TM 01 - The alphabet games - America

[SkunkDoctor]

OK, I didn't even build a settler, in my turnset. New York needed to grow, Washington was nearing unhealthiness (suppose a settler woulda fixed that
), and Boston had the pyramids to worry about.

IT: Enter

1 (875 BC): zzzzzz

2(850 BC): zzzz

3(825 BC): Worker in NY start Forge, Obelisk in Boston start Pyramids, Forge in Washington start Granary.

4(800BC): CoL in, start IW. New York City is the Confucian holy city .

5-8 (775-700 BC): Wha!? Oh, I must have fallen asleep for a minute there. Carry on, citizens.

9 (675 BC) Sally stops by asking to trade his cows for our corn. Now I'm not sure how this works but I think we get health from the farmed crops double when we have granaries. As much as I could use a burger right now, I refuse.
Am I mistaken here? next player feel free to renegotiate.
Perhaps there should be a "butcher" building that does the same as granary for cows/pigs, etc. I do, however tell Sally to stop by anytime and sign open borders with him.
And I Confuse Boston

10: worker stuff. There are 2 workers clearing forests in Boston. One is mining a hill (thus clearing the forest), and will be done same turn borders pop I believe. Then we can go hook up the stone.

The Save

 

[namliaM]

Just the ten Doc?

It is cause of the zzz's early on we would take 20 first time around.
Sure was quiet out here. To bad about the settler(s), we can sure use a couple of em. Next up can take care of that I guess.

Do you want to take another ten doc?

Revised Roster
- Burglar => Up
- Mailman => On Deck
- namliaM
- rddc05
- SkunkDoctor => Did 10, up for another 10?
- SpriteSoda => Skip for now

 

[SkunkDoctor]

Nah it's cool. I left it at a good spot I think, plus I am up in another SG right now too. In the interest of not taking four days to play 20 turns, let burglar go (Sprite is skipped this week in both SG's if I remember correctly).

Just remember to hook up that stone and chop chop chop for the Pyramids.

 

[Burglar]

Okay - got it.
I will make my moves in the evening after work.

 

[MailMan]

Some notes on the last turnlog (haven't looked at the save):

Do we have military? barbs should already be active

Cow deal - I do not think we need it yet, we should have some health bonus soon. In the early game I think that happiness is a bigger issue (especially in our current map). IIRC cows and pigs health bonus gets doubled only with supermarket (way down the road at reregistration)

I think I would have used the missionary on Washington instead of Boston for two reasons:
1. Washington is bigger and need more happiness that a temple can add
2. Boston will get religion on its own. Any religion is Boston would have been good for us. Hindi - our state religion, conf - we would have converted and made it our state religion, other - more religions to later run free religion.

 

[Burglar]

Hi Freaks!

I made my moves.
650 traded cow for corn with saladin.
adopted slavery (very important in my eyes early on)
625 rearranged some city tiles to work on
600 zzz
575 IW researched -> Monarchy (Wines)
Pyramids in another civ completed
550 changed production to forge
want to get copper asap
popped forge
525 forge finished -> temple
500 zzz
475 - 375 worker stuff connecting cities, get copper, get stone ...
350 We were world's no.1 in view of cultivation
325 axeman popped
300 temple popped
Monarchy researched -> Alphabet (trading techs)
275 anarchy -> Hereditary Rule (+1 happines per unit in city) which
was very important for us.
Barbs near NY (Axes already!) but luckily I popped an Axe and built
another on, so archer defeated (Axes from Washington with barracks)
and got another promotion
Philadelphia founded near Iron + Wines (SW of NY)
250 forge finished in Boston -> granary
popped barracks in NY
225 zzz
200 we have stone
connecting cities
popped granary
150 worker stuff

 

[rddc05]

Nicely done Burglar. I didn't see any wines near Philly though, it looks like Saladin has hogged all those sites. I was thinking we going to try for the gems down there with that city. Nice to have iron hooked up at this point though, for city raider swords.

Couple of comments going forward:

1) If we don't settle that grassland/cottage site southeast of the capital, Victoria will have it very soon, and I don't think she is a good candidate for war. Her culture will be crowding the site as even as it currently stands.

2) Looks like Saladin is begging for a war of expansion against him. If we can trade up to construction after Alphabet, we should give it to him.

