The Average Joes

[50_dollar_bag]

Sounds good.
Thoughts on leader? map-type? difficulty?

Mine are:
Ragnar
Stalin
Mansa

Fractal or Pangaea

Monarch

 

[colony]

My picks for a leader, to not make it too easy or too hard would be one of:

Ragnar
Mansa
Gilgamesh - Protective's not great, but early courthouses, Vultures and Creative all work quite well together
Hammurabi

Map: Fractal sounds good

Difficulty: Monarch, unless you and Simple Simon would both not mind Emperor, but that would be heading towards a very hard game and probably isn't the best idea.

So overall I'd say Ragnar, Fractal and Monarch should be ok.

 

[Simple Simon]

So overall I'd say Ragnar, Fractal and Monarch should be ok.

Second

 

[50_dollar_bag]

So overall I'd say Ragnar, Fractal and Monarch should be ok.

I third that.

Hence

We've got 2 clams and corn in our BFC
so I built 2 workboats, when BW came in and I spotted the copper I built a warrior who's headed off to keep an eye on it. We're building a settler.

Our scout got mauled by a bear so we only know Hannibal so far.

Research I went mining ==> BW==>can't remember sorry

Plans: Secure copper then perhaps a second city by the gems and corn but that will take a while to become useful.
The bald tile in our fat cross will probably hide a strategic resource, let's hope its iron.
Iron working is going to be a must for us very soon.

So city placements:
do we plop the settler where the warrior is now for a good long term city, or 1s of the copper for instant access to copper/fish my vote is for the latter although it will waste quite a few tiles on the West coast unless we want a marginal city there.

For a third city? Any body?

 

[50_dollar_bag]

Roster
50_dollar_bag (played)
Simple Simon (up)
Colony (on deck)
Open
Open

might as well play 20 turns or there abouts depending on what's happening

 

[colony]

Haven't had a chance to look at the save yet, but here's a few thoughts looking at the screenshot:

Not the best start looking at that, we'll need IW for anything beyond 2 cities. The only way of getting that copper early would be to settle on top of it (pink city), but it's a long way to go so early, although that would at least leave room for a reasonable city on the western coast. Once we get past the initial jungle problem they'll be a lot of commerce everywhere, but there might be a lack of production power, which is why I didn't put the red city 1 square north, it'll be able to work all 4 hills by size 5 or 6 with the pigs, perfect for cranking out some swords/axes/cats. The green city looks ok, but it'll have terrible production until levees appear, and there might be room for a city on the eastern coast later on. As for order I'd say go for the Red city if we have IW by then, or the Green one if we don't. Coastal cities will be important here, so we shouldn't delay Sailing too long.

Spoiler :

As for research, we obviously need IW, and working a few financial coastal tiles it shouldn't take a massive amount of time, but it will still be expensive. Maybe getting Pottery first would work better, although with no rivers a couple of cottages wouldn't help a lot. Maybe something like Agri -> Sailing (to connect copper to capital) -> IW.

Hannibal being so close will be a problem, so the earlier we can at least cripple him the better, preferably being ready to attack before 1000BC, a few axemen will be able to pin him down easily enough, even if they can't take the capital. Also as we won't have much use for Settlers pre-IW those forests can fuel a stack of Axes instead.

Are you using Bhruic's patch for this or not?

 

[Simple Simon]

this is my 'got it'. I will need 12 hours until I can start playing, though.

 

[Simple Simon]

No wonders, no specialists – but can CAN chop, right? There’s so much forest around the capital that I strongly advocate heavy chopping – lots of that forest will grow back speedily! Building (whipping) a worker first, then chopping out a settler might have been a better option.

Why are we going for AH right now? For the pigs? They are some sort of wild jungle pig (warthog?), so we desperately need IW to use them……I would prefer to be researching IW. Now, horses, which are shown by AH, are nice – but do we want to fight without dedicated city attackers until we have cats?

OK, there’s a bunch of beakers already invested, and it is ‘only’ 5 turns to go. I’ll leave it as it is and pray we get horses near the capital

I decide to revolt to slavery ASAP! Extreme growth and no hammers means whipping, period! Inc ase you wonder: AIs are massive whippers, so using Slavery is totally average



Btw, if we HAVE horses close to either town, then maybe we can settle one NORTH of the copper. Weakens the copper city, since ti loses the fish, but gains us wheat

Turn 31 – anarchy

Turn 32 – we are now in slavery

Turn 33 – nada….

All the wa to

Turn 16 – AH comes in, we have horses (now where is that smiley….?????? Gotach!

What to research – if we want to use the horses, we need a road. Same for the copper……. I chose the wheel – and whip the settler for one pop. Next up in the queue will be a warrior, to allow growth to size 3 again.

Turn 37 – Judaism FIADL (man did it take me long to figure out what that one meant )

Turn 39 – Nidaros growths back to three. I’ll let it grow since it is a 5/5 happiness. It should be whipped as soon as the whip anger runs out!

Turn 41 – our people discover why you will fall when you step onto a felled tree and it rolls Now for Sailing, so we can trade along the coast.

