Tired of losing this map.

@Seraiel: Yeah, I'm aware of the tech costs and there are certainly advantages to going early alphabet. Indeed, for what it's worth, I'd likely be suggesting going the same way to alphabet as you if @HeliosDisciple were playing on a higher level. After all, @HeliosDisciple is playing on a pangaea, so the benefits of going early alphabet for trades are even greater than usual because he's assured of neighbours to trade with.

However, the issue I have (or had) with going alphabet in this particular case is that @HeliosDisciple is not only playing noble but has a two gold start. My thoughts when I made the earlier post were therefore that it might actually be possible to get an earlier rush by self teching HBR instead of investing extra beakers into alphabet. For what it's worth, I've since confirmed this by running two very quick shadows. Of course, this advantage comes at a clear cost – of not getting alphabet early – so going alphabet still has a huge amount going for it, even on noble. However, not trading with the AI this early also means the AI is denied access to techs it might pick up in those early trades too of course, which isn't a bad thing if they're going to be a rush target.

To be absolutely fair though, the difference I noticed teching BW and then HBR > hunting > archery directly – which I found five turns quicker than getting to writing > alphabet > HBR and trading for backfill (EDIT: including hunting and archery) in my shadows – was probably less than I expected. That likely means that I'm also making the same mistake you note of not going to alphabet early enough in general. So thanks for the heads up @Seraiel. Fortunately, on this occasion, any error on my part is unlikely to be terminal. It'll be interesting to see what @HeliosDisciple does in the next turn set.

 

I wouldn't have settled in place for sure. So with a small tinker you can see what I did below. Keep in mind, we're talking Noble so many things become possible. I did get HBR from a hut, however, even w/out it, you'd simply research it yourself, and with gold, very quick (while waiting to finish you'd get more granary/barracks). I also agree with Sera's initial tech path choice, at least up to Alpha (trade makes things quicker in most cases).

I opened up with a Worker > 4x Warrior > Captured Madrid and 1 Worker > made 1 Settler > 2 more workers > 1 Barracks > 2 Granaries (Capital and newly founded city). Everything else gets chopped/whipped into HAs till game is over. After Currency research slider is off.

 

I disagree with the person who said build warriors and grab Madrid. Maybe if the nearby neighbor was Monty or Shaka ... but it's Isabella, she's sure to build a shrine, missionaries, and maybe some wonders if you leave her alone. (See spoilers.)

Lot of FP isn't ideal -- had to build an aqueduct, don't remember doing that in the BCs. And yeah, chopping the forests makes the health even worse. But this map isn't so hard.

Spoiler :

You have a lot of good land, copper, some decent luxuries. Neighbors aren't too bad although Joao can be annoying. One nice thing about being in the middle of everyone, barbarians are not much of a problem.

Build order was worker -> warriors to size 4 -> settler -> worker -> settler. Tech order was Agriculture -> Hunting -> Animal Husbandry -> Mining -> Pottery -> Bronze Working -> Iron Working.

Worker farmed a FP, pastured brown cows, farmed another FP, mined gold.

Spoiler :

Settled 3N (cows/ivory/flood plains) then 3E1N (copper) then 4W3N to get iron, stone, and a lot of FP.

Had my eye on some jungle land to the south west (which is why I researched IW). A barbarian city spawned and on a higher level I'd have had no trouble grabbing it, but on Noble the barbs just have warriors so Joao was able to pick it off with a single chariot! So I smacked it and founded my own city.

I made peace with Joao since I didn't have much of an army yet. By T100 I was able to declare on Izzy with a few cats and swords. The reward was a city with a 9 GPT shrine. (Unfortunately only wonder she built was the Oracle). She only had two cities total.

The Oracle was built before Stonehenge, not sure I'd ever seen that.

I did eventually get Alphabet. I did do a little backfilling (Med, Poly, Fishing, Sailing) but on T73 there were AIs that lacked Agriculture. That suggests that beelining Alpha wouldn't have accomplished much.

 

Getting hunting before AH is interesting, as it lets one improve the Ivory. The downside though is, that AH get's reached later. If I were you, I'd also go for Mining before AH, because the Cow's aren't such a great benefit over Floodplain-Farms, but the Gold otoh is.

Regarding the techs and Alpha, I already feared that AIs on Noble would not be able to produce any significant research, so maybe on Noble, teching most of the basic techs makes sense.

