopia. If you stop them from getting to the coast, they'll get torn to shreds by barbarians while they hunt for a place to build the city.

This doesn't help Egypt at all if you're going for the HV, of course, and Egypt has its own set of problems with actually surviving long-term, but it's still fairly amusing to watch what ends up being the only other Jewish nation just withering away.

 

[Walliard]

England's settlers would have to be preloaded, otherwise Inverness will become your capital on the third turn. I guess you're stuck with the 3000 BC start as it is.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I think the capital should be prebuilt when they spawn so it always comes on it's historical location. Maybe that will make some UVH's like Egypts harder though.

What capital(s) are you referring to?

--Berlin/Germany (if anything it should be Aachen, the de facto capital of the Frankish king Charlemagne, giving much more weight to France's claim to found a capital east of the Rhine)
--Kiev/Novgorod/Moscow for Russia
--the many contenders for Spain (Cordoba, Barcelona, Toledo, etc) before the unification
--an Indus valley capital? No way with all that swamp. If anything Pataliputra should be favored over Delhi since it was the capital of Asoka whose empire encompasses the extent of India in the game.
--Egypt should definitely start at Memphis (Ineb Hedj) closer to the Delta, west of the Nile, even though Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt they did not make their capital Thebes (Niwt-Rst)--only later did that happen.

And don't get me started on China--Anyang/Xi'an should be favored over Beijing.

Addendum: just read the following in the Memphis, Egypt entry in Wikipedia. All the more reason to start more up north!!

The Egyptian historian Manetho referred to Memphis as Hi-Ku-P'tah ("Place of the Ka of Ptah"), which he wrote in Greek as Aί γυ πτoς (Ai-gu-ptos), giving us the Latin AEGYPTVS and the modern English Egypt. The term Copt is also believed to be etymologically derived from this name.

 

[Verily]

If you really wanted the original capital of Egypt, that would be Tjeny (modern Girga, often known as This or Thinis).

 

[chococid]

Egypt gets to squat on Ethopia. If you stop them from getting to the coast, they'll get torn to shreds by barbarians while they hunt for a place to build the city.

This doesn't help Egypt at all if you're going for the HV, of course, and Egypt has its own set of problems with actually surviving long-term, but it's still fairly amusing to watch what ends up being the only other Jewish nation just withering away.

I take this back. I just got the UHV with the Ahdju location.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

The Ethiopians must have been really obliging not to trample on your 2nd city with their swordsman/axeman.

 

[chococid]

The Ethiopians must have been really obliging not to trample on your 2nd city with their swordsman/axeman.

I gave them a tech fairly early on, then they lost a city to the Impi. I captured it from the Impi, razed it, and made the Ethiopians my vassals. They had something like 90 turns to research construction (and it only got worse, as you can see in the final pic).

I'm doing India now, I've got a save after getting all 5 religions but I'm having a hard time getting the country to stay together... but that's another topic.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

The Aksum area is great for production, so you must have gotten the Great Lighthouse there. But how the heck were you able to not have that city flip the the Ethiopians? (I guess unless you founded it after the Ethiopian spawned, but how would you have enough time to build the GL?...a saved Great Engineer maybe?)
Maybe I'll do your thing for my Egyptian space race...

 

[chococid]

The Aksum area is great for production, so you must have gotten the Great Lighthouse there. But how the heck were you able to not have that city flip the the Ethiopians? (I guess unless you founded it after the Ethiopian spawned, but how would you have enough time to build the GL?...a saved Great Engineer maybe?)
Maybe I'll do your thing for my Egyptian space race...

My build order was warrior until Niwt-rst hit level 2, worker, settler, go there, then Niwt-rst went Stonehenge then Pyramids.

Early tech order was masonry, monotheism, animal husbandry, fishing (in some order). I bulbed one of the techs on the way to Great Library, and traded for a few others. Aesthetics I just had to bite the bullet and work on for 20 turns, then literature for... 8 or so? Whatever. I got a GE to build the Library in one turn.

I used the whip a *lot* in Niwt-Rst, not as much in Ahdju. Ahdju had so much production I realized it was better off to let it stay there- and of course once I got Caste System, I switched and stuck as many artists in Niwt-Rst that I could without the city starving. You see the result in the culture graph.

Ahdju just goes work boat, get to level 2, worker, Great Lighthouse and it builds very quickly due to the fact that you've got all the production there.

