First of all, a question:
I decided to play a few games on island/medium and small maps. I had troubel hooking some resources up and I don't understand why. Hopefully you can help.
My initial island didn't have any good second-city sites, so I was forced to build up my capital while waiting for a galley + settler + escort and my scouting reports to come back. I wish I had a screenshot, maybe I'll go back and add it when I get home from work. The site I chose for my second city had coastal Fish, Ivory, and 2 gems (grassland and grassland hill).
It was an excellent looking site.
While it got to work good tiles however, it didn't give any happiness.
I think it might be because it wasn't 1 landmass and the elephants + gems were not connected by road to the city tile. Let me see if I can describe the city to you properly.
..--x
x---g
e-C-g
x-f--
..---
C is the city tile. X is a land tile - either plains, grassland, or hill.
- is a water tile
e for elephants, g for gems
.. is nothing, just to help appearance/format for the post
As you can see the city itself is surrounded by water on all sides, so none of the resources touch the city tile. Not getting the +2/+3(w/forge) happiness really hurt, particularly since this island was not in the direction of my closest neighbor, but I thought that resource combination was too good to pass up. Does anyone know why that happened? I roaded every tile there was nearby, and eventually its culture overlapped with my capital and the resources were still not connected.
Is this a bug or by design?
----------
I've been playing most of my recent games with Aggressive AI on and No Tech Brokering enabled - I like the feeling that the AI is really trying to win and that they will pounce on unprotected cities.
I decided I wanted to play some games on the high seas, with Aggressive AI on and leaders I thought would be well suited (or histortically suited) to those circumstances. I've found out a few interesting things so far.
I've only played 2 games so far, so it's too early to say much definitively, but there are a few things worth nothing.
Game settings are: Island/Medium and Small, Monarch difficulty, Epic speed, High Sea level, most other things random. And again, Aggressive AI + No Tech Brokering.
I hand selected most of the leaders. The Island map I played was Large with 9 civs, but ended up feeling too roomy. Most civs were too far away to consider any kind of early naval conflict.
I then switched to Medium and Small, standard size with 11 civs.
The civs are:
Hannibal (Me) - Cha/Fin
Willhem van Oranje - Cre/Fin
Isabella - Spi/Exp
Joao II - Imp/Exp
Darius - Fin/Org
Mehmed II - Exp/Org
Ragnar - Agg/Fin
Zara Yaqob - Cre/Org
Pericles - Cre/Phil
Victoria - Imp/Fin (Random Selection - I wanted an English presence though)
Napoleon - Cha/Org (random selection)
My reasoning for the choices:
[*]Civs with Naval UUs or UBs are in.
[*]Financial is obviously excellent on water-heavy maps.
[*]Organized is also great on island maps - two buildings you build in almost every single city are Lighthouses and Courthouses - they are 1/2 price with Organized and can be whipped MUCH sooner which is a large boon.
[*]Creative is also quite nice - most cities are starved for production. There are typically few, if any forests to chop for monuments, and even if there are it's difficult to move workers around.
[*]Some historical conflict - Europe's Colonial powers are all present: England, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Spain. Greece seemed to fit.
The short of it is that I wanted a bunch of leaders who would be fairly well suited to the map, let them loose with their aggression turned up, and see what developed.
I think I chose well. The Dutch are a powerhouse, beating me to liberalism in my second game. The surprise has been Isabella - in both games she has been in the top 3 and stayed there for a long while. Her shrine income must be really nice.
Ragnar has been a dissapointment - I was hoping he'd be the scourge of the seas, but he's struggled.
Pericles is middle of the pack - and tends to be a bit of a lone wolf, not joining the big alliances but not making enemies.
Joao got dogpiled in game 1.
Unsurprisingly Isabella instigates a lot of holy wars.
Darius is well suited for these maps despite not getting optimal use out of his UU.
Zara is middle of the pack as well - although in my second game I just finished eliminating him from the game.
Victoria is in the lower half, although Churchill was #1 in the first game (I was #1 as the DUtch until I met him).
Napoleon is near the bottom.
Mehmed was doing fine in game 1 with a sizable island, but at the bottom in game 2 with a smaller set of islands.
Other observations:
I thinK I want to play on an even more crowded map. I'm thinking there should be room for 3-5 cities before close borders tensions strike.
Key wonders: Lighthouse and Colossus, obviously. Temple of Artemis is nice. Stonehenge is really nice if not creative. Pyramids are always nice. There are usually a few good food tiles per city and a bunch of mediocre ones so running specialists is attractive.
