UNGY-02 We like our people

[silverbullet]

Seems like settle in place case. Even though there is no whipping we could still use all that food for great people, as I believe caste system will be our civic for most of the game.
I would have liked to see more production in the capital, especially with no whipping, let's hope the grassland tile to the south is a strategic resource.

EDIT:The tech order seems right. The build order may leave the worker with nothing to do for a couple of turns, but with no whipping I wouldn't go for 2 workboats before a worker.
If the southern grassland is horses that makes it even better to have the worker quickly.

 

[Rusten]

We should keep in mind and look for a possible capital switch already indeed. This city will be a great place to run specialists, and specialists are pretty much the only thing not affected by bureaucracy. It's also pointless to put cottages here, no extra comemrce tiles (river etc), just plenty of food.

 

[darrelljs]

Lurker Kibitzing

Whoa...I didn't realize you are playing an FE without whipping . Good luck with that. Might want to consider moving the Scout NE one tile, and if there are hills 3N of the Settler, moving the Settler one N. Having a production capital is pretty important without the whip.

Darrell

 

[Olodune]

We should keep in mind and look for a possible capital switch already indeed. This city will be a great place to run specialists, and specialists are pretty much the only thing not affected by bureaucracy. It's also pointless to put cottages here, no extra comemrce tiles (river etc), just plenty of food.

The seafood will provide a little bit of commerce, but clearly this city is ideal for a GP/production hybrid -- that should fit very nicely into our gameplan. Looking to move the capital to a more cottageable location would have my vote. Exploring the map is good too.

Too much food really shouldn't be much of a problem, before Caste we can just make sure most of our workers/settler get built here. Hopefully we have some room to ReX as that would make the game more interesting.

Edit:
@darrelljs
There is a possible "clear tile" 2S of the settler, so my preference would be to settle in place. Move the scout first, naturally.

Edit2:
Is that coast north of the settler?

 

[Rusten]

@darrelljs
There is a possible "clear tile" 2S of the settler, so my preference would be to settle in place. Move the scout first, naturally.

You sure you're not confusing the settler with the scout?
[edit] doh, somehow I read that as 2W, my bad, nevermind, you're more on top of things than me [/edit]

I'll wait a little while to start and possibly let the others chip in as well (if they're hasty ). I'm pretty intent on settling in place, even more so after moving the scout, but if anyone disagrees feel free to persuade me/us. Here's an updated view after moving the scout.

We'll have ivory, which is sweet. The biggest worry of mine is that we might be isolated. That's a lot of coast, and coastal fractal starts increase the odds of isolation a lot. Oh well, more suspense, just the way I like it.

 

[silverbullet]

Yes, settle in place. Let's hope we are not completely isolated. Being on an island with galley connection is quite nice though. We need to find out quickly and potentially chop the great lighthouse.
Question: how do you generally like to scout with a scout? do you always move 2 steps, or do you always try to finish on a tile with a defence bonus?

 

[Rusten]

Hills allow for plenty of view, you can see 2 tiles in each direction unless there's a forest blocking. By moving onto the hill I can see every tile any other direction would have granted (except for the tree 1E where we'd see 1 more coastal tile). Defensive bonuses won't come into play until barbarians/animals start spawning, but even then hills are good because you can see them before they can attack you (except panthers and wolves).

 

[mystyfly]

Nice to see this start. Indeed the start is very strong - I agree with everything said. AH - Mining - BW is very nice, we'll have the early strategic ressources uncovered at max speed. I also use the same build order when starting coastal. The capital site is very strong. Early we'll use the food to build workers/settlers and once we hit CS, we'll be running specs. We also don't have to worry that much about crushing the economy with those coastal commerce. On top of that, we'll get a luxury ressource once our (creative-powered) borders pop.

We might consider sending a WB out early to island-hop. Depending on what we find, we might consider chopping those forests for the GLH (no neighbours nearby on our island and more island reachable by WB). I don't think we're isolated - only a gut-feeling though.