Turn 43 – Uppsala!, and starts a worker. Since we have horses and copper now, I took the liberty to change the dotmap a tiny bit

I assume that we make our planning without Hanni’s presence, right? Especially since we have horses and copper The blue city uses the fish and is a productive coastal city (lighthouse!!! Erh, Trading Post, I mean), red will be a slow growth, but come around long term when irrigation can be spread, green is a no-brainer, and yellow fills the gap What do you think?

Btw: I KNOW our capital has a It will go away when the warrior is done, and then we can whip a worker. This way, I got the settler out faster, though, without long term punishment for it.


Turn 45 – Nidaros back happy, worker started.

Turn 46 – Nidaros whip unrest ends, worker whipped for 2 pop.

Turn 47 – rest of whip goes into a 1-turn warrior. This one will go into the jungle to draw barbs away from the cities. Roading to horses.

Turn 48 – 2 turns ‘til growth, 2 turns ‘til sailing, so I ‘waste’ 2 turns into making a warrior. Grrrr, I hate this!

Turn 50 – Sailing is in, roading of horses starts. I select IW, but feel free to change that.

 

[Simple Simon]

OK, some words on the future as I see it - feel free to rip into my harebrained ideas:

Nidaros should be kept on a short whip - workers and settlers, with an occasional axeman in between. We should soon start to mine the hills, using the chops to go into settlers and maybe barracks?

Uppsala needs to be connected to the copper, then we can mine the hill. That gives solid prodcution for such as small town. Next, a munoment? Or wait for a lib? In any case, this town will take off when the wheat is online, so it needs to expand borders. And atm we lack the ability to built a culture building. So a tech allowing that is on the tech list, too (wirting, I'd say, which is a must anyways).

As mentioned before, I'd like to tell Hanni to go the way of his Nanny. And soon. If we get iron, then an axe-sword army could go for a joyride. Bring along a chariot or two to fight axe defenders. If we lack iron, then maybe we wait for cats.

Cities: I think it would be too risk to settle 'green'. Yellow requires the removal of Hanni first. So fill up blue and red and have a settler ready for green when the time comes for your army to strike

And here's the save, too!

 

[50_dollar_bag]

Nice turns Simon, and I was researching AH in the off chance that the forestless tile in our capital's fat cross was horses or iron in hindsight AH was the best choice .

I think we should settle for 3 cities and then make a move on Hannibal, chopping and whipping Axes.

@colony I've got Bhruic's patch.

@colony and Simple simon, I also started the game using the BUG mod 2.0, if you haven't got it the game might crash when you oopen the log, sorry about that. Although if you haven't got it you should try it out, very useful.

 

[Simple Simon]

Nice turns Simon, and I was researching AH in the off chance that the forestless tile in our capital's fat cross was horses or iron in hindsight AH was the best choice .

Yeah, you're a lucky one

I think we should settle for 3 cities and then make a move on Hannibal, chopping and whipping Axes.

If we do that, then I'd prefer to settle blue first

I've got Bhruic's patch.

Second

the BUG mod 2.0,

Where can I find that - whatever it is?

 

[50_dollar_bag]

It's short for BtS Unaltered Gameplay I think, it has a whole lot of reworked and more informative info screens, you can also set reminders using Alt+M, worth getting just for that IMO.

You can get it from here

 

[colony]

Got it, though I'm going to be very busy today and won't be able to have a good look at the game until this evening, and probably won't be able to play until tomorrow.

Good to hear I'm not the only one using the BUG mod, I can't imagine playing without Civ4lerts any more, they let me micromanage and be lazy at the same time.

The game looks like it's going well so far, but I'd agree that attacking Hannibal after we've got 3 cities would be preferable. I'll do a proper post tonight though.

 

[colony]

Right, now I've looked at the save, here's what I was thinking of doing for my turns, let me know if you've got any other ideas:

• Change research to Mysticism, we need something to give culture soon, so that Uppsala has the food to grow a bit. Writing takes twice as long to research and Libraries are three times as expensive, so that's not a great deal when you don't get the 2 scientists from them IMO. After Mysticism go back to IW.
• Once the Warrior in Nidaros is done start a Settler, and found the blue city. It's got food for whipping and forests for chopping, which gives a bigger benefit the earlier it gets settled
• Once that's all done start building those Axemen, and a couple of Spearmen to deal with the Chariots Hannibal will have. Doubt I'll be able to start before 20 turns is up, but you never know.
• Building more cities can wait until we've dealt with Hannibal, it looks as if it's just us 2 there so having enough room shouldn't be a problem. Getting lots of workers will be very important though, that's a big jungle to remove. If we are alone then we can get away with a tiny army and use some of the saved maintenance on supporting a horde of workers instead.

I should have my turns done by tomorrow afternoon (in ~16 hours)

 

[50_dollar_bag]

Sounds like some solid plans Colony.
A scouting chariot/workboat would be good, will require open borders with Hannibal though I'd imagine.

 

[colony]

Hannibal's taken the green city, so we're going to have to wait to build anything there. I managed to get most of what I wanted to do done though, and the good news is that we have Iron within the red city.