3) I think we should farm all the grassland around Boston and use it as a production city.

4) Maybe try for Hanging Garden after we get a couple more cities up.

 

[Burglar]

Sorry you're right. I meant near Philapdelphia (NW). We can get that.
And Iron was priority no.1 for me regarding our military position compared to the other civs.

 

[namliaM]

650 traded cow for corn with saladin.
adopted slavery (very important in my eyes early on)
575 IW researched -> Monarchy (Wines)
300 temple popped

Wouldnt it have been better to take the two in one turn of anarchy?

Otherwise looks like another solid set....

 

[namliaM]

On saladin and Nashran, I guess he is just asking us to take it from him...
Can we possibly flip it? Or do we have to take off the gloffs?
No sense really in him going that far unless he has allready taken the other 2 wines which are nearer to him + it has a cow too. So I guess we are done expanding west (peacefully that is ) Nashran is right on the same spot I would have put it, thanks Saladin...

Boston can sure use some farms out there so we can work those hammers... uhm hills.
There are 4 plains hills and the stone mine to work... This means we need atleast 9 extra food. 1 will come from the spice in due time, but that leaves 8! grasslands to farm untill Biology (that is the right tech right?)

We should mine the hills of washington ASAP and maybe shoot for Itza, its a stone wonder and gives Great prophep points, maybe we can have prophets research us Theo and Islam (I forget the tech)

But we need to expand toward Victoria like crazy for now I think (agreeing with rddc)
Refering back to this dotmap from post #34 of rddc

I would have like philadelpha on a different spot... I understand this grabs 2 food resources but I would have picked the Dessert tile NW-W of its current position or just one more tile SW, yes loosing one of the food boni, but also a lot of the 4 tile overlap and grabbing more Hills which we may one day want to work. Or even just on the spot of the dotmap.

On expanding tho, remember the purple one goes 1 EAST of its current location on the other side of the river.

Revised Roster
- Burglar => Turned in a sollid set
- Mailman => Up, go get us some settlers
- namliaM => On deck
- rddc05
- SkunkDoctor
- SpriteSoda

 

[Burglar]

Acoording to your 2 points:
You are generally right in first point, but in my eyes it would have been better to adopt slavery earlier. Happiness is a problem in too big cities and early chopping PLUS popping is even more effective.

2nd point: Philas location is because of the iron. I think Iron is of huge importance military wise. I would have founded Phila elsewhere certainly if there had been no iron.

 

[namliaM]

I do sure love to handle the just like any other, I really only learned to in my other SG Fox01...

It just seems a waste to have two turns of anarchy so short in succession...

 

[rddc05]

I agree, we probably should have adopted slavery a bit earlier; I did not adopt it during my turns for a few reasons: I was thinking that we would move to caste system shortly (within ~20 turns, once some headway on a great prophet was made and a couple more cities founded) and we would have plentiful forests to chop along with good hpt production in DC and Boston at least.

We are actually in a pretty good position, although it looks like we have under-expanded at this time so it's probably time to get geared up for war. Do we have a Level 3 unit to build Heroic Epic? If not maybe try to get one out there on the barbs.

I would also encourage discussion and consensus on things like tech path, city placement, Wonder builds and so forth in the thread. It will help the game result in the long run. For example, if I had brought up the issue of revolting to slavery before my turns, the consensus probably would have been to go ahead and do it. So I will try to get more input for that type of decision.

 

[MailMan]

I will need to skip this round since I do not have access to my playing computer.

I have an additional request - pictures.
Pictures helps a lot in the discussion on what is the situation and what to do next, the reading of the turn log is much easier to understand and it keeps the lurkers interested.

 

[namliaM]

I guess its up to me then for some settlers....

Up and at em... Got it, play probably tomorrow... by this time...

 

[namliaM]

Pre flight check up...

We need settlers and we need them ASAP... Order up settlers in WDC and NY

IT Saladin pops up, He is cancelling our cow for corn deal...

1@ 125 bc Not much, notice a barb archer nearing boston and a chop helps the settler along in Boston.

2@ 100 BC nada

3@ 75 BC The archer killed our copper mine...

4@ 50 BC nada, but spot the barb city

IT barb archer attack our Axeman who is on a hill, our axe goes down to 1.1 but survives and has a promotion available.

