Team Game - Isolated Pacal (Deity)

[Fippy]

Trireme from Mutal is okay.
I would agree that we keep farms, so each city can contribute a bit towards units

Some micro ideas, Pigs next turn for Mutal and we could grow (copper can be used this turn), then give them back to CI (cottage can also be swapped with CI).
Lak can drop it's scientist, and CI use 2.

GS can replace an unit (Axe south) as fogbuster?
We also have an Axe under Calakmul not needed against barb galleys anymore.
Mutal warrior can be delayed imo, and we start Trireme
(Uxmal warrior too, small gains but since it's a community game ~~)

 

[Lain]

Oke, so collecting a bit...

Mutal starts building Trireme, takes pigs, grows next turn. Maybe keeps pigs too for reaching size 11 quicker? CI is already at health cap, limited use in growing more for now.

Lakamha drops scientist, CI uses two from now on. GS replaces a fogbuster south.

Would consider another farm between Calakmul & Mayapan to help grow and build infrastructure, helps Mayapan reach size 10+ quicker. What you think?

Apart from that just grow, queue some Forges, delay/build/move warriors as needed.

Would play next if nobody minds~. Just need feedback on that farm here.

Spoiler :

A bit long-term, but.. would consider building 3 settlers before Optics, in Mutal/Lakamha/Calakmul. Mutal and Lakamha can generate enough overflow for 1T Caravel with a chop. And Calakmul has good food ... maybe we even get a Forge here before settler whip action.

CI would be free from whip duty to run scientists ... could whip 4th caravel for 2 pop though, I think that would be a good idea.

 

[Fippy]

Sure, shared farm is nice imo each city can have a bit more food as needed.
Worker 1e of Cal has a nice route, 1t chop forest then could improve Iron first.

Your 3 settler cities sound good

 

[Lain]

Played a bit. Optics soon, so focus needed and a good time for fresh perspectives. Already think the work boat will come a bit late for clams :/ well, can settle it last.

Spoiler :

Used pigs for Mutal mostly, because CI reached health cap anyways and capital had some more potential



New forest, yay



Gave lake to Lakamha, will good tiles to grow on.



Started windmilling, Trireme is out... should start on settlers soon I think



Would suggest whipping Forges soon instead of building more warriors... +1 happy from gems and whip anger can recover before we need units.



And what about our settling plan... clam is obvious, but what about something like this: saves forests on the river (levee, who cares?) and more importantly, stone/copper in first ring for trades. For improvements we can go full farms for these 2 cities, Granary/Forge/Barracks and build units. Maybe even skip Barracks since we go Vassalage?



Only thing I am not so happy about is the late-ish work boat now. Miscalculated timing a bit.

Did marks where I think workshops would be good. Put 1T into one in the north already. We will have 30+ towns, so time to think about production a bit I think .

Should also hook up all resources soon (2nd gems for example) so we are ready for trades

 

[dutchfire]

I had a three city dotmap earlier, cities on copper, plains hill and 3N (and possibly 1W or 1E) of plains hill. 2 cities can share pigs, copper city is a bit weak and needs a border pop (or calakmul border pop) to get best tiles.

I would never have considered using a GS as fogbuster myself.

How much do we want to rush forges when health is currently our biggest limit on city size and working all that lush green land?

 

[Anysense]

How much do we want to rush forges when health is currently our biggest limit on city size and working all that lush green land?

Thats what I'd like to know too. Although I don't think that health is a big concern here, as cities have ~5 surplus while reaching happy cap, thats they can't grow bigger anyway. Usually I don't build many forges pre cuirs because it takes 5 cuirs for a forge to pay back, which doesn't seem to help with a cuirssier rus very much. Here we don't have much to build right now and there is lenty of time to regrow, but whipping means not working cottages and other tiles and commerce is vitally important. Is it worth it? If forges are no greater than 3-pop whips and you grow into unhapiness prior to whipping then its not much of a loss, may be 10 lost before the city in question regrows.
Edit: Oh, I forgot about warriors, so the point about happy cap is not fully valid. Normally I don't build many warriors for that purpose except the capital. Apart from paying for warriors, you also pay increased maintenance. Perhaps, just build another city? How do you evaluate such things?

 

[Lain]

The idea here would be to take the hit in commerce after/when reaching Optics, while we essentially wait to establish contact and don't tech anything. Forges have plenty of time to pay back their investment with the attack coming no earlier than 1200 AD. For early Cuirs it might be different, yup

I liked your dotmap for sharing pigs Dutchfire, would mean we produce 4 settlers though. And I think maintenance rises quite a bit with the 10th city. Also the copper city would be fairly weak with lots of coast and only a few land tiles. Don't know what's best really, sharing pigs would be very useful for unit production + drafting from multiple cities is stronger, spreading the unhappiness and all that. Fippy?

