Stuck in a tight spot early on - Washington/Monarch, NHNE

[guspasho]

I rolled a random start, standard/normal/fractal, and this is what I got. By 2600BC, I've already explored all the land I can because I'm blocked by Louis and most of my land is crap. There's a big desert separating me from Louis, room for one good city and one crappy city that secures horses near him, and room for two good cities near me.

How would you guys play this? I think my first priority will have to be to take Paris in order to get out of this. And that the best way to do that is to settle the copper and silver near me and then send a stack of axes to Paris. I think if I tried setting up blocker cities and grabbing the gold and horses and going for a horse rush, it would take too long and my economy couldn't take the hit.

What do you think? Any other ideas?

Just so you guys can also critique my start, I SIPed on the plains hill, teched AH>Hunting>Mining>BW, and built WB>Worker>WB>WB>WB. The third and forth WBs are for coastal exploration. I tried worker first but after my worker improved the cow and deer, it had nothing to do for 13 turns until BW came in. So, WB first, and it was only idle for 3 turns.

What should I plan to research for my rush? Wheel>Pottery>Writing>0%? Wheel>0%?

 

[Revent]

Start again and axe rush?

 

[vranasm]

i could see here case for 3-4 cities catapult rush.

the distance is a bit meh and the big desert in the middle says to me you need currency before rush.

and then move capital to french capital obviously

 

[The Oz-Man]

I agree--axes and catapults are the key here. Maybe use your first scientist to bulb Maths?

The good news is that the capital has enough food to feed another city. You can get four cities in here, and you've got lots of forests. Save them up and chop-chop-chop once Math and Construction come in. Louie will be so busy wonderspamming that he won't know what hit him.

 

[vranasm]

is this by any chance K-mod?

 

[The Oz-Man]

It's not K-Mod.

It's not Washington, either; it's Lincoln.

Spoiler :

Louis built three wonders for me. You know, three wonders. Instead of the troops he needed to fend off Axapult Reaping.

 

[vranasm]

It's not K-Mod.

It's not Washington, either; it's Lincoln.

Spoiler :

Louis built three wonders for me. You know, three wonders. Instead of the troops he needed to fend off Axapult Reaping.

in my game he built around 30 archers...

 

[The Oz-Man]

That's pretty crazy. When it came time and war were declared he built up some forces (and chopped a wall in Paris), but I had no real problem wiping him out other than the fact that it came sort of slowly. He got a Great Engineer from the 'Mids and spent it on the Great Lighthouse in his second city.

 

[guspasho]

I'm having trouble doing this quickly. What was your research order? Did you try to settle any of the land on his side of the desert before it was time to strike? How did you squeeze four cities out of that land otherwise?

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Agreed that a Construction war looks desirable

Just so you guys can also critique my start, I SIPed on the plains hill, teched AH>Hunting>Mining>BW, and built WB>Worker>WB>WB>WB. The third and forth WBs are for coastal exploration. I tried worker first but after my worker improved the cow and deer, it had nothing to do for 13 turns until BW came in. So, WB first, and it was only idle for 3 turns.

What should I plan to research for my rush? Wheel>Pottery>Writing>0%? Wheel>0%?

Hunting should be researched before Animal Husbandry:
-Hunting is a prerequisite to AH so, once you know it, it gives you a discount on AH's research.
- The deer is 4 food while the cows are 3 food: you want to improve the deer first.
Following with Bronze Working is ok (prolly even right). Sailing or The Wheel will be needed afterwards.

WB>Worker is the way to go. However, following with 3 workboats is unneeded. Even though extra workboats are cool to explore, they are costly in the early game.
I feel a 2nd worker at size 4 would have served you better (many forests + bronze working = extra chops into WB + settler).

From where you are, you can safely grow to size 5 and go Worker (chop, chop, chop), Settler, Settler. Maybe you'll need another worker at that point.
I take it that Washington won't grow into unhappiness at size 5, right?

City spots:
- In between clams & copper (instant access to resources);
- 1E of Wheat (resource in 1st ring, plains hills city tile (2hammers), 2 green farm, 2 hills, lake tiles);
- 2W1S of cows (plains hills city tile, plenty of hills, last riverside green farm). That city will take the longest to set up since the cows are in its 2nd ring.
If there isn't any more food we can't see... that's your base! Hence the rush...


If planning city locations near the lake close to France, consider settling coastal so you can count the lake tiles as 3 food tiles (Lighthouse). Especially important when food is scarce.
e.g.: 1E of horses + 2W1S of copper covers the whole lake.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

It's not Washington, either; it's Lincoln.

Then, Lincoln being Philosophical, it might be a good idea to bulb Mathematics on the way to Construction.
Not necessarily an easy thing to do well because it requires planning & timing.

After Writing is researched, Masonry will be required in addition to Maths to start research on Construction.
1st GP takes 9 turns to complete, running 2 scientists.
--> Player can bank gold + research Masonry after Writing is done and before the GP is born.