Triremes require Sailing and Metal Casting. That puts them much further back than galleys. The AI tends not to prioritize Metal Casting, which means a few things - you can beeline it and harass them with Triremes for many years unopposed, or you can delay a bit yourself and build up a more sizable fleet. At first I wanted to Oracle - Metal Casting, but I didn't have the production to make a sizable invasion fleet of Galleys + Troops + Triremes possible at that point.
---
In any case let me know if you've observed any similarities or differences in your naval warfare games. I had a lot of fun landing my invasion force - 4 axes, 2 spears, 4 catapaults, 5 galleys, and 2 triremes to escort them. I had to pillage important resources when I landed and survive counterattacks for a while because none of my catapaults had Accuracy.
Perhaps the coolest thing I discovered - after I had taken down the Jewish Holy City (with Shrine, next to his capital) my troops were recovering in the smoldering city site. He had sent out counterattack forces while I was bombarding the city walls (60% defense in the Holy City and the capital - Creative is nice). After I had captured the city he sent 1 archer to sit next to it on what had once been a grassland iron mine. The archer sat there not attacking - so I sent my catapaults after it. The first won, but withdrew, earning 1xp. Since I was playing Charismatic Hannibal, that brought me from 3xp to 4xp, enough for promotion #2 - Accuracy. The archer was under 1 health, so I couldn't attack with my other catapaults. But he didn't move, and next turn he had healed to ~1.3. So I attacked again with a different catapault, which also withdrew earning 1xp for its promotion. Then again, until all 4 of my catapaults had earned their accuracy promotions. It made taking the rest of the cities MUCh easier.
Shortly after that I earned my first Great General, which meant I could build 5xp troops and level 2 Catapaults out of the gate, but I didn't have to wait for those reinforcements or spend 2x as many turns bombing the city walls on my next target - his capital. Once those 2 cities were gone the rest was much less of a challenge.
I had a lot of fun moving my stack from island chain to island chain - it was a bit tedious at times but still a lot of fun. I felt like a Greek war band. My armada sailed from island to island (the animation of a group of galleys and triremes moving in unison is really good), sacking cities and my veteran units racked up promotions. At the end of the campaign I identified with my veterans - they would soon be sent home as lords of their new estates, which they had all helped conquer. I might call on them again in the future to go raiding again, but in the meantime they should enjoy the spoils of war.
I decided to play a few games on island/medium and small maps. I had troubel hooking some resources up and I don't understand why. Hopefully you can help.
My initial island didn't have any good second-city sites, so I was forced to build up my capital while waiting for a galley + settler + escort and my scouting reports to come back. I wish I had a screenshot, maybe I'll go back and add it when I get home from work. The site I chose for my second city had coastal Fish, Ivory, and 2 gems (grassland and grassland hill).
It was an excellent looking site.
While it got to work good tiles however, it didn't give any happiness.
I think it might be because it wasn't 1 landmass and the elephants + gems were not connected by road to the city tile. Let me see if I can describe the city to you properly.
..--x
x---g
e-C-g
x-f--
..---
C is the city tile. X is a land tile - either plains, grassland, or hill.
- is a water tile
e for elephants, g for gems
.. is nothing, just to help appearance/format for the post
As you can see the city itself is surrounded by water on all sides, so none of the resources touch the city tile. Not getting the +2/+3(w/forge) happiness really hurt, particularly since this island was not in the direction of my closest neighbor, but I thought that resource combination was too good to pass up. Does anyone know why that happened? I roaded every tile there was nearby, and eventually its culture overlapped with my capital and the resources were still not connected.
Is this a bug or by design?
----------
I've been playing most of my recent games with Aggressive AI on and No Tech Brokering enabled - I like the feeling that the AI is really trying to win and that they will pounce on unprotected cities.
I decided I wanted to play some games on the high seas, with Aggressive AI on and leaders I thought would be well suited (or histortically suited) to those circumstances. I've found out a few interesting things so far.
I've only played 2 games so far, so it's too early to say much definitively, but there are a few things worth nothing.
Game settings are: Island/Medium and Small, Monarch difficulty, Epic speed, High Sea level, most other things random. And again, Aggressive AI + No Tech Brokering.
I hand selected most of the leaders. The Island map I played was Large with 9 civs, but ended up feeling too roomy. Most civs were too far away to consider any kind of early naval conflict.
I then switched to Medium and Small, standard size with 11 civs.