 

[Anysense]

I downloaded the latest save and passed a few turns. As 5 pop added the maintenance changed. Cities 31->32, civics 25->29, inflation 6->7, thats an increse of 6 in total. Then you need 5 warriors, which brings the number to 11 or 2.1 per a unit of population, and thats without expensive civics like bureau or OR. Rather expensive but worth it if you grow to work a financial riverside mill.
What effect on the maintenance will a new city have? Does other cities being size ~10 matter?

 

[Fippy]

Was busy yesterday, we had to get moving in our sgotm

Overall i get forges when it's not hurting anymore, usually.
Lain already explained that a bit, in Iso we have Optics as huge goal and there are 2 ways of playing:

* minimalistic, keeping unit costs at 0 with no Mona and teching only what you need for Optics (or sometimes Alpha added, if building research pays back).
Here you count on meeting AIs fast enuf for trading & backfilling techs, so your small empire until then does not hurt too much.

* or what we are doing in this game, not caring much about those costs and increasing our future potential instead.
Ofc that's helped by having a great leader and gems Without FIN our Optics date would be pretty bad now, 6 cities and so many warriors is very expensive.

Minimalistic games often have research rates of ~120 at 100%, here we have 220 already.
But in both cases, Infra and stuff usually gets whipped after reaching Optics cos the commerce hole stops hurting now.

New cities
Sharing 1 food resi between 2 cities is usually not good after Optics, starting at size 1 and so.
But sometimes if there's lots of green land, normal farms can still make decent whipping cities alone, especially with exp and quick granary.

Here we have 4 grassland tiles south of Lak, and 4 west of Cal.
It's also worth mentioning that Maya have ball courts, so happy cap can be huge with that and forge later..a good food city can whip many units before running into happy problems.

Need to think some more about that (and look at your dot map too, Dutchfire), but already posting my other stuff.
Will also look at forges.

 

[Fippy]

In response to your latest post, Anysense.
New cities instantly cost lots of gold, starting with the ~5th.
Pic

Spoiler :

We can see Lak is rather unexpensive, size 10 and still under 5 maintenance.
60% or so comes from number of cities, as it's close to Mutal.

New cities increase that cost everywhere, let's say we pay 0.5g more if settling another one.
3gpt more in exisiting cities, and another 3gpt at the new place = 6gpt for city #.
Save to assume Pigs city would cost 2g at size 1 for distance from palace too.
Brings minimum costs to 8gpt, i am sure there's something else hidden..so let's say 10gpt just for settling.

Total pop matters for Civic costs i think, guys like Izuul or Pedro would know more

 

[Fippy]

Forges, Mutal busy with boat and Settler into Cara?
Waiting seems good here.
Same in Lak imo.

CI looks well set up for forge whip in 3t, into harbor.
We could drop scientists for few turns to gain pop back then, and use an Engi to make up for GPP loss.
Probably also switching cottage for farm with Uxmal in 2t to help with regrowing.

Uxmal hurts too much for whip imo, i would instead send one warrior from CI over after we whipped there.
Finishing warrior in Lak seems sensible to replace him mid term.

Mayapan forge at size 10 looks good, if we spare Uxmal it can cover one cottage.

Cala looks good for settler 3-whip at next pop, overflow finishing forge and we need no further warri.

 

[Fippy]

Dotmap..yours looks very thoughtful and has good ideas, Dutchfire.
But i would use only 2 cities like Lain (plus clam) for a couple reasons.

City under Lak struggles with getting irrigation.
Only 1 (shared) forest to help.
And 3 settlers fits better into our current city plans i think.

Unfortunate that we cannot really settle on copper, if Cal had an earlier 100 culture..
not having the river tiles in first ring hurts.

 

[dutchfire]

Yes, I would say that having an additional city there is probably bad in terms of commerce and would be good in terms of production only if we do mass-drafting (because it helps share the unhappiness).

 

[Lain]

Yup agree with everything pretty much. Whip forges in some places like you said and then shuffle warriors as needed.

Would you whip 3 pop or 4 pop in CI? Because 4 pop would mean harbor gets finished from overflow pretty much .

Mutal + Lakamha whip settlers for 3 pop into Caravels that are finished with a chop. Maybe a 4th caravel from CI later? Just normally built, so 2T after Optics.

Still need a final dotmap I think ? Even if we agree on 3 more cities, do we put pig city on the coast (where the GS stands right now) or on the hill? What about copper/stone ... not going on the river, right?

Most micro questions can be decided in game when continuing imo, depending on what you feel is best. Would you play next, Fippy? Finally want to meet the other AI

Also looks like the Calakmul settler will be done soon, so where should the 7th city be? Should maybe be cautious with that until Optics is in. If things go bad and we have to self-tech Calendar etc it would be a burden to have new cities

5 Great Generals born already, no Taoism yet and wonder screen looks fairly normal. So can't be that bad. Also Mansa wasn't in the game I think.