Banking gold for 10 turns is certainly close to giving the funds to research Construction. For sure, 15 turns would be enough.
--> Library must be completed very fast after Writing is researched and the city must have enough population to hire 2 scientists asap (size 6 is desirable, if happiness allows).
Best way to do this is to have a couple of workers on duty near Washington when Writing is done:
3 chops and some turns working mines would work well. With mines, you can easily produce 10hammers/turn so, with 3 chops (60 hammers), it could take no more than 3 turns to complete the Library.
Otherwise, 2 chops + a little production will enable a 2 population whip. However, you might not have enough happies to afford that.
Remember you can pre-chop and even pre-mine.

 

[The Oz-Man]

Well, he's Charismatic with Silver nearby, so he has some early options. And his capital has four sources of food (none really great, but in good enough quantities to make up for it), so chop/whip is definitely possible.

 

[Apricottage]

The desert is rough, but I can see three or four good city locations. With five cities and that huge desert to limit troop movements into your territory, I think you could definitely pull off a solid war. 6-7 Catapults, 5 Axemen, a Spearman, and an Archer (for fortifying the first captured city) would definitely be enough to win on this difficulty with constant reinforcements streaming in. Just be sure to have roads leading up to Louis' territory!

 

[Pengu]

I don't see the problem here. On a higher difficulty maybe, but with just 3-4 cities you can get way ahead of the AI by just teching. Sure, Louis REX really fast this game but when I got engineering he still had archers. What was annoying though he didn't build 1 single wonder, heck no one on the continent built one
So Louis had a ton of archers to plow through. After he capped though only Sury's damn elephants cause some problems. A very slow tech game this one. Lib went very late and the game took forever cause of the continents.

 

[vranasm]

well I mostly ignored AH on this one

went with hunting, mining, bw, wheel (maybe wheel and bw were reversed, I am sure I had wheel before settled city 2 because I had it almost instaconnected and I went for very early city 2), pottery, writing, then I guess sailing, AH, math, construction

builds were wb, worker, warrior, most probably size 2 settler

settled 2nd city between wheat and copper and stagnate it on size 2 with more settlers/workers (thus I went for the wheel)

the reasoning behind the tech path was

1) city 2 is inland (copper+wheat were too strong)
2) once you have wheel pottery is cheaper then AH
3) plains cows are very bad tiles to invest 150 beakers when you have low commerce and we had already copper

What I used the trees for? Library and worker. I run then 2 scientists generating 2 GS before the war started (the attack date was somewhere along the 450 BC date).
First GS was academy, 2nd was clueless since I just settled it to have at least 10 bpt on 0% slider.

city 3 and 4 were east from capital

city 3 overlap on 2nd clams, first ring silver

city 4 was 1E from the grassland cows, which proved to be mistake since that spot has no hills and I just cottaged all grassland except the grassland tile at the lake which was farmed, but the city basically sucked for production (the only units produced were whipped)

as for the city 2 location... it actually is very strong production center with copper, couple of hills... future Heroic Epic spot.

After I successfully wared superexpanding Louis (he had around 8 cities at the point of mine attack) I moved capital to Paris and my former capital was used for NE and forbidden palace.

Very slow going game... not a single AI had alphabet up to 1 AD... me too since I had other techs to hunt.
Lost Music by 2 turns which made me pretty angry :-(

edit:
to clarify the city 4 spot...
much better is 3E from city 3 spot since city 3 can't feed all those plains hills with clams and thus you can give at least 2 plains hills to grass cow city which has food but lacks production if settled farther away.

 

[guspasho]

Lots of great advice here. I played through a second time implementing a lot of it and conquered France by 600AD. I think that was probably still too slow judging by vranasm's tech path. I thought I'd need currency first, so I teched to currency, bulbed math, teched to construction, and turned off the slider. I managed to get a few more techs over time with my scientists, Suri traded me monarchy so I could get wine hooked up. But what ultimately happened was right before I killed Louis, Suri and his vassal Zara both declared on me. My economy was already in the crapper (-50 each turn with 0% on the slider) and with Suri leading in score, I bagged it.

I'd like to try again and see if I can attack even faster, but the big problem I have is that solving games like this when using foreknowledge seems like cheating. Who would skip AH unless they already knew what they were racing for? I'm having trouble deciding if that's a fair way to play the game.

I'll give it another try without alphabet and currency. How does your economy survive without currency?

 

[vranasm]

actually i think I gave it a fair thought.

I saw a lot of deity games where players skip AH if the situation doesn't call for it. With deer, a lot of trees and finding copper right outside the capital BFC there is not many arguments for AH even in fair thought.

I teched currency after construction while building army...you can fund then CoL/Alpha from war money too.

 

[pigswill]

Fun romp up to 300bc. Put second city on Louis's doorstep (1E of horses grabbing lakes and gold). Chopped/whipped Glight (1100bc). Expanded a bit, teched to HbR then whipped out a bunch of lvl1 HAs.
Louis expanded to 3 cities while building Gwall, Stonehenge and Pyramids. He didn't have any metals (it was his last mistake). HA rush. No Louis. Now up to 9 cities, currency and CoL (I've ignored aesthetics so far).