The civs are:
Hannibal (Me) - Cha/Fin
Willhem van Oranje - Cre/Fin
Isabella - Spi/Exp
Joao II - Imp/Exp
Darius - Fin/Org
Mehmed II - Exp/Org
Ragnar - Agg/Fin
Zara Yaqob - Cre/Org
Pericles - Cre/Phil
Victoria - Imp/Fin (Random Selection - I wanted an English presence though)
Napoleon - Cha/Org (random selection)
My reasoning for the choices:
[*]Civs with Naval UUs or UBs are in.
[*]Financial is obviously excellent on water-heavy maps.
[*]Organized is also great on island maps - two buildings you build in almost every single city are Lighthouses and Courthouses - they are 1/2 price with Organized and can be whipped MUCH sooner which is a large boon.
[*]Creative is also quite nice - most cities are starved for production. There are typically few, if any forests to chop for monuments, and even if there are it's difficult to move workers around.
[*]Some historical conflict - Europe's Colonial powers are all present: England, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Spain. Greece seemed to fit.
The short of it is that I wanted a bunch of leaders who would be fairly well suited to the map, let them loose with their aggression turned up, and see what developed.
I think I chose well. The Dutch are a powerhouse, beating me to liberalism in my second game. The surprise has been Isabella - in both games she has been in the top 3 and stayed there for a long while. Her shrine income must be really nice.
Ragnar has been a dissapointment - I was hoping he'd be the scourge of the seas, but he's struggled.
Pericles is middle of the pack - and tends to be a bit of a lone wolf, not joining the big alliances but not making enemies.
Joao got dogpiled in game 1.
Unsurprisingly Isabella instigates a lot of holy wars.
Darius is well suited for these maps despite not getting optimal use out of his UU.
Zara is middle of the pack as well - although in my second game I just finished eliminating him from the game.
Victoria is in the lower half, although Churchill was #1 in the first game (I was #1 as the DUtch until I met him).
Napoleon is near the bottom.
Mehmed was doing fine in game 1 with a sizable island, but at the bottom in game 2 with a smaller set of islands.
Other observations:
I thinK I want to play on an even more crowded map. I'm thinking there should be room for 3-5 cities before close borders tensions strike.
Key wonders: Lighthouse and Colossus, obviously. Temple of Artemis is nice. Stonehenge is really nice if not creative. Pyramids are always nice. There are usually a few good food tiles per city and a bunch of mediocre ones so running specialists is attractive.
Triremes require Sailing and Metal Casting. That puts them much further back than galleys. The AI tends not to prioritize Metal Casting, which means a few things - you can beeline it and harass them with Triremes for many years unopposed, or you can delay a bit yourself and build up a more sizable fleet. At first I wanted to Oracle - Metal Casting, but I didn't have the production to make a sizable invasion fleet of Galleys + Troops + Triremes possible at that point.
---
In any case let me know if you've observed any similarities or differences in your naval warfare games. I had a lot of fun landing my invasion force - 4 axes, 2 spears, 4 catapaults, 5 galleys, and 2 triremes to escort them. I had to pillage important resources when I landed and survive counterattacks for a while because none of my catapaults had Accuracy.
Perhaps the coolest thing I discovered - after I had taken down the Jewish Holy City (with Shrine, next to his capital) my troops were recovering in the smoldering city site. He had sent out counterattack forces while I was bombarding the city walls (60% defense in the Holy City and the capital - Creative is nice). After I had captured the city he sent 1 archer to sit next to it on what had once been a grassland iron mine. The archer sat there not attacking - so I sent my catapaults after it. The first won, but withdrew, earning 1xp. Since I was playing Charismatic Hannibal, that brought me from 3xp to 4xp, enough for promotion #2 - Accuracy. The archer was under 1 health, so I couldn't attack with my other catapaults. But he didn't move, and next turn he had healed to ~1.3. So I attacked again with a different catapault, which also withdrew earning 1xp for its promotion. Then again, until all 4 of my catapaults had earned their accuracy promotions. It made taking the rest of the cities MUCh easier.
Shortly after that I earned my first Great General, which meant I could build 5xp troops and level 2 Catapaults out of the gate, but I didn't have to wait for those reinforcements or spend 2x as many turns bombing the city walls on my next target - his capital. Once those 2 cities were gone the rest was much less of a challenge.
I had a lot of fun moving my stack from island chain to island chain - it was a bit tedious at times but still a lot of fun. I felt like a Greek war band. My armada sailed from island to island (the animation of a group of galleys and triremes moving in unison is really good), sacking cities and my veteran units racked up promotions. At the end of the campaign I identified with my veterans - they would soon be sent home as lords of their new estates, which they had all helped conquer. I might call on them again in the future to go raiding again, but in the meantime they should enjoy the spoils of war.
