Starting Position

If we go for Stonehenge, it would be like this:

Research: Agriculture, Bronze Working, Mysticism, then Hunting, Animal Husbandry, Wheel, Pottery, Writing.

Build: Working Boat as we get Pop 2, make warrior 1-2 turns, then swop to Worker as Pop 2 is reached, complete Warrior and make a 3rd Warrior as we research Mysticism, Stonehenge (after mysticism). Stonhenge is completed Turn 42 as city is Pop 5.
We need to get out the working boat asap, as that is the only competitive advantage of early fishing, with no resources, as we can scout much ahead of others along with Vikings. Stonehenge only needs one chop.

We develop 2 wheats and 1 silver mine


Orders:
Warrior goes around in a semicircle, first SE to the point we are reaching the southern end of our lands (We are southern hemisphere), then follow the high ground towards the northwest, and then again back to capital for needed garrison work.

Working Boat goes straight westwards, then north, as the warrior has been scouting the SE and SW.

New Worker: Farm both wheats, mine one silver, then go for all chops for the Stonehenge

Charismatic trait, Silver mine, possibly the bonus from the Stonehenge monument and the warrior, will all combined produce 4 happiness, enough to boost population to 8 mid term, 5 short term.

By Turn 42, upon completing Stonehenge, we can make a settler every 7 turn without chopping, utilizing the 2 spare warriors we have in our city as garrisons.

By turn 49, we have the first settler ready, Turn 56 for the 2nd. By turn 60 we can have 3 cities up and running.

Monuments in all cities + Charismatic trait and silver, as well as 1 garrison allows us to get 3 cities of Pop 8 within a short period of time.

Dropping the silvermine and chopping a bit earlier, mining the same hill, may allow us to get Stonehenge by Turn 41, at the cost of Animal Husbandry a bit earlier, due to the immense value of the silvermine.
 
This plan allows us to REX maximum with a mixture of Settlers (2), workers and yet more warriors until we have researched metal casting (pottery, masonry and metal casting), where we then can build forges in our cities.
 
I don't see a reason not to do a worker first in any scenario; we lose so much with each extra turn the wheat is unfarmed. I got Stonehenge at 36 or 37 or whatever I mentioned in testing the same capital land, with definitely at least pop 5 and all resources farmed/mined, plus the worker free for chops after that (Stonehenge is done without a chop I think). We could build a workboat before Stonehenge and that would be ok of course (worker => workboat => Stonehenge) as I think I did worker =>warrior => Stonehenge but the worker first gets us going much faster.
 
I think I will insist on the early working boat, which enables us to map a lot of the world before anyone else. This is priceless intelligence we would need.
 
Is building the boat 2nd after the worker not still early?

The intelligence isn't really valuable until we can do something with it, and if we're going for stonehenge (which I agree with) our first 40 turns or so are mapped out, pretty much regardless of what we discover.

What more, we'll almost certainly be in a race for stonehenge. There's a pretty good chance that the difference in finishing it on turn 37 and turn 42 is the difference in getting it and not getting it. If we're not going to go after it in the fastest way possible I don't think it is worth the risk, that includes chopping twice if necessary.

We'll be extremely vulnerable defensively after stonehenge. I'd get really uneasy if we went straight into 2 settlers without building a warrior or two or getting a horse or copper hooked up.
 
Ok, we can make Stonehenge the following way in 34 turns, not 42.

Research Agriculture, Mysticism, Bronzeworking, Animal Husbandry
Build Worker, Warrior, Stonehenge
There is only time for a singular forest chop.
Worker will develop Wheat, Wheat then silver mine, and finally chop the forested hill west as soon as BW is finished, this is the only way to go straight for Stonehenge. The city is 5 pop on completion. People would go for this?
 
Yeah, that's what I'd go for, if we all like getting Stonehenge in the first place. If we're going to do it we ought to do it fast is all imo, so we have the least risk of losing the wonder to someone else. Though there is a choice of whether to chop or mine the second silver, (chop means 2-3 turns faster on SH of course, but we could do something like get a religion or not worry about bronzeworking as early if the worker was just making both mines) but that's as fast as we can manage it, the way you have listed.
 
So do we want this thread or the other to keep on talking about Stonehenge?

But anyway, I guess the questions we have are:

I. Do we prefer a Stonehenge race to other builds/wonders/ideas?
My answer is SH is probably a top-two option for me, so yes, I'm onboard too.

II. If we get SH, is there anything to consider besides getting it as fast as possible?
I'm not really so crazy over having to have a workboat, but it is a decent idea and could be very useful. However, it IS doable - Currently building worker => warrior => Stonehenge is nice and simple, but if we want a workboat... So I'm ambivalent here.

Edit: We can get a workboat at 21 and Stonehenge still at 36. This is due to the forest chop coming in at the same time anyway, which finishes up the last bit of Stonehenge. So not a significant delay over a warrior instead of a workboat. That does leave us with just our starting warrior anywhere on the ground though. Presumably we'd build another warrior before the settler then. But on Monarch I'm not all that worried about barbs really, and we'll be smart with our opening warrior too. (Also, I've been mining both silver in all of my test runs as I've said. So chopping instead of mining the second silver gets Stonehenge faster as Provo says.)