5@ 25 BC Another chop (this one outside of the borders of Boston) helps the settler. This time 37 hammers.

IT We learn Alphabet and immediatly Mansa offers Math for Monarchy... I didnt even study the tree yet... so I decline for now...

6@ 1AD Start research on Literature

IT our axe outside the Barb city of Goth gets attacked by an archer, without getting hit he gets promoted... Nice...

7@ 25 AD Viccy has taken our Juiccy spot, or actually 2 tiles south... This means war!
Lets see about trades...
We are up Monarchy, CoL, Alphabet (which I am keeping ) and Metal Casting

Saladin and Montezuma are not trading .... What?
I call up Qin Shi Huang... and trade him Monarchy (429) for Animal Husbandry (143), Monotheism (171) and Meditation (114)
Next I call up old Julius Ceasar, he has some gold (thus currency ) Monarchy (429) for Mathmatics (357) and 80gold

8@ 50 ad nada

9@ 75 ad Nada

IT Qin commes to trade Calander for CoL, Aint happening...

10@ 100 ad not much

Current situation...



In hind sight I went a bit overboard on the settlers, we have one nearly ready to found a new city. One wating in DC and another nearly done... Sorry guys...

Near the end I noted we are low on workers and High on signs (sorry bout that too). We currently have 3 workers on 4 (nearly 5) towns.

After we finish up on Literature, we need to make a dicision.... Do we take on Viccy sooner or later? I say sooner.
If we can build some more Axes (another 3 or 4), preverably from barracks too. We can surely raze canterburry and possibly do some pillaging.

Removing Canterburry Will allow us to keep expaninding south, in the end we possibly want to take out viccy all together. If possible take her capitol in this campagn?

Finaly the save

Edit: I noticed to late that one axe was still on a goto, it is the axe covering the Settler...

 

[rddc05]

Got it, will play sometime tomorrow or Saturday. Is there any particular reason we didn't hook up the iron?

Here are some items for discussion: Seems we have a choice at this point. With limited production, I think we can either go after either the Great Library or go to war. If we decide to go to war, is it with Victoria or Saladin. Since Victoria is our religion, I was thinking we would make allies with her against Saladin/Monty, but it is looking like she has some prime real estate. The city we are about to found will be a good, but not great cottage city and the site where Coventry is would be nice. Saladin has better resources to take.

I don't think that Chichen Itza is a good build for Washington. If we want a stone wonder, Hanging Gardens is cheaper at 300 hammers plus 100 for Aqueduct and has more useful effects.

So, wonders or war? If wonders, which ones? If war, against whom?

 

[namliaM]

Got it, will play sometime tomorrow or Saturday. Is there any particular reason we didn't hook up the iron?

Cuase I forgot ....

Here are some items for discussion: Seems we have a choice at this point. With limited production, I think we can either go after either the Great Library or go to war. If we decide to go to war, is it with Victoria or Saladin. Since Victoria is our religion, I was thinking we would make allies with her against Saladin/Monty, but it is looking like she has some prime real estate. The city we are about to found will be a good, but not great cottage city and the site where Coventry is would be nice. Saladin has better resources to take.

I don't think that Chichen Itza is a good build for Washington. If we want a stone wonder, Hanging Gardens is cheaper at 300 hammers plus 100 for Aqueduct and has more useful effects.

So, wonders or war? If wonders, which ones? If war, against whom?

I like the war on Viccy, we have our own religion allready. But if we can the the holy city of our current, that would be better.
Reason for Chitchen Itza IMHO is the Great Prophet points.
Great lib would be nice to have... Gardens as well offcourse, but choices...
We have a great shot at the Great lib & Chitchen, even if we build military we still have a monopoly I think on both techs. And great plains are not exactly known for their high production potential.
If we time the chops (outside the city boundries) to go into the Chitchen Itza and build some axes meanwhile that should rush along quite nicely. Possibly a worker first from DC tho to improve the horses and mine the hills and stuff?

Boston doesnt have a Barracks yet, AND quite a bit of chop up north. Building a lib there followed by some timmed chops should net us the Great lib without problems?
A note about boston, it is growing very slowly. It can use a farm or 2 to grow a bit faster.