Go ahead rusten!

 

[Olodune]

Jumbos!

If more scouting shows a similar long coastline (or if we're isolated/galley isolated), I agree that the GLH should be chopped out.

I still would settle in place as well.

 

[Rusten]

Played 33 turns up to a natural stopping point (bronze working in). We need to make some decisions now before moving on.

- popped 4 huts (3 gold (128) 1 scout (died))

- we are far from isolated. Kublai Khan greeted us from the north-eastern area early on and we met Justinian south-west. They had no chance to meet each other as we're blocking the pass and also we've got more spy points on them than they had on us. Conclusion; there are at least 2 more AIs nearby if not more.

Here's a look at what we've explored so far. The lands look very tasty and we can settle several great cities (not like a certain Tokugawa game ).

A closer look at the southern part.

Now onto the decision part. As you can see we don't have copper nearby, but we do have horses. I personally prefer making chariots over archers in general, but there's a lot of fog here, so we should discuss it. If we go for chariots we'll need to research the wheel next and if archers then archery. I didn't put anything into either research, just stopped at that point. The horses are nicely located; we can settle a city on that river for plenty of commerce tiles and the corn too (creative means we won't have to wait long before a border pop hooking up the horses ). We can snag that southern gold with a city on the desert with fish + a flood plain.

- I made a second worker at size 3 because we really need chopping to make units for more exploration. The settlers and workers can get made by seafood and cows, but the work boats and archers/chariots can not. The 2 chopped forests will yield 40 hammers, so there's enough to finish that warrior (explore north-east?) and to get the second work boat out swiftly the turn after. The workers should mine some hills next. Also camped the ivory while waiting for bronze working (perfect match turn-wise) so remember to hook that up when we have researched the wheel.

Our scout is currently in the middle of the jungle there. Hopefully it can reveal some more northern tiles before dying to barbarians.

As a reminder; barbarians cross our borders at 2200 BC on immortal. There are exceptions however, so it might be wise to leave a warrior nearby. If the AI loses a unit next to our borders and there's an improvement on the tile the archer/warrior is next to then it will enter regardless of what year, even if it's 3500 BC.

What length should our turnsets be? Maybe something like +/- 15 turns until ~500 BC and then onto 10? The next player (Olodune) should perhaps get some more turns though, depends on whether there's a logical stopping point.

There's plenty to decide at this point, so bring forth your input.

Do we want archers or chariots?
Do we want to beeline IW and move into the jungle for gems?
Do we want to expand aggressively or passively?
+ anything else

ps. there could be iron 2S of our capital. Seafood is only counted as 3/4 (?) a food resource and the tile is surrounded by forests so I'm guessing there's "something" there.

 

[Olodune]

Got it.

I'm going to wait a full 24 hours before playing as now is a very important discussion period. (I'll look at the save carefully soon.) I'm glad we're not isolated too

 

[Olodune]

I opened the save.

First impression:nice land! Rich in resources too.

I'm also pleased to see two workers busy chopping

The land and not-so-nice neighbors means that I think we should skip the Great Lighthouse -- too bad as it would be great on this map. If we did want it we should immediately research Sailing, while building a settler. Then chop out Lighthouse/GLH -- but I think the cost is too high.

I also prefer Chariots over archers. In fact I think our second city should be 1SE of the revealed horses -- it would be a great commerce/production hybrid, getting ivory, horses, corn, and lots of riverside grass.

Justinian is a worry, since he has access to our juicy landmass -- maybe we should trim him back with swords/chariots?

Either way I think land claiming to the west should be our top priority (meaning early IW).

 

[Melior Traiano]

Agreed with Olodune's assessment. We should grab as much land a possible, but war with Justinian is only a matter of time. There might be Copper in the fog north of the Scout. If not, Ironworking becomes that much more important to research.

