Try2 - Return of the Newbies!

[Mitchifer]

I would almost like to restart, only because I think I'm ready to move on to Monarch. Trying Monarch in a SG will help out my game in the long run.

And I've been playing the BOTM as well; I usually switch out dll files depending on what I'm playing. So either with or without the unofficial patch is fine by me.

 

[Shadzy19]

I would rather restart then , to many bugs.

 

[Trynthlas]

I usually do the same, Mitch, just made a goof.

Actually I think (to avoid brain-farts like this one by me) that I will restart the game using the HOF mod for BtS, since everyone can download it easily, and it has all kinds of neat reports/logs/etc.

Restart it is - we'll keep the same leader and map settings.

 

[Trynthlas]

Ok, all settings are the same, except this:
Difficulty: Monarch

Game now uses the BtS HOF mod

Starting spot (I already moved the warrior):

Spoiler :

Discuss!

 

[ddrekins]

I'm probably the least experienced player here, so I guess I'll start on the comments and you all will have to correct me.

Assuming we accept this starting location I think we'd be pretty punished for researching a religion first. We'll be stuck using the two-food plots (unimproved clams first) unless we grab fishing. Of course, the relative beginner that I am, I'd grab bronzeworking a start making that forest around us history.

I also don't like the amount of plains around us. . . I hate plains. Quick question, if borders expand to access a tribal village, does the goodie bonus act as if a scout/explorer or a non-scout/explorer touched it?

EDIT:

Wouldn't moving 1W make sense on the first turn? We could see what is there and if we settled there we'd keep the fresh water bonus, keep access to the clams, gain access to the sheep, and gain +1 hammer in the city plot. Of course, if we do that, we'll be 1 turn behind in research making religion training tough and we won't be able to produce fishing boats to access the clams until we get a coastal city. (I mean, we have access to working the plot but not boats for the improved bonus.)

 

[Shadzy19]

Im quite sure we will have another 2 fish/clams in the sea , all the other tiles around us are forest and they will never give a capital with just 1 fish.
Im also pretty sure we have copper/iron on that grass hill , my bet is on iron.

Im no fan of a early religion unless i have a civ with fish/agri+mys , it slows the growth down a lot and if you have a nearby civ with a diffrend religion your bound to get involved in religious wars.

My suggestion :

fishing>bw>the wheel
settle in place > warrior >wb , once you hit size 2 hold growth and max hammers > worker and whip him when bw comes in (usually is around 8/9 turns left and thats pretty much the same amount of turns u need to grow again to size 2 so its a win win situation. > warrior > stonehenge > at size 3 whip another workboat .
worker just mines hills.

 

[Trynthlas]

Shadzy, why stonehenge? It's not one of my favorite wonders, and while the automatic monuments for border pops are nice, I usually prioritize expansion and the other early wonders much higher.

ddrekins - given our seemingly resource-limited starting position, it is a safe bet there is at least one or two more resources hidden in the BFC waiting to be revealed. We don't want to lose our ocean access, so moving would really only waste a turn in this situation. Also, trying to grab an early religion, while possible, is a waste in this situation I think - it won't benefit us that much, and if we really want we can probably grab Judaism (unless there's a religion monger like Izzy around).

My choice would be to settle where we are. I agree with the tech path Shadzy suggested initially, though I'm not sure why he wants Wheel after BW? I would go Fish->BW->(hunting or agri). As far as builds, I agree we do warrior, WB til pop 2, switch to worker, whip when BW is in, back to workboat, then see where we are and maybe another worker and chop a settler with the first one while that second worker is building.

 

[Shadzy19]

I have always been a fan of stonehenge with India , our worker will only have to mine 2 hills (1 with a forest) , other then that all he can do is chop forests while growing (also the reason for the wheel , we have nothing to irrigate or dont have any need for camps atm) so by the time u get size 5 you will already have stonehenge completed and will get a very early GP that will help cover the expenses of the expansion phase if we settle him.

After that at lvl 5 we can easily rex 3 or 4 city's building nothing else then settler -workers and a escort and our new city's wont have to worry about border pops so they can start working on granery's right away and whip those when able.

Its just a suggestion offcourse but ive used this quite a lot and it makes for very strong starts.

 

[Trynthlas]

Ok, so we have a start. Decent, not amazing though. Short report since it was a rather uninteresting start...

I settled in place, and we find a LOT more resources, plus get a map from the village near us:

Spoiler :

Started with Fishing->BW->Wheel as discussed.
Built a warrior, work boat, worker - though I didn't work in the whip as mentioned

Also of note, we met...

Spoiler :

Our world at turn 40:

Spoiler :

Roster:
----------
Trynthlas - kicked it off
Shadzy19 - make it happen!
Mitchifer - on deck, general!
Carneios
ddrekins

 

[Mitchifer]

Not sure if an early rush is feasible, since Victoria is somewhat far away - not to mention that our copper to the north won't be in our cultural area for a while unless we build a city in the ice, which probably isn't a good idea.

Other than that, we could build a city to the west to grab the stone for some of the early wonders - the great wall or the pyramids for instance.

Also, I'm heading to work in a few hours so I'll be need to put near the end of the roster. I'll be back on Thursday - I also updated my sig with my current schedule.

 

[Shadzy19]

got it , will play later tonight .

Oh boy did we get lucky , 3 diffrend seafoods just in our cap coupled by 5 hills!
If we stay settling near the coast and get early harbors we wont have any health probs whatsoever.