We allready have some axes near Canterburry & Due South = Grassland.
London isnt that far away. Scratch together 6 axes and say 3 or 4 swords maybe an horse archer (or 2 or 3) right after things get started (they are 2 movers). Maybe we should go for a catapult or 2, London is bound to have some strong defensive boni, appart from quite some defenders...

 

[SkunkDoctor]

The only thing is, vicky might be a good trading partner, so long as she doesnt get to grabby with the land, which sally is doing already. Also, we could capture the Pyramids. Running rep plus great library would be sweet.

 

[rddc05]

I tend to agree with SkunkDoctor and favor war with Saladin (either short or medium-term) for the following reasons:

1) Vicky is already +6 pleased with us from sharing religion and will be a good tech/resource trade/war ally
2) Sal is already annoyed with us and likely to attack while our limited forces are tied up in the south (if we attack Vicky). Monty will come soon too, giving us 3 unsafe fronts. Vicky can take some heat off from him if she is our ally
3) London is the proverbial "Bridge to Far" I believe. If this is the case, all we stand to gain from war with Vicky is one excellent cottage city site, which will kind of be working for us anyway if we trade a lot of techs with her; also we are about to settle a decent alternative directly south of Washington
4) We will eventually need to smack down the tech-whore Mansa around the renaissance, so westward expansion would help with this
5) We can always turn on Vicky later if the circumstances warrant, and when we can win with tech-advanced troops

I'm not sure we can get two cities from Sal in the short-term and survive a counter-attack. Taking Najran within the next 20 turns is probably doable, even while building the Great Lib. We will have to see how strong we are (and what his counter-attack looks like) for the second and following cities. About Chitchen Itza, I think it is a waste of hammers and we are short hammers. We can achieve another 2 Great Prophet points by running a priest in Washington (I think it has a temple already?) It is 250 hammers (with stone); whether produced or chopped, that is 7 axes or 6 swords or 5 Horse Archers, which we will need for war with Saladin and shortly to defend against Monty. It would be nice (as would Hanging Gardens), but I don't think the circumstances favor it.

We need a level 4 Unit for Heroic Epic. Probably best chance is down by the barbs in the SW, but may be able to do it taking Najran from Saladin. Getting this lv. 4 unit should be a top priority, before Monty comes calling.

We need at least 2 more workers immediately, so that also makes it harder to go to war and survive counter-attack in the next 10 turns or so.

As to overall strategy, we only have 5 cities at the moment (counting one about to be settled), probably 6-7 max. for the medium-term future. We will need to be on the ball to preserve our tech lead without opening ourselves to attack from Sal and Monty (Monty will attack within the next 40 turns, guaranteed). To this end, I propose the following

1) City specialization:
a) Commerce/Science: lib./market/courthouse/pop growth/happiness: Build Cottages: Washington and city about to be founded south of there
b) Production: Barracks, granary (for whip), UNITS!!!, courthouse when possible: Build Irrigation/Mines: Boston and Philly, Heroic Epic in one of those two
c) GP Farm: National Epic, lots of farms, library/Great Lib., pop growth/happiness: Build Irrigation: New York

As hammer poor as we are right now, I think it is crucial we stick to only the builds needed for these specializations (with the exception of some unit builds in Washington in prep for war). A library in a city with 5-6 commerce (or less) does not help us. Barracks/units in a 6 hammer city does not help us.

We are up Code of Laws, Metal Casting and Alphabet on everyone. We can get either HBR or Construction from Mansa, but only by giving him Code of Laws and Monarchy. If we are not going to build Chitchen Itza, this is not really a problem and Cats will help us a lot against Sal. Nobody else has Alphabet yet. I would recommend not trading Alpha and Metal Casting as long as possible. We should be able to trade someone for currency withing the next 10 turns or so. Calendar is available now, but we don't have much use for it, except for the spices. I would rather build an obelisk in Philly and pop the borders (30 hammer vs. 90 for library in 1 commerce city), so we should at least wait until after that border pop to get calendar.

For tech path, I favor Civil Service next:
1) Get Washington booming with Bureaucracy (increasing tech lead, maybe allowing for Hanging Gardens after war with Sal)
2) Chain irrigation to Philly to allow more hammer production
3) One tech away from maces at that point

Comments?