Up for an expansive game?

The evidence is clear. You should restart and settle in the tundra region. Activate the ice archer strategy !

Geeeeesh, what a map.

 

What worries me the most is that there's no Ivory in sight.

Amphibious War Elephants are nice, but Amphibious Ballista Elephants... can you imagine??

Ivory is mandatory. Plus Amphibious Swordsman sounds a lot less cool

 

Got it!

That map looks insane for now, and poping BW is just so sweet!
I wouldn't reroll, if that's too easy, we can alway do another one after that

I'll have a look at the save and post a pre-turn plan.

 

techs: AH -> archery (worker will have no turns available for roads in the short term) -> TW -> pottery.

worker: farm ->gold -> cow -> pigs (pigs give more food but it wastes worker movement to go for them after the gold).

capital (still working on a name pomthom) : worker -> warrior -> warrior or archer depending on tech.

First warrior should head toward the southern gold to clear the fog to better dot map the area. We'll prolly need some fogbusts in the north since there is jungle up there, some barbs are to be expected from that direction I guess.

I am not sure where should go our first city yet, clearly toward Izzy but I am not sure which gold is best to secure first

Thoughts?

 

Have you considered:

Worker 1: farm Corn ----> mine Pigs ----> mine Gold ---> pasture Cows
Worker 2: pasture Pigs
​

Mining Pigs = 5 Worker turns are lost, since a pasture will inevitably take its place. But we can work an improved resource one turn sooner, and this is a resource that will help us grow. Going from the Corn to the Gold takes as much time as going from the Pigs to the Gold, and returning from the Cows to the Pigs will lose a Worker turn, possibly two (= 4–3 Worker turns lost, depending on the location of city #2). The 'turn cost' of improving the Pigs twice therefore isn't quite as bad as it first seems.

Mines and pastures add +3 and +3 respectively, so, thanks to the Expansive trait, the yield is comparable before a Granary, especially if we are building Settlers or Workers. Moreover, if we work a mined Pigs before a mined Gold, we gain +2 per turn on those turns that we choose to grow. Waiting for a Pasture may be counterproductive.

Working the Gold will be the strongest commerce opening, obviously.

The second Worker produced by the capital would pasture the Pigs, and the Granary should be done at about that time, so we can then begin to go nuts with the whip.

Just some thoughts ^^^. I may be way off base.

 

^ Mine gives +2 and pasture gives +3.

My initial reaction is to just let Izzy have the unirrigated rice and rather make a great city right away instead with irrigated wheat+riverside gold. The 2nd city is always very important to the overall developement of the empire -- you want it to be awesome. If we start off by settling a weak blocker then our research and production will suffer. This could change depending on what we find in the fog though, it might be preferrable to settle more aggressively then.

I'm not worried about losing either gold any time soon based on the terrain and resource layout, the only thing in jeopardy is the crappy unirrigated rice. The northern gold would not be settled right next to so we'd win it by culture anyway and the southern will not be taken until she's placed at least 1 more city.

Based off of current intel I'd put city #2 on the river between gold and wheat -- and the one after by rice+gold.

Probably this. Mining the pigs immediately is still a very valid option but I like commerce. CS slingshot anyone? Just to add to the hilarity.
Cows before pigs makes sense as we'll be size 4 then and producing settler/worker anyway and the raw output is the same.

Are we going to whip 1st settler into granary? Would make sense to regrow off of that. If so we should adopt slavery and take the anarchy while the worker is improving the corn. Better to do it while we have no improved tiles.

 

There has to be an invasion onto the other continent using these later.
I'm sure the jungle up north will have some given how this game is going.

Touched on this previous post. When there's as much available land as here I rate usefulness/productivity over blocking off everything. We already have wet rice, who cares about the dry one.

 

Ahhhh. Ignore my post then. I am a noob.

Regarding city #2, 3S1E of the capital seems very strong, as Rusten suggests. The south also looks like it will suffer from less barb pressure than the north, and some fog-busting Warriors could well be enough. The wet Rice/Gold city will make for a great third city, with a road and some Archers to keep it safe. There seems to be a lot of open space up there...

