VQ06b - Emperor just win!

[Maquis]

Time for the VQ series to move on to a tough challenge; Emperor!

This SG is a "Just Win" with all victory conditions enabled.

The only twist? We're competing with... ourselves! Which VQ team can win, achieve a better score, or, most impressively, be the quickest?

Here's the roster for VQ06b:

GreyFox
namliaM
armstrong
eektor
Cosmichail

We've rolled a random leader on Emperor, the map is Fractal. - We are Napolean of France. An Aggressive leader just might be what we need to keep in this game - maybe even win!

Everyone plays 20 turns the first round, then we'll drop to 10 after that. We'll also want plenty of discussion, especially when something big comes up.


Here's our starting screenshot:




ChrTh is up for the first 20. Good luck to all!!


Here's the save:

 

[GreyFox]

...
ChrTh is up for the first 20. Good luck to all!!

something is not very correct here ....

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Roster
-- GreyFox
-- eektor
-- armstrong
-- namliaM
-- cosmichail

I would suggest 20 turns each first round. I will play in 12 hrs time, give us sometime to consolidate our ideas, and have some discussions.

Firstly, any changes needed in the roster?

Secondly, our starting moves. But first, let me resolve our starting save and screenshot first.

 

[eektor]

Ummm ...

 

[armstrong]

Here's the actual starting screen shot:



And here's the real save, from the A-Thread:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=129616&d=1149996868

I'd move the warrior 1e to the hill, just to see a little bit to the east.

Someone mentioned settling 2s in the VQ discussion thread. I'm starting to like that, as you get at least 4 plains hills for production and a extra tribal hut. If Emperor does turn out to be bloodier than Monarch, that could come in handy On the other hand, we lose fresh water and some river land.

I think either 2s or settle in place seem good (someone sell me on one of 'em!)

Since we're industrious, I like going for the Great Lighthouse, especially if we have some other good coastal sites. It's such a useful wonder, rarely contested, and you can use the Great Merchant to research Civil Service.

On the other hand, I'd guess we want the religious route to Monarchy relatively early for our wine, so it might be worthwhile to instead go for the Oracle and take Code of Laws or Metalcasting (cheap forges!)

Techwise, I like Mining -> Bronzeworking. Despite having Pigs, and the fact that hill pigs (5F1P) are better than wheat (4F1P), since we start with Agriculture I don't think Animal Husbandry is an extremely high priority.

Oh, I know it's random, but it seems like the French always start with wine!

 

[GreyFox]

From the VQ Planning Thread, this is the correct screenshot:



We could settle in place, or move the settler a bit.

I am more inclined to settle in place, but that means poping the hut using our settlement (may cause the result to be a bit less favourable). It also mean losing one forest tile.

Moving 1 S to any tiles (SE, S, SW) is unacceptable, since it means we would be 1 tile away from coast.

A third choice is to move 2S, that will nab us the pigs and wheat for early growt (instead of waiting for the first cultural expansion). But that means losing one wine, the fresh water from river, and one turn of research/prod.

EDIT: I see armstrong beat me to this ...
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[Cosmichail]

Let the games begin good luck fellow players......

EDIT: 2S sounds good, lots of food/production

 

[namliaM]

Oh, I know it's random, but it seems like the French always start with wine!

I am playing a Pitboss game with the french and did not have wine in the capitol... Which I didnt move... Wierd map that is... not your 'standard' kind of map... I will post a screeny sometime ....

Moving 2S will add a lot off hills, which is verry nice offcourse. BUT loses the +2 health of fresh water unless the water due South is also fresh (which it doesnt look to be...

I think in place we have a decent mix of commerce and hammers for a burocratic capitol. Lets try and work towards that goal... Lighthouse is nice, but takes away from CS and we have no (current) use for fishing.

Looks like we may be on a land bridge between 2 bigger patches of land. Would be nice if that rings true...

 

[Maquis]

something is not very correct here ....

Sorry all... too much cut & paste. Not enough editing.

I've corrected the screenshot. Looks like you've got the save.

Good luck... I promise to stay out of your thread for awhile now...

 

[GreyFox]

I will play in 1 hr. I'm more inclined to settling in-place (although I am the first to suggest 2S). The fresh water bonus is too important to miss in an Emperor game, and with the resources pointing towards the north, we are likely to be at the south of the map. SO, it might be better to have settle on the northern coast rather than on the southern coast.

Research-wise, since we start with argiculture and wheel, there is already initial worker techs. I am inclined to getting mining next, then go for Bronze Working.

Production wise, with low initial food, we will have to get a warrior out, wait for the city to grow to size 2 before switching to worker.