The Worker in Niwt-Wrst goes stone, marble, farm, horses, then heads down to Ahdju. He should get there roughly the same time you get the second one in Ahdju- have them work together so you get the higher production immediately.

I had plenty of time left, and built like a dozen wonders by the time the game was over. You can see Ahdju has the Moai Statues in it, though that was after I built the Lighthouse.

The Ethiopians were completely irrelevant to the actual gameplay- that's what happens when you have a grand total of 2 tiles that you can actually work in your capital. (Their second city was built where the elephants are, but the Impi took care of that for me.)

The city is far enough away from the Ethiopian location that it won't immediately flip (if you build one square west from there, it will try to flip) though I think that has something to do with how high I got the cultural borders before the Ethiopians spawned. The city kept requesting to leave, but I kept refusing, and once I vassalized Ethiopia, it was over.

I like this strategy a lot more than the "capture Jerusalem and lose the lighthouse to Arabia" strategy.

 

[Barak]

Starting a game as the Franks (French) I had built Breme as my capital, Paris and Stuttgart, plus had Marseilles and Bordeaux flip to me (600 start). The Dutch got moved up to Norway, and settled their capital of Gravenhage in the location of Stravenger (sp?)

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Starting a game as the Franks (French) I had built Breme as my capital, Paris and Stuttgart, plus had Marseilles and Bordeaux flip to me (600 start). The Dutch got moved up to Norway, and settled their capital of Gravenhage in the location of Stravenger (sp?)

Yeah, I've done that too (see the wiki for the neo-Frankish empire). Breme is a monster site for population. Tried doing Cologne but s'Gravenhage was founded in Denmark which crimped my space. I think the best 2nd "German" city for the French is Constance on the stone because you can found it early without risk of flipping to Germans, it doesn't eat into Breme's or Paris's space too much, it's on a hill (so good defense), and you get stone early for the Notre Dame. (I presume Stuttgart is east of the stone, so you have to found it after the 3rd move when Germany can't flip cities anymore)
The Dutch teleported all the way to Ireland in one game since all of Europe was occupied. Of course they collapsed eventually.
BTW, as the Germans I tried founding Hamburg as my capital but Amsterdam eventually takes over all its western tiles. The best way is still to have Frankfurt flip as the capital on the 3rd move.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

The city is far enough away from the Ethiopian location that it won't immediately flip (if you build one square west from there, it will try to flip) though I think that has something to do with how high I got the cultural borders before the Ethiopians spawned. The city kept requesting to leave, but I kept refusing, and once I vassalized Ethiopia, it was over.

But if you look on the atlas Abdju is one block east of Aksum which is still in their flip area...so that's why I wondered why you kept it. If it works, don't let Rhye read this thread (he already sabotaged my Greek and Carthage squatting technique by putting a DIRECTION_SOUTH for the preloaded galleys)

Addendum: maybe it's because you vassalized them before the 3rd turn? (But even then I've had vassals declare war on me if I didn't give them the city, e.g. I was Aztec and America wanted my Florida city)

 

[chococid]

But if you look on the atlas Abdju is one block east of Aksum which is still in their flip area...so that's why I wondered why you kept it. If it works, don't let Rhye read this thread (he already sabotaged my Greek and Carthage squatting technique by putting a DIRECTION_SOUTH for the preloaded galleys)

Like I said, if you go one square west of there, it flips (or you go to war, whatever). I don't know if it's because my culture had already hit 500 and they were forced to build one square too far away from being able to flip it or if it's because they simply can't insta-flip that tile to begin with. I'm fairly new to RFC so I don't know how exactly it works internally.

EDIT: and what atlas?

Addendum: maybe it's because you vassalized them before the 3rd turn? (But even then I've had vassals declare war on me if I didn't give them the city, e.g. I was Aztec and America wanted my Florida city)

I definitely didn't vassalize them that early. It's location-based in one way or another.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

EDIT: and what atlas?

This atlas (which needs updating since some spawn areas have changed, like more Germany and Russia):
http://civ4.technologyresourcesgroup.com/

Don't read the wiki until you've done all the UHVs--it's nice to have somebody good to try their hand at UHVs from a fresh viewpoint.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

Tried the Ethiopian squat (without a capital there) and failed. And if you look on the map, even if you founded a city north of Aksum it would still eventually flip to them because Aksum's palace will have enough culture.
Did you update your version (or are you playing straight out of the box)?