 

[silverbullet]

How fast do you think we can fogbust the area between Justinian and us?
In a game with whipping I would definitely go chariots, but in this game we cannot do emergency whipping, so we might have to think this more carefully. Chariots have a fair chance of losing to barbarian archers (especially if there are 2 of them attacking at once), while fortified archers are pretty safe.
On the other hand, chariots can move faster between cities, and help us do the landgrab that we want to do here, so I think chariots.
I agree that GLH is not an option now. I would like to see peaceful expansion using iron working (as I am pretty certain it's iron 2S, and we desperately need extra hammers).

So my thoughts are: chariots, wheel, iron working, peaceful expansion.

 

[pigswill]

A slightly more aggressive option would be to settle second city near the copper. Until we get fog cleared its not clear if we could block Justinian with a city down there and it would need IW sooner rather than later.

I'm not sure if its optimal but its an option to consider at least.

 

[mystyfly]

I also see the copper city as an option: we can settle on the ivory, hook up copper. This city and athenes will be easily connected via rivers. The city itself is so-so from what I see here: Gems, Copper but no visible food ressource (thou likely in the fog) and riverside if I see that correctly. I see there is a unit nearby. It should stay in the vecinity. If Just isn't 2-3 tiles away from gems we might go for it. This would ensure lots of land to backfill.

Other option is that horse - city (SE of horse): This could become our capital, with all the commerce potential. It also grows fast and has a little production.

Techwise I say wheel (not a matter of whether we want to use chariots, unless we want archers) > writing > (pottery) > IW
We want writing to hire scientists. Our cap has great GPpotential so why not start on GP-generation. Also we then can control growth more easily. In case we settle copper city, I don't think we need pottery that badly, we can wait until the gems mine comes up and we then also can start making coppercity productive.

 

[Rusten]

That copper is a really long walk though, and you might not see it from the screenie, but that's really Justinian's territory that the marker is pointing at, not the direction to find him. Add in the fact that he's imperialistic and I rate the odds of that copper being available by the time we get there very low.

I didn't mention the GLH, but that was an added factor for stopping there. The next tech decides whether we want it. I don't think it's worth it. We have a lot of promising inland cities and the hammers are better spent elsewhere. Making wonders with all this food and lack of production isn't really ideal.

There could be copper north of the scout, but I wouldn't bet on it. Copper is pretty rare in the temperate zones in my experience. I always find myself hooking up horses and/or iron in games like this one as there's a lack of copper. If Oloodune finds copper there then I recommend a quick pause in the turnset and another round of discussion.

Also note that Kublai Khan can attack really early, at least he's done so vs me several times (far into the BC years). We better watch out, an AI with creative is very good, he's also bound to hook up his strategical resources faster with that trait. At any rate we need to scout north-east and find out just how close he is.

I agree with 1 SE of the horses. Going for horses (the wheel) will also allow us to grow to size 6 as we can hook up the ivory. That's going to help us mass out a lot of workers/settlers from Athens (fish+clams+clams+cow+(mine+mine or scientist+scientist)).

PS. That's Justinian's holy city, and its borders are already distanced 1 tile from the copper, there's no way that's going to work out.

 

[mystyfly]

That makes things clear - J-man is just too close then. Also I don't think we'll be building any early wonder this game. Let's just try to get as much land as possible - it's very important to scout east so we'll see in which direction we can and should expand.

 

[Rusten]

I agree with more scouting, that's why we needed those 2 workers. Coastal starts are harder to play out early on as you have to put so many hammers into boats instead of exploration, it requires solid play and no detours. We don't have any plains hills either which makes it all the more challenging, but fortunately our scout has showed us quite a lot already, we'll map out the rest with a warrior or two after chops.

 

[Rusten]

And one final note;

- Please don't play with BUG unless the creators are 100% sure they've stopped the log crash this time around.

For those new to SGs using the BUG-mode -> it crashes the event log for people not using it (unless they've fixed it, which I doubt). You're only playing 10-20 turns, so please abstain from using it.