However I could see this being really interesting, because the centering of the map combined with the workboat puts us in a good spot exploration wise.

At any rate, this is just my opinion, but I'm willing to drop 2-3 turns on Stonehenge to mine the second silver before beginning forest chops, just for the research boost. 34 is the earliest SH I can see us getting of course, but 36 is fine by me.

Oh and for the record those pointing out Colossus after Stonehenge is still possible are of course quite right - we could even have it as early as around turn 70 if we teched Metal Casting soon enough. Essentially building Stonehenge doesn't slow down our tech much towards Colossus IF we want that - it does take away production from more cities/warriors/etc... though but we know that. Colossus after Stonehenge is not at all required of course, and something may easily happen by then in game with regards to diplomacy etc... but it's out there.
 
If we gp for workboat to scout, and the starting warrior to garrison capital, and mine both silvers, I would go for building workboat, not warrior, and scout by sea, not by land. This also let our neighbors know we are by the sea, as we all are, no surprises there. The good news, workboat does not let the enemy extrapolate our capital as a slow moving scouting warrior would do.

I agree with Earthling: Build worker, then workboat, not warrior, mine both silvers, then chop the forest (faster research) and of course, target Stonehenge by turn 36 (A little gamble, but willing to take it).
This means
 
I like the sound of that as well. I'm also not that concerned about not building a warrior before stonehenge so long as we get to it fairly quickly afterwards.

Besides enabling the chop, going BW obviously shows us where copper is which can be a pretty big deal. I don't so much expect to see a rush in MTDG but building a couple copper units early makes for a lot of peace of mind.

For my part, rather than garrison the warrior I would atleast send him out on a quick loop to see the candidate locations for our second city right away. Doing it right away minimizes the chances that he encounters something dangerous. If others aren't comfortable with the risk of it that's cool too though. My playstyle doesn't totally lend itself to games that last a year =).
 
I would be okay with the workboat for our scout as long as our initial warrior stays to guard the capital. With that said, I do agree with TyBoy about the quick loop. Do a little scouting close to home then get back in time for garrison happiness.
 
I think there's a solid period of time where all that's out there is animals anyway, and even after that it's only barb warriors for a while (no AI with free archery...) So we can definitely get the starting warrior out and about some; we really might be able to just let him go the whole time, because even after Stonehenge we'd have another warrior out before 40.

We can get up to pop 5 with mined silver with no happy cap problems either. I might look up some numbers/random maps to see exactly when we'd expect barbs actually coming in on monarch, but no huts, no events means if the standard barb spawns aren't a threat before turn 40 or so then we'd have no worries keeping the warrior on a 'round the world trek. If barbs are a threat before then we still have the warrior out for 20-30 turns and then he can come back and garrison.
 
Ok, lets do this. I insist on the workboat. Best regards Provo
 
I like the workboat well enough - rather good odds for much success and I am rather optimistic/sure we won't really have a problem with barbs or land-based trouble too early for it to matter. So for the record, I'm fully onboard with the Stonehenge plan. Hope other Quatronians looking forward to the start and much excitement!

Anyway, the first set of turns while we're building the worker we still have plenty of time to discuss plans/ideas and even if something comes up in exploration or gameplay we'd adapt fine. I trust our first Lord fully though and hope there's not too much of a delay for the first 10 turns or so...hope other teams have their turnplayers around. Good luck :)
 
Game is running, first turn down for the count.

Found some wheat SE, which is good, as it was very good we settled on spot.
Also good we sent warrior here, in order to preserve scout moves later. I plan to have gridmapping with warrior going inland, where workboat covers the Western coast, in this manner we max out tile mapping.

I also found out some of Maverick and Sirius, their starting positions and preferences on research, by mapping the demographics screen right now. As there are only 3 players completing the turns, it was easy to extrapolate the numbers.

Maverick: Hammers focus and Meditation
Sirius: Food focus and Mining
 
Figures Mavericks going for a quick Oracle. Hopefully they aren't unnecessarily competing with us on Stonehenge (or if they are that they lose the race ;))

Anyway congrats on first turn played, things are sounding good. Do we need help organizing new threads/etc... soon cause I could certainly help with "records keeping" a bit now?

Edit: Obviously don't want to post on the turn tracker thread - should probably remind everyone too. But discussion of one point there - I think the discrepancy in GNP is due to Willem being creative, and getting 2 extra culture. (I never liked the change to count culture in GNP back with the BtS transition but I think that's correct).
 
Very well, could be the added culture of Willem, but I really think its the research target. Try to wiggle research objectives back and forth, and consult the Demographics screen, and you will see.
 
Not that it affects anything we do, but I think the analysis of what kinds of squares are being worked is off. 5 hammers means that person is working a plains hill forest and the 2 food are coming from their city tile. Likewise, the 5 food means any grassland with a food resource on it. Nothing is improved at this point.
 
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