Strategy for playing boreal map

gavenkoa

Prince
Joined
Jun 11, 2019
Messages
416
Location
Ukraine
A Boreal map generation script puts lots of tundra & some plain tiles (almost no grassland) with Deer and some Sheep / Wheat. There are some Gems, Fish / Crap & no Silver / Gold for happiness & Calendar resources.

So for high difficulty levels you don't have health / happiness resources.

Also most of the tiles are bad for production but Deer provides food surplus.

What kind of playstyle should I lean to? I think about:

* placing cities only around resources or near ocean - this might limit compact city placement crippling maintenance cost...
* early on burn food surplus from Deer on 1F1C1H cottaged plains, and even river tundra cottages 1F2C - when I hit whip limit.
* pursue Heredity Rule early to fight happiness limit, then lean to Representative and compensate unhappiness with buildings / religion (as there are no happiness resources besides Gems).
* shift to Representative to burn Deer food surplus on Great people, instead of plains / tundra tiles... Then Parthenon is a interesting Great Wonder...

I can't figure out if chopping is a viable option, tundra tiles without forest are very weak... and forest provides lacked healthiness... Maybe early on I keep some own tundra forest (leaving 2 or 4 in a fat cross) per city but make an army of workers to chop conquering forest - as foes land will be less developed to rely on & to support military buildup... Deer provided hummers provide enough performance for workers & settlers (for my Imperialistic leader) & research rate is too low to have buildings to build, maybe I should focus on war then...

Also I don't understand what way I could organize production. There are no plain/grass mines, low happy limits make whip difficult... Seems whip is the way with all those bad tiles...

That is my capital on T130 and cottages are essential to keep research progress, but I cannot make cottage nor mine capital... It cripples my research rate & building construction...

What should I concentrate on? Which techs or civics or great wonders (Immortal / Deity)?

1728058839126.png
 
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I would chop the resourceless tundra (not deer or fur) liberally. The extra hammer on a tundra forest is not worth much. I would rather have a cottage there or just not work the tile and have specialists from the extra food. A lot of your production will come from chopping and whipping in cities with some food. Cities without food should be rare except if needed to grab a specific resource. As always with bad land quality, wonders that boost your research, like Pyramids or Great Lighthouse (not sure if enough coast for it on that map script), will shine. And yes, if not Pyramids then get Monarchy early for happiness.
 
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Well since there are a lots of tundra/plains, you can't rely much on cottages. Mids must be the wonder for both :)-cap and specialist boost.

Also I don't understand what way I could organize production. There are no plain/grass mines, low happy limits make whip difficult... Seems whip is the way with all those bad tiles...
Yes, obviously whip as you won't have a lot of good tiles (=cottages). Mines suck anyway though, so it's not much different compared to a normal map script. At least you have a ton of forest to chop!
 
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Yeah with food plains river cottages can be good. I haven't played the map script so I don't know if there are in general many plains river tiles in the capital area. In the screenshot there is only one grass river and one plains river tile.
 
On Boreal maps you can find a reasonable amount of (forested) gems, often in clusters. This can make early aggression especially rewarding, so it is worth to scout your neighbours' capital cities early on.
The vast amount of forests also facilitates early aggression, since the AI are usually slower to put that production to good use.

Regarding your T130 (!) screenshot, it seems you could have expanded a lot earlier. That city spot you marked to the west is awesome and immediately connected to the capital by the river. All it needed would have been a warrior and a settler. Now it's T130, your workers have built many roads, the cap is building a forge and a barb city has been allowed to spawn in the west.
 
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