The last challenge -- Team game -- Deity trial

[bestsss]

Here I prefer bronze working for whipping but the slavery event can be dangerous, so we might want to switch it on/out.
BW can save us against bad odds w/ whipping an archer when we need it, also it'd be good to know where is the copper. May affect the settling decisions.

Btw, if we keep archers on the forested hill the barbs are more likely to ignore them and go for pillage.

 

[shyuhe]

So it looks like we're in the middle of the south side... Crud. Also, I think we're going to hit the barb enters culture date a LOT earlier than normal given the AI expansion rate. Isn't it something like 2n+1 cities where n = the number of civs? So I doubt horses will be up in time to protect us so archer spam it is!

I'd try to park an archer on the hill SE of the rice to attract barbs away from our sheep tile. For the east, try to park the warriors on forested hills and archers on regular hills.

We're never going to be able to trade with Joao (unless we get him to friendly and Toku at cautious) so I think we need to butter up the warmongers...

 

[Duckweed]

Nice pickup of the extra 50g gold , Obs.

I prefer Wheel next for preroading to the gold and then BW, if we road through the green hill, our settler can settle 1 turn earlier. We have five good tiles to work already, so whipping and chopping is not that attractive.

We have a major divergence of cottage or farm the FPs in capital.
Farm -- grow faster and result in getting settler, worker, GP, and infrastructures faster through whipping.
Cottage -- average 2~3 commerce per turn to mature.

I prefer farm in this case for more reasons behind:
1. If we work on all the hill tile, we'll only have 4 food plus if we put cottages, farm give us 7 food plus and that's almost double growth rate.
2. all 3 FPs can be watermilled, I value a hammer capital than commerce capital, so 2 hammers beat 5 commerce.
3. This map is commerce rich, so the extra commerce from capital is not that important, the western rice/FP site is a better site for OU.

 

[JammerUno]

^why presume W of the gold is the best location? E of the gold might be better. It picks up gold+FP as well, and there might be something interesting in the BFC to the E later on.

 

[bestsss]

We're never going to be able to trade with Joao (unless we get him to friendly and Toku at cautious) so I think we need to butter up the warmongers...

Yes, that's correct.

There is something that has escaped me, and I believe I have misled the team members.
The averaging of the attitude is done for the requesting party (and for the target in case of bribes). Then, each team member must agree on the deal based on the team average attitude.

Once again, I apologize.

Basically we have to satisfy both of the team members using the their average attitude towards us.


So to open border we need pleased (because of Toku).

 

[Duckweed]

@Bestsss
Indeed, the position of copper might affect the 2nd site, so BW 1st is good.

 

[Duckweed]

^why presume W of the gold is the best location? E of the gold might be better. It picks up gold+FP as well, and there might be something interesting in the BFC to the E later on.

It might not be the best if there're more food resources E of the gold, otherwise, 1 FP is not enough.

 

[Dirk1302]

We need to scout E of the gold before anything useful can be said. E of gold is on a hill which could be a lifesaver.BW next seems best to me too.

 

[shyuhe]

Agree on BW, I'd scout around for another 7-8 turns before we fortify our anti-barb units.

 

[The Rook]

I'm displeased to see Toku here. I assume that Joao will effectively have his characteristics rounded to Toku's, i.e. won't trade techs at cautious, attacks at pleased, -2 for refused demands etc. Also, if they came from the south, I'm guessing that we are likely their closest neighbours. No religion for them yet, but I suppose we were pretty certain WVO/Churchill took Buddhism anyway.

Nice to see some horse to the north, but do we really need it quickly? I mean chariots aren't great for taking barb cities, and archers are fine on the defensive. 1W of gold will block the horse from the east after 1st border pop.

I'd probably lean to BW next for revealing copper, and expanding our production options. There are some pretty nice sites to settle, but it's unclear the urgency that we need to take them. With Toku/Joao to the south, we can't take the western sites for granted anymore. Whipping/chopping could be useful insurance for us.

 

[bestsss]

It's looks strong BW pref.