 

Question: I know people can tell a player's tech order from the save file.

How do you do that? I opened a save in a text editor but it's just byte garbage. WorldBuilder? Another tool?

 

There's an InGame-log which you can read. I don't know if this is a BUG-feature, but there's a button in the upper left corner to open it.

Of course what would be even better, would be if the player himself turns on the "All actions log" which comes with BUG and similar mods. Then really every move is written down in the format of this forum, simply post it here then, and you'll get more detailed advice.

The road on the Floodplain would i. e. have bin mentioned in the all-actions-log, every action the player does is written down then. In SGOTM this is standard.

 

2 gold start on noble.... I'd be swimming in infantry before the ai's got macemen~

Seriously though... Mines FIRST. you cant grow while building workers so might as well let the 1 tile you work be a goldmine. (I build multiple workers, as I play on marathon speed).

 

Spoiler :

Getting hunting before AH is interesting, as it lets one improve the Ivory. The downside though is, that AH get's reached later. If I were you, I'd also go for Mining before AH, because the Cow's aren't such a great benefit over Floodplain-Farms, but the Gold otoh is.

Hi Seraiel,

With so little food I didn't want to work a 0-food square with my 2nd or 3rd pop.

In the abstract 3H7C > 3F3H. But the limiting factor at the start isn't really tech speed, it's workers and settlers. Working the gold would research techs faster, but having Pottery or BW sooner doesn't really affect what my first worker does, and doesn't compensate for the first settler being built a few turns later.

Anyway this was my thinking, but I know you're a top player and am interested in your opinion.

(Also note that cow is necessary for health at size 4 , although that doesn't really affect the question of whether to work gold before cow.)

 

My experience from Deity is, that GNP is more important than Mfg, at least most of the times. Also, the tile the city would work would not be a 3 tile but 4 because I had farmed the FP.

Main point for this decision is also, that Ah gets fastened up greatly with mining the Gold-mine, so Mining -> AH takes less time than AH -> Mining. Additionally, the Worker can pre-mine the 2nd Gold. I've experienced it actually quite often that if going Agri -> AH that my Worker runs out of tasks.

 

So in my shadow of this game the timeline was:

T21: AH. First FP is farmed.
T26: Cows pasteurized. Worker starts on second FP.
T27: Mining. Const grows to size 3.
T32: Const grows to size 4.
T33: Second FP farmed.

Note that by the time I get Mining, the worker has finished only one farm and one pasture. (And this is with the additional ~3 turn delay from researching Hunting before AH.) It would not have been done with two farms. (That's another reason I chose AH, farming flood plains is slow.)

If you choose Mining before AH, you'll get Mining on T13 and AH on T23. The worker will arrive on T15. Even if the first improvement was a gold mine, that won't finish until T22! So I don't understand how working the gold mine would get AH faster.

(Do you normally play marathon? Maybe the worker-to-research ratio is different there?)

 

I decided to stick with BW since I know there's bronze near my capital. After the Warrior was completed, I started on a Settler to go grab the horses down south. The cows were pastured on turn 29, so I moved the worker to mine the first gold.

I sent one Warrior down to fogbust around the horses, and the other to scout around Spain's border. BW and the gold mine were finished on turn 34, so I started Writing and told the Worker to build a road down to the horses. When the Settler was done I built another Warrior and also sent the Settler to the horses.

I founded the city on top of them for quick access and started building a Chariot. With Writing done, I got Open Borders with everyone and sent a Warrior through Spanish territory to check it out. The third Warrior was sent north, finding a desert beyond the fog, so I settled my third city here:



I started building Chariots in the capital once the road was connected. Madrid's got a lot of food and horses of its own, so I built three Chariots and moved two Warriors to her borders.

Alphabet was finished on turn 56 and I started Horseback Riding, then declared war on Isabella and rushed two of my Chariots to Madrid. One Chariot died to her garrisoned Warrior, but then the other killed him and I conquered the city, knocking Spain out.

It's turn 60 now, my army is 4 Chariots and 2 Warriors, I'm waiting on Madrid to settle down, and I have 2 Workers (one captured from Spain, though I have two more about to be ready in my other cities).



I'm thinking of building a Library next.

 

I play all speeds, all maps and every victory condition.

I lately played a 2 normal speed and one epic speed game. From those I thought I remembered, that if one goes Worker first and farms something while having animal-resources, that the worker will run out of tasks because he has to wait on Mining. That's why I usually went Agri -> Mining -> AH because then, the Goldmine would speed up AH.