Unirrigated Rice is just a Floodplains without commerce for ~100 turns or so. Not a great tile.

Revolting after the Worker is produced sounds good to me. A little earlier than usual.

Whipping the first Settler into a Granary... er, maybe? It's likely that we'll whip away a resource tile, so perhaps we should whip the second Worker or Settler into this (i.e. when the second city is settled, and can claim the Cow).

I think it depends on Worker availability. One chop = 40 , and four turns of working a Cow = 24 completes the Granary with more-or-less optimal food OF. So whip if our Worker is available to set up city #2.

 

Another thing to note is that we are playing with random events on. This is another thing I didn't use for ages, so I can't remember all the relevant ones. However, I do remember that it's useful to build up a small bank to mitigate tile improvements being destroyed and more. Where are we putting the limit? Never going below 20 gold? I think that's enough to stop the really annoying ones (like losing all food progress in city).

 

Cities 2/3 by Weat/Gold and Wet Rice/Gold will give you a most powerful trio. Dry Rice is indeed not justified here because you'll probably be able to grow to at least 6 cities with no difficulties

 

BTW it looks like there's tundra in the South. Other than having the possibility to build Sea people ice stations, early scouting might net an extra couple of goody huts...

 

I am not sure we can squeeze two workers before first settler, since we must produce some units too... and we want that settler ASAP!!!

I am thinking one south of the location you suggested for city 2, it has more potential long term, and we can grab some more bonus tiles hidding in the fog. The evidence is clear, overlapping high food tiles (rather than brown cows) has more value!

I am agree with going for slavery right after the worker. We can arrange a 4 to 2 whip to accelerate the first settler then.

CS slingshot seems a bit off Rusten I'd rather use the gold to grab the land (supporting the rex), but if u pop math in your next round, I might reconsider

techs: I'll switch to mysticism right away, this is the superior

 

That's what I said!!

 

I have been away for 4 days but I'm back and having a look. Our start looks very nice.

 

Played 15 turns.

3440 bc: four turns into the set we complete our worker, one of Izzy scouts is hunting lions in the south west...

Spoiler :

3400 bc: worker is asked to farm the corn. We are stockpilling cash to prevent bad events

Spoiler :

We switch into slavery also.

Spoiler :

3280 bc: 20 gold in, research back on.

Spoiler :

3240 bc: Greetings Huyana! The Hindu founder is already Izzy's worst ennemy.

Spoiler :

little finger says HR is his favorite civic

I am switching EPs to keep visibility on Izzy demographics while building up points on Huyana.

He is coming from the north btw:

Spoiler :

3120 bc: starting to work on the gold mine.

Spoiler :

3040 bc: AH is in, starting on archery... note the barb archer roaming in the east.

Spoiler :

3000 bc: warrior due in 1 turn, gold mine up, growing size three next turn also.

Spoiler :

I figured we could talk about the possiblity of going settler right away (we can always restart to grow on an archer later). It will enable a second gold mine earlier than the original plan, and I am not sure we can have pottery by the time we are ready to whip if we choose to.

Thoughts?

 

No worries. Take time to go through the thread

Roster:

Rusten -> starving
Ras -> just played
Folket -> up!
pigswill -> fly next!
Doshin -> the shadows

that was hilarious

 

I got it.

No horses or copper. That is not going to be great.

But our land looks great. If we can get our settlers out fast enough and are able to keep barbs away we should come into mid game strong.

 

We still have a few tiles close to us that are a bit on the dark side so its possible we have horse/copper in reach (but not guaranteed).

Even with goldmine its still 16 turns for archery>wheel>pots. We could either build a warrior while waiting for pop 4 and archery or start settler at pop3 for 4 turns, swop to archer once archery is learned while growing to pop4 then swop back to settler and whip.

maybe go for northern rice gold first, it'll need a road of course but we should have wheel by then and probably improved cows and pigs, maybe worker will have time to prebuild road.

 

I think this is the superior

 

@pomthom

Would you like to take my official place in the roster? If RRRaskolnikov and the others are ok with the switch.

I'd like to play... but, ah, time is short.

I will continue to lurk, comment, and miscalculate the yields basic tile improvements, of course!