 

[Fippy]

Interesting question with 4-whip in CI, but looks good.
We should probably steal Uxmal farm so we can grow and do that next turn already
Some nice micro possible, Uxmal can take cottage from Mayapan where a new one can be worked.

Hmm, pigs city at GS spot looks a bit better.
Copper city with low food cannot work stone much i guess, so could be useful for pigs city.

Busy here, out today and sgtom (and also have 1 gotm to play still) so i think it's better if you play on for now.

 

[Lain]

Okay, where to begin...

Spoiler :

Shaka wants to kill us



Oopsy, wrong game. Well, whipped 4-pop in CI, overflow into Harbor. Could have almost put it into Colossus, but it got built on that turn :/. Pretty late though.



Preparing 3-pop settler whip in Calakmul, angry face doesn't hurt while building settler/worker, it doesn't consume food. Whipped next turn for quicker city, no overflow stuff. Also preparing settlers in Mutal and Lakamha.



Mayapan will only whip 3-pop. No overflow, but nothing useful to build anyway (Barracks, meh) and it's harder to grow back without good food.



Mutal and Lakamha whip their settlers 1T before reaching Optics. Using pigs in Mutal was a fail, but I wasn't sure if overflow would be enough otherwise. Workers in position to chop next turn.





Meanwhile the (earlier) Calakmul settler grabs pigs (two workers improve immediately), it's the strongest city and costs less. Also, work boat wasn't in position for clams anyway.



Increased vision through Optics leads to enemy spotting. Nice and close, squishy Asoka/Gandhi could be a good target?



Caravels finished, the 3rd one upgraded in the south. I boarded two caravels with Great Scientists for scouting, so... try to not get them killed whoevers plays next





Met Asoka first... was happy that he didn't have Optics, but... will have to keep looking.



Western exploration yielded this fellow... doesn't know Asoka, but probably hated by everyone on his continent . Would still pull the trigger on this deal though, world map is really nice... but could discuss about taking Masonry. Will it count towards global WFYABTA? Without knowing other AI.



Scouting GS on Asoka's continent found this guy aswell... he lacks Machinery.



Him and Asoka are not best friends, so might want to be careful here... I suggest not trading with Asoka, Gilgamesh is fair game. Asoka won't hate us too much even if we trade with Giggles. And happy Giggles means we don't run into troubles, he is fairly aggressive, so...



Also settled cities #8 and #9.
Overview techs + wonders





India would be nice, but might be too big...

Lots of stuff to discuss. Some workers not moved yet... trade for Maths before chopping

Could do the trick where we finish Astronomy in anarchy while switching into Vassalage
(Optics for Feuda)

 

[dutchfire]

Interesting, probably would be good to think about about our long term strategy. I will have a look at the save.

We know that there is at least one more civ on the Gilgamesh/Asoka continent, right? Since Asoka is angry at Gilgamesh for declaring on a friend.

 

[Snowbird]

Well, Asoka owns Rotterdam, which is not very plausible name for an ex-barb city.... I would have never guessed India would do that well on that map...

 

[dutchfire]

Good point.
Rotterdam is city #4 for the Dutch.
Asoka has Harappan (Barbarian) and Bangalore is listed noticeably low and not in the regular order. Strange.
Korean and Sumerian have the usual cities.

Why engineer in CI?

We now want to trade for a lot of techs, right? Priorities math, calendar and alphabet so that we can bulb Astro (need to avoid opening up Paper and Philosophy).

What units do we want to use to attack? Maces/muskets+Cannons?

 

[Lain]

I would prefer (drafted) Rifles+Cannons. I mean, the stack would have Macemen mainly I guess, just a few Rifles for stack defense and tough battles. 5 Rifles, 12 Macemen, 12 Cannons. Something like this.

For trading, we could do something like this now... shame that Gilgamesh is going for Machinery, that kind of ruins things a bit.

T135: Trade for Feudalism + Mathematics ... will cost 100 gold or so unfortunately. Tech Hunting or Masonry at 100%

T136: Trade for Alpha + Calendar. Bulb 2x. Switch into Vassalage (anarchy).

T137: Overflow from Hunting/Masonry has finished Astro while in anarchy. Trade Astro for Guilds. Start on Gunpowder tech 550 AD..... although looking at this, it's not clear who would trade us Guilds . So maybe nevermind.

Acquiring Feudalism on T136 would also work of course.

Now it would be nice to know if Masonry generates enough overflow for that ... I could have prepared it better. But with the kind of beakers we have + decent sized capital for good bulbs, it should still work.

No special reason for engineer in CI, just that we are not teching anything right now. Again, could have prepared Masonry for major overflow. Or we do Hunting (meh), that would definitely be enough.