Plan: improve the mine, work it when it's done, improved north of the mine floods plain into farm.
Build 3 archers and start settler, finish the bronze working and handle the set.
Reveal around the gold site. Keep one archer on the hill next to the rice. The warrior next to north/east goes into the forested hill and prays for good luck.

I will explore w/ the warrior from the capital and finish an archer in the same time it grows (may have to shift unimproved flood plain to 1f/2h).

Settling/whipping/chopping will be left to the next. However, the work will start improving the last flood plain into farm but if you think chopping the grassland forest hill is a good idea, I will move him there (even fast workers cant move to a forested hill and start chopping in the same turn) one turn before BW is finished.

I am more afraid of barbarian cities than Toku/Joao for the time being.
By the way I will check if we can know who is closer to us by just the composed team name.

 

[obsolete]

Since we met Monte first, I am guessing he is closest. Whatever the case, we should decide now I think who to focus our spy points on.

 

[bestsss]

I plan to play it in 4-5 hours or so, still waiting for some input.
Espionage, I prefer the warmongers.

 

[PaulisKhan]

archer-archer-settler(2pop whip the turn BW comes in)-overflow into ?

keep units close, can't afford to get pillaged.

 

[The Rook]

I think 3 archers before a settler is too conservative, especially considering we already have 3 warriors. I'd go for 2 Archers at the most. Before BW/gold city, I think finishing the mine and farming FP is all our worker can do.

On EP, I'm not sure. Monty and Ragnar are the warmongers, but they likely have another nearby target. Unfortunately, we might be Joao/Toku's closest neighbour, and if that's the case there is a very good chance they will naturally come after us. Probably not much help, but I can see an argument for putting EP into either team.

 

[obsolete]

I don't look too much into this closest neighbour & tile non-sense. I know it seems to be the latest rage on the forum, but it reminds me of way back when people thought they were clever by trying to get archers out thinking it would somehow protect them from getting DoWed due to some fictitious belief in how the power-rating worked with war DoWs.

I constantly get Toku and similar leaders go into weehorn (without triggering weehorn status), and build up a giant army in the BC years, and then they will march it ALL ACROSS the ENTIRE CONTINENT just to put it next to my borders, despite I was the farthest civ away from them... I had done nothing to trigger such an event, and I certainly was not his worst enemy!

Meanwhile, other AI's would be culture pressuring him, and sharing more than 9 tiles, but apparently that never phases him.

 

[bestsss]

By the way one of the way to open toku's team borders is joining a war. Sharing a war ignores the attitude for open borders.
---
I will be playing it now. I will build 2 archers but if there is some danger like losing warriors/archers or having injured archer I will build one more. We will need an escort archer anyways.
I prefer Ragnar's team b/c both of them dont like the espionage and there is some chance to have an effect, plus there are going to keep their EP on Willem/Churchill

 

[Dirk1302]

@Obsolete, that closest neighbour and tile thing is directly from civ4 code and it often works out that way. Then again i also have seen the behavior you describe and it has puzzled me. Next time anything like that happens a save would help. I have to update my SDK to 3.19 which entails some work but i'd be interested to take a look at what what happens exactly in those cases. From bestsss comments i think he can take a look as well.

 

[PaulisKhan]

good luck Bestsss, look forward to the report.

 

[bestsss]

That was short (compare to the previous AW game but with the game progressing it'd be quite long and difficult).

So:
Decided to listen to The Rook and went w/ 2 archers. Explored a bit and lucky didn't lose any unit.
Monty is close, managed to see his border. Also there is a barbarian city, consider it Rangar/Monty property soon.
There is a barbarian warrior approaching from the north though.
The settlers is 4 turns.

Last turn attacked a warrior w/ the archer to get 2 xp for promo healing.
Also Judaism found 2480 by Ragnar who converted into. Not nice.
2400BC the great wall was built in Kyoto (Toku likes the Great Wall for real), so the barbs from the west will target us only...

Hi-Def ( =p ) picture of the land.

Spoiler :