Turn 0 - 2000BC - Switch research to Mysticism (5 turns)
1 - 1960 BC - Apparently we're the 6th largest civ. Hannibal was 3rd, not that it makes much difference this early.
2 - 1920 BC - Nothing
3 - 1880BC - Nidaros grows back to size 4, rearrange tiles so that the Warrior will be done the turn it grows back to size 5, once the unhappiness has gone
4 - 1840BC - We get the War Chariot Quest, which we'll be failing soon enough.
5 - 1800BC - Mysticism complete, begin researching IW
6 - 1760BC - Get a -1 diplo penalty event, not that it really affects us
7 - 1720BC - Nidaros Grows to size 5, Warrior complete, start Settler
8 - 1680BC - Worker finished in Uppsala, begin Monument
9 - 1640BC - Hinduism spreads in Uppsala. I switch to it, without any diplo penalties the main reason not to switch is gone and it'd save 30 hammers on a monument in Uppsala which is more than a turn of anarchy will cost us. Build a Barracks there instead

10 - 1600BC - Nothing
11 - 1560BC - Get the Tower Shields event, so now all our melee units start with cover, as well as Combat 1. A nice, if slightly excessive advantage.
12 - 1520BC - Nothing
13 - 1480BC - Nothing
14 - 1440BC - Copper hooked up
15 - 1400BC - Settler finished, begin a barracks. 5 Turns to IW
16 - 1360BC - Barracks in Uppsala complete, start an Axemen
17 - 1320BC - Found Haithabu on the blue dot, start a Monument (I didn't wan't to rely on religion spreading naturall when it needs the full BFC for both food resources). The Barracks in Nidaros is complete, start a Chariot for scouting. Nidaros will become unhappy in 2 turns, and the chariot will take 4, so the next build (another Axe?) can be whipped for two pop.

18 - 1280BC - Nothing
19 - 1240BC - Axeman in Uppsala finished, build another
20 - 1200BC - Uppsala's borders expand. IW is complete. Nidaros becomes unhappy, but with 1 turn on the chariot to go and the possibility of whipping that away with an Axe it shouldn't matter. The worker at Nidaros is also sitting on a forest with 1 turn left to chop, which would leave 21 overflow from the Chariot, it might even be possible to whip another Worker straight away, which would be useful for getting Haithabu up and running

The map's basically the same as last time, but with one minor annoyance:

Spoiler :

I put the research on Pottery, but Writing might be a better idea first, to get an idea of what Hannibal's got hidden. He's only got 3 cities and we can't sign OB so he obviously doesn't have Writing yet. Time to get building those axes and get ready for some fun I think.

Roster
50_dollar_bag (up)
Simple Simon (on deck)
Colony (played)
Open
Open

 

[50_dollar_bag]

I've got it.

 

[50_dollar_bag]

Well played Colony.
Iron at red dot, very tempted to get a 4th city

 

[50_dollar_bag]

Couldn't resist the temptation of the iron city...

Nidaros finished it's chariot and started a Settler, adjusted tiles for maximum commerce and to get 29 food/hammers so I could do a 3 pop whip with maximum overflow which went into a spear. When the spear finished I started an axe until it got unhappy again so a worker was started and whipped the next turn.

Uppsala just built axes with the help of a couple of whips.

Haithabu got is monument and started a workboat.

Our new city Birka built a Barracks and is close to completing a swordsman.

Researchwise finished pottery(forgot to change it but we got a dicsount on writing) and writing then started meditation with an eye towards monarchy, but I actually think Alphabet would be best it would take ~32 turns currently but we're working pretty much all production tiles ATM. With Alphabet we can leave Hannibal with a city and extort some techs for peace.

Scouting revealed a decent amount of land beyond Hanniballs' northern borders, I spotted gold, stone and a barb city.
When I finally got writing and opened borders with Hannibal I discovered he has a source of Iron which was only just connected about 3 turns ago. We have a chariot and axeman a couple of squares away to pillage when we daclare war.

Our power ratio is 1.2 that of Hannibal's, consisting of 7 axes, 1 spear and a sword 2 turns away from Uppsala. 1 axe and a chariot just on the outskirts of Hannibal's northern border. I haven't declared war yet as the Simon can decide if he wants to declare now or when the sword arrives. My recommedation is to attack at the beginning of the next turn, that will expel our 2 axes from Hannibal's borders and leave them with movement points to move back in. Delaying any longer would let him build swords and axes.
Carthage was defended by 2 archers the last time I saw it, it's had it's 3rd expansion so will be at 60% defense, should still be doable, we do have the Tower Shield event on our melee units

I haven't whipped any other city except for Nidaros and that whip anger wears off in 3 turns which coincides with growth.

Do we keep or raze cities? I'd keep the gems city definately, the others we could resettle later, including Carthage, it's a holy city but that matters little when you can't build the shrine.

Good Luck Simon.

 

[Simple Simon]

got it!


Good one, 50_$_bag! I think you are absolutely right about not letting Hanni build up a force of axes! Pity I used up my luck in the Tight Fit game