UNGY-01 Another spy attempt

[pigswill]

That is to say maps showing iron in our vicinity:

We do have iron in York's bfc which simplifies the issue of metal availability.

Dot-mapping of blocking cities remains interesting and challenging.

I'd put one city on the plains hill on the north coast immediately east of the gems in screenshot 2. I'd put a second city on the south coast on the jungle square immediately east of the mountain in screenshot 2. These would block Monte with a border pop each. Northern city misses the second iron by one tile. Southern city misses the corn by two tiles.

There would be space for an adventurous city placement two south of the iron in screenshot two. It catches iron, corn, sugar and gems. It's also in the middle of jungle with no freshwater, limited production outside of iron and gems and would be very close to Monte and a long way from our capital.

I'm considering chopping a forest near York to speed monument to speed availability of iron.

We've got gold connected increasing happy cap by one. If we're concerned about protecting settlers then maybe complete granary and build archer escort before completing settler (due in 3 turns). We could alternatively risk settler with a single archer escort and rely on 50% jungle defence to keep them alive.

Here's the save in case anyone else wants to play at dot-mapping.

 

[Rusten]

I see. I'm fine with either though, don't really have a very strong opinion on this. A problem with settling on the grassland hill is that there won't be any other hills in the BFC, we'd be doomed in terms of production, so I agree with 1 NE too.

Another interesting gambit is to settle the pigs spot first for safety and then try to make it 1 NE of that furthest gems before Monty settles there instead of the plains hill which could wait another 5-10 turns, but even if we'd decide to do that making it in time would be hard. It would be an even better choke point due to the mountains, but as mentioned already making it there in time will prove tough. I think aggressive settling is the way to go on higher difficulties, the AI's are terrified of settling beyond anyones border, and if anyone can pull it off it's an imperialistic civ with gold at its capital. Still, if we don't make it there in time we can just settle on the plains hill instead and nothing will be changed.

Was thinking something like this:

Edit: Wow, I better learn how to read! You (pigswill) also mentioned the spot I was talking about (2 S of iron). I like it very much, but due to the shape of the land Monty's border is already closing in on the pigs spot, so if we settle 2 South of the iron first he might sneak a settler past us in the galley as that spot seems close to the programmed AI. Only difference of opinion that we have is the order of settling. Personally I think that plains hill can wait as it's not really blocking Monty that much as of yet.

 

[mystyfly]

I like your dotmap rusten, but we better settle 2-1-3, as 2 is the site that really blocks off. I don't think Monty will bring a settler via galley until he runs out of land to settle close to the capital. All those spots look like great cities but unfortunately none is riverside. Two are coastal though which means some trade route income.

 

[ungy]

I also like the dotmap but I would say we should settle 2-3-1.
Either 2-3 or 1-3 is a blocking position with culture pop but not 1-2.

Now one problem we have is that we have need for a LOT of workers and only one. We also have need for some defense given our neighbor and our blocking plan.

Still I'm game for settling 2 first.

 

[pigswill]

Once the second settler is built Paris could focus on workers while waiting for the iron to become available.

 

[mystyfly]

Paris??
Btw was this the whole turnset pigswill? In case it was I guess I'm up for XX turns.

 

[pigswill]

Paris? London? Berlin? European anyway.

Not the whole set. Just wanted some feedback on city placement before continuing. Still got a few hours left before my 48 .

 

[Rusten]

Happy to see that we're doing it the aggressive way, this will intensify the early game. I like playing risky and taking up any possibility that arrises. However, keep in mind that the city #2 will not grow at all before we have our worker there, and iirc our worker is still back in york. Reason I'm somewhat sceptical of settling there first is that it will have no health bonuses as it won't be connected to our capital and it is surrounded by jungle, it won't be able to do anything at all. I counted 13 jungle tiles, what is the ratio again for number of jungles per -1 health? 4? If it's let's say 4 we will have negative health when settled as we start with only 2 and all it can work is a 2 food grassland tile without production. Then it will have 4 unhealth (3 jungle 1 size) and 2 health, meaning -2 food, so it will do nothing for such a long time. I'm not sure if this is such a good idea. Due to this I wouldn't settle there before we have a worker or two ready to mine that gems immediately. There's also the added risk of that jungle growing onto that jungle tile (unless there's a resource hidden under it) which would put us at (+)1 - 2 food.

Make sure we keep an archer or two somewhere in between making a narrow fogbusted passage for us to move our new settlers and workers through once we get our first blocker up.

@mystyfly, #3 is riverside, it will help connect the new cities to our capital once we get sailing, just need to road 1 or 2 tiles.

Edit: Make that 12 jungle tiles as 1 will get settled on, but it will still be -3 if the ratio is 4. Even If the ratio is 5 or 6 we would also get negative health (+2)-2-1. A monument would take a full 30 turns (less if a worker will get sent immediately, but still a long time) without any possibilty to get whipped and then another 10 to break borders.

 

[Rusten]

Another thing; after looking at the new save I noticed Monty has built a city up north there that I didn't notice on the screenshot earlier. Now I totally understand the importance of settling the plains hill (#3) sooner. He could move there at any time at this point so I'm more set to settle 1-3 given the health issues of (#2). It's a great city no doubt, but we already have sugar, corn, gems and iron. They would be great resources to sell for gold per turn, but not worth the extremely handicapped early game of what settling #2 first would cause imho.