If you say, that it's possible to get AH before Mining and that this doesn't delay the Worker building a Gold-mine, but that it even speeds up working the Gold-mine because Pastures build faster as FP-Farms, then I believe you. Maybe my Workers also ran out of tasks, because I usually settled a 2 or 3 tile which fastens up the build of the Worker by quite a few turns, and I also often went stealing Workers. It's understandeable that if getting the Worker in T10 and with having 2 Workers early, that the route of research must be adjusted.

 

I agree with Seraiel, you should beeline Alpha with 2 gold. But with a small change. I used Agri, AH, Mining, Pot and Writing before learning Alpha.

Since this is on Noble, I chose to do a warrior rush (of sort) since I chose to finish the worker first.

After the worker, I build 6 warriors (while working a farm, cows and 1 gold) plus the original warrior to rush Izzy. Lost 2 warriors for a gain of a capital with two religions. After that aggressively settled and captured barb cities.

This is a very decent start without any real food for a cottage capital. I would have settled with no more than 7 fp if possible or 9 at a max. 2 unhealthy from the fp's is the best with 7fp's instead of 4 unhealthy you get from 10+ where you settled.

 

Spiritual leaders are hard to play; they can give good advantages but need some micromanagement of the civics and therefore need a lot of practice. Without such micromanagement the trait is useless and that's why even if the spiritual AI gets strong start, near the middle game it usually succumbs to the other civs.

 

That totally makes sense. I think it's a pretty common situation, you have one food resource to farm and nothing to do after that. Here it's reasonable to farm two of the flood plains so the worker will not be idle.

Spoiler :

That's what makes the so brutal on this map, no grains anywhere near the capital. I was wroth with Joao for grabbing the barb city not because of the gems but because I wanted the wheat (and bananas) so badly.

There are a lot of ways to develop the capital and I'm not sure which is best. All of these seem potentially reasonable:
A. Two FP then browncow then gold (fastest growth).
B. FP, mine, FP, browncow (lots of ).
C. FP, FP, mine, browncow.
D. FP, browncow, FP, mine (sacrifice an early food for 3 more ).
E. FP, browncow, mine, FP (most ).

Early gold is nice but working two golds is also nice and so (A) may be the best.

 

Madrid will easily whip enough units to take over 2+ AIs. In most cases Religion is a trap.

Edit: I notice you live in Sunnyvale. I live very near Wolf/El Camino ^.

 

Then I'm about a mile from you, near Ortega Park.

Sunnyvale is kind of boring especially in Civ terms. Santa Clara just built a colosseum. Cupertino is a corporation headquarters and even has a levee (Stevens Creek Reservoir and Dam)!

 

Small little World, eh!? I visit the 7-11 on Freemont and Wolf about 5 days a week.

 

Building a Library in the capital is a good choice. Try to build a 2nd one probably in Madrid, if the city has enough Food to sustain 2 Scientists. Getting a Great Scientist as early as affordable is very important.

Other than that, go for Construction after HBR and explore more territory with your Warriors and Chariots. If you find good city-spots, settle them, or, build an army and conquer some AIs .

Good techs after Construction would be 1. Currency followed by 2. CoL unlocking 3. Civil Service.

Also, don't forget to stay at about 1 Worker / city.

 

I started the Library in the capital, then spread my Warriors around to garrison my cities in case of a random barbarian running out of the fog, while my two Chariots went exploring.

Found the Inca to the southeast, but they didn't want to trade; instead I traded Mysticism to Joao for Fishing...and then realized that Isabella had already built fishing boats on the food sources offshore Madrid.

I built a Scout in Madrid to clear out the map faster, while gathering my chariots in Constantinople to build up my army.

HBR was done on turn 65 and I went for Meditation, since none of the AIs would trade it evenly and I have two religions now. After Med, then Pottery to build some cottages, and then Currency.

I whipped out the Libraries in Constantinople and Madrid, then started building Monestaries in Madrid and a Granary in the capital. Menawhile my five-chariot army was finished and sent north to explore Joao's domain.



My scout just passed through Lisbon, and he has two axemen, an archer and a warrior there. I'm thinking to attack and swoop in to snag Lisbon first thing, then mop up the weaker cities.

I attached the save, turn 75, in case I'm doing something stupid elsewhere.