Plan is to tech towards masonry > deer > ah and get that stone up and running , I would settle our second city 4W of Delhi so stone and sheep are in the first ring.

Will also use our warrior from Delhi to see if we got any seafood near our copper mine .

Il whip the wb in the cap at size 3 , chop a forest and build a second worker , start roading towards our stone .
At size 4 start building a settler and whip it when able , build some warriors to fogbust and once the stone is connected get stonehenge.
After that another settler towards the copper mine , settle him on the ice if we get a seafood otherwise with small overlap so it can borrow the crab.

After that we can decide to axe rush or to get pyramids , axe rush looks appealing since we wont be able to get a lot of land , will we wait for constuction or go in early?

Does the plan looks ok to u guys?

Edit : on the great wall , I doubt we are gonna see more then 2/3 barbs , barbs can only come from 1 direction and is easily covered by fogbusting so do we really need this wonder?
It could be usefull for a great spy however but that would mean having to let Victoria alive and get boxed in very fast.

 

[Trynthlas]

I would actually prefer to ignore the copper to the north and make a run for the second copper down south, to the west of London.

I think we can safely ignore the great wall for this game, but the pyramids would be nice...however I would prioritize REXing to make sure we don't get boxed-in, which is also again why I like making a run with a settler down south, west of london. Yeah it's far, and our economy will take a hit but it will facilitate an early war on Vicky.

Tech path sounds fine, but I would like to consider doing a CoL pop with the oracle to get courthouses up early so maybe we want to tech some along the religious path.

Let's see a quick dotmap before you drop any settlers, please

 

[ddrekins]

I'm back, so you can call on me whenever you need someone to newb it up!

 

[Trynthlas]

Good to see you back Feel free to take a look at my report and the save, and put in your ideas for what to do next!

 

[Shadzy19]

Its hard to dotmap this map when we have quite a few undiscovered tiles , a seafood can make a world of diffrence .
After about 10 turns in my turnset we have all our tiles explored and it will be easier to dotmap and decide on future city's .
Perhaps il stop there , we can decide where to settle and after that il continue my turnset.

Just took a look at the copper site Trynthlas suggest , its quite high risk (we most likely lose it to Victoria as its in a prime location and we only have 1 place to settle if we want the cow and bronze in the first ring which is in a very bad spot , if we skip the cow for first ring and settle on the desert its a very strong city however we'l need a early monument to make the city be able to grow and work decent tiles .
Its very far away however so its hard to get a road up there and protect it the city /roads from barbs and we get a big hit on science.

On the oracle , i think it will be very hard(if not impossible) to get masonry > hunting > AH > poly/med > priesthood > pottery > writing before anyone else has build it.
We can skip the first 3 but thats also skipping on the stone city and any of the stone wonders.
I would much rather grab the pyramids so we can grow our city's and get some 6 specialists going .

 

[Trynthlas]

Makes me sad to agree, but sound logic on the oracle vs. stone/pyramids - so let's shoot for the 'mids.

On the southern copper, yes it's risky, but it seems likely it would also deny Vicky the copper, giving us a huge advantage for an early war, which would likely even out for the science benefits vs. early hit long term (or so I would like to think ). I'll agree to your idea of playing a few turns, however many it takes to scout out the areas we are looking at settling, and then pausing to talk about options.

 

[Shadzy19]

Im already praying for a copper mine near that rice north of London

Il play the turns now so we can discuss our options.

 

[Shadzy19]

Ok , this is bad .
The moment i press enter a jag eats our scouting warrior , so much for exploring north off London ...

 

[Shadzy19]

Played 8 turns so far .

Everything looks good , move warrior from delhi to go scout our shore .

IBT : A panther eats our scouting warrior near London
Turn 41-45 : scouting
Turn 45 : Delhi grows to size 3 , whip wb
Turn 46 : Delhi : wb > warrior , wb on clams , MM for max growth , we grow in 4 turns , start whipping a forest to help build another worker .
Turn 47 : hunting > masonry
Turn 48 : scouting is completed , found a island with clams nearby east of Delhi , no other seafood near our stone or copper
yuck ! Bear spotted south of Delhi , will be risky to go scout the fog .

Dotmap :

Spoiler :

Possible city's :

Red dot can use the crabs from Delhi , so it can work crabs , copper , and a plains hill from delhi giving 8 and 4(1 from trade route) at size 3 so it isnt really that bad of a city .

Yellow dot : mainly for the stone and sheep to get some stone wonders .

Blue dot : uberb city for more then 1 reason but is very risky in more then 1 way , specialy now that we have no unit scouting there and a bear closeby .

Green dot : We dont know all tiles but this is imo the best spot so we dont waste to many good tiles .

I would go for red and yellow dot , still undecided if the axe rush or the pyramids is more important .
For now I would say get stonehenge and pyramids , tech towards construction and kill Victoria with cats and axe buts its to early to say this for sure.

Place your opinions pls .
Im not really sure how fast AI's go for pyramids on monarch , around 1AD or earlier?

 

[Trynthlas]

I pretty much agree with your dotmaps, although green dot will be conditional on what we find in the blackness. The more I look at it, the more I think we're just going to have to settle yellow/red, and green a bit later - then go to war with Vicky to get out of our box.

If we somehow get lucky and blue is available when we're ready to settle the 4th city we should definitely take it instead of green.

Let's get the 'mids, prioritize that first, I think. We need a settler, some workers, and some good mines around Delhi to crank it out once the stone is hooked up. I'm not sure how much value stonehenge will be, but I'll leave that choice to you.