 

[pigswill]

So go for #3 and #1. Its very likely that Monte will pinch #2 before we get there but he'll pinch lots of other sites as well and Ungy did comment that having too many cities would make the game too easy!

Edit: Enough talk. Time to play and see what happens!

 

[ungy]

So go for #3 and #1. Its very likely that Monte will pinch #2 before we get there but he'll pinch lots of other sites as well and Ungy did comment that having too many cities would make the game too easy!

good plan.

Rusten: I think you are definately correct about city 2--looks good on the surface but the reality is that it just won't work out--good catch!

 

[pigswill]

Played 15 turns up to 1000bc.

1480 Warrior Woodsman II > Woodsman III.

1440 London settler > granary. MM tiles for growth.

1400 London granary > worker. Pop 6.

1360 AH > writing.
York monument > archer.
London swop worker to archer for escort duties.

1320 zzz

1280 London archer > worker.

1240 Archer/settler meets barb archer. Wood3 reinforces.

1200. Wood3 survives barb archer.

1160. London worker > worker.

1120. Writing > alphabet.
York archer > WB.
Nottingham founded:

Spoiler :

1080. Hastings founded:

Spoiler :

Oracle bidl. Confu fidl. Coincidence? Probably not.

The Voice of the Beehive says "You are not alone":

Spoiler :

1040 zzz

1000bc. London worker > settler (no hammers).

Nottingham and Hastings are building monuments.

Research is down to 50%.

York expands next turn. Couple of workers nearby for iron mine.

Worker heading towards Hastings.

More maps:

Might be worth checking out the north for seafood. If nothing else its a sound production city as it stands.

 

[Rusten]

Be careful. Its a jungle out there.

Nice turns, happy to see us get to both of those city spots safely. Great to see another civ nearby too given our variant.

Just to make sure, we now have 10 experience on our warrior? Looks like the northern territory could be a good spot for our Heroic Epic then. Many hills and some food resources, but lacking in commerce. This is pretty early to say though as we definitely need to explore it first to make sure we don't miss any sea food, but 1 city on the hill 2 south of the horse for the flood plains and 1 city on the desert 1 west of the wheat could prove to fair well. A city on the desert tile west of our capital could pick up the fish and corn too. These are still quite some time ahead though - that jungle riverside gems+fish+sugar city should come before any of these in addition to exploring the north and developing our blocking cities.

Btw, are we not allowed to research sailing? It's not the most important tech in the world so if we have to steal it we'll survive, but if we're allowed to get it now would be the time in order to hook up all of our cities and to get a religion from Monty.

 

[pigswill]

Rusten. Our warrior has 10xp so Heroic Epic shall be ours after the minor detail of stealing aesthetics and lit. He's also Great General material.

Sailing is probably ok but I'd rather err on the side of caution in terms of keeping the variant so I went for alphabet first. If its ok then may as well switch to it straight away then finish off alphabet afterwards.

 

[ungy]

I guess technically sailing as it's not a worker tech I originally thought would fit into the steal catagory. However, I think we should let ourselves research it as it would normally come well before alpha and not a reasonable length after. Prohibiting research seems like an unnecessary handicap which really doesn't speak to the espionage economy overall.
So I say let's allow it (and then we should research it).

Nice turnset pigswill.
Kind of surprising to be doing as well as we are on score now.

I'd change the settler build to a worker--we need a few more of those I think.

I think we should OB with Monte to try and get Buddhism--we really don't want an early war with him.

Khmer have contact with Qin but not Monte--makes me think either a snake continent or maybe 2 continents.

There is another AI in contact as Khmer are hindu but didn't found it.

 

[ungy]

Rusten. Our warrior has 10xp so Heroic Epic shall be ours after the minor detail of stealing aesthetics and lit. He's also Great General material.

Yes we should try and avoid combat with him.

 

[Rusten]

I'd change the settler build to a worker--we need a few more of those I think.

Agree. Any further cities can wait some turns - I'd much rather get ~3 more workers. Also think we should whip out some granaries after our monuments as we won't have to spend any hammers on libraries. We've got enough units for a while too, no need to add any, we've started paying for them already (only -1 though, for now).


I would vote <yes> for sailing as it's necessary to be able to escort spies who can steal techs. At least that's the case on many maps and some fractal ones. This time we got an ai on our landmass but other times you might need a galley, so it goes under the general espionage pre-techs imo.

I think we should OB with Monte to try and get Buddhism--we really don't want an early war with him.

This is also a good move. Better to get some negative diplomacy with far away leaders than staying at cautious when neighbouring Monty of all civs. Then we can explore the rest of the island as well. I like to know as much as possible about the geography to be able to predict/plan ahead what's up.

 

[druidravi]

Yes we should try and avoid combat with him.

I am of the impression HE is unlocked once you get a lvl4 unit and doesn't matter if unit dies.

 

[pigswill]

I think its more for the GG than HE (Wood3+Medic2).

 

[mystyfly]

OK got it. I'll either play today or tomorrow.
So Alpha > Sailing.
OB w/monty.
More workers and some settlers. Try to squeeze in near monty border.
Some defence so we don't run into barb problems.
woody-3 warrior will be fortified somewhere in the jungle near one of our new cities.