Any other thought before I start playing?

 

[namliaM]

I would suggest picking up AH first anyway. We need it for the pig and Horses.
BW greatest effect = Slavery. Will not get (really) get into effect until we have atleast the Wheat and Pigs improved for the extra food.... and maybe even a granary in place....

Maybe picking up Pottery would be to much on Emperor, but AH definatly...

Edit: I second the wait till size 2 then worker idea... maybe tech: Mine => AH. I dont know how long the research times will be and/or how long the worker will take to build & farm/road the wheat. If we can either time the discovery of AH & Worker build (Improve the pig first, cause I think that is the stronger tile) or discover AH & Improving of the wheat. That would be GREAT.

Edit2: The warrior just head West. Start exploring...

Edit3: How about moving the settler 1NW it will cost us in the initial development (maybe to much?) but would leave a POWERhouse second city 2S of the warrior. I think it may just cost us to much in the initial phase. (Have faith in the MGG (tm) => Map Generater God )

 

[GreyFox]

BW is also for copper. AH will get us the pig, but efect is the same as the corns. By the time we have the worker and grow to 3, we should have AH by then. Rvolting earlier into slavery also means less disruption due to anarchy (i.e. its better to revolt at size 2 rather than at size 3).

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[namliaM]

Of hand I cannot tell which is the better tile (dont have CIV right now). My instincts tell me the pig is better, but may be wrong... Still dont have this resource thing straight in my head....

Any turn of no production is best done ASAP offcourse and if we do turn up Bronze in the capitol, that would be NICE indeed...

If Wheat = Pig, sure do BW first.

 

[armstrong]

Even if we lose, friends, I'm quite sure we have set the record for opening screen shots in an SG thread with 4.

It sounds like you might be playing already, but I don't know about warrior->worker. I'll try doing the math on it sometime, as it's actually kind of interesting. My intuition is, since we have plenty of tiles to improve, it's going to be a bit slower, especially if we settle in place where we can only work 2F tiles until border expansion.

In defense of AH, pigs are 5F1P while the wheat's only 4F1P. On the other hand, I just don't think we want to delay BW. We want to know where the copper is for our second city. Delaying AH will cost us 1 FP/turn at size 1 and 2 FP/turn at size 2+ (food or production) because our second tile worked will be a mine, not the pigs. (Unless we luck out and have copper in our capital, in which case there's no loss.)

How about moving the settler 1NW it will cost us in the initial development (maybe to much?) but would leave a POWERhouse second city 2S of the warrior. I think it may just cost us to much in the initial phase. (Have faith in the MGG (tm) => Map Generater God

Heh, it's very risky, but I'd say waste two turns to settle 2s of the warrior first (made up with the +1P from the plains hill) and then see if 1N1E if worth settling It might interesting just to put some differentiation in between our game and the A-Team.

 

[GreyFox]

The people in Paris was happy. Settled in the year BC4000, Paris is now a size two city, producuing a worker to improve on the surrounding land of Pais. They have learnt the secret of Minings, but are more interested in the secret of working with copper. WIth the strange people who called themselves mongolia not so far away to the east, French needs mor eimproved weapons made from copper to protect themselves.





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Seems like there is roster change (or I copied the roster wrongly), so here is the updated roster:

Roster
-- GreyFox == Justed Played
-- namliaM == UP (if not too drunk celebrating the 1-0 win)
-- armstrong == on deck
-- eektor
-- Cosmichail

Everyone play 20 turns first round.

>>>> The Save (3200BC) <<<<

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EDIT:

Ok, noticed that you guys posted while I play ... but I'd stick to my original game plan
Again, think warrior first then switching to worker is faster than worker first, then again I might be wrong.

 

[armstrong]

Some quick comments (gotta get going in a minute):

Doh, with 20/20 hindsight 2s looks like it would have been better - no way to know we had that fish 3n of us, though. Kublai's not a fun neighbor - creative, aggressive, and a decent UU. I've noticed he tends to beeline for Monarchy a lot, which means early longbowmen, too. Ugh. On the plus side, he's close. Is it safe to assume everyone agrees with a quick axer rush if we have copper?

I'm curious if there's any seafood in the south by the plains hill. A city 4S and 3W, with a couple of seafood, is about as good as you can get for early production. A city 4W would be a decent early game production site, and then turn into a fine fishing village with a bunch of windmills too. However, we need a border expansion to work that fish, and, of course, Fishing. That's some techs that might not be useful otherwise. Hmph.

Would we perhaps want to have namliaM play 4 turns to reveal bronze, and then take a break so we can discuss dotmaps, before continuing? It might be a moot point since it looks like we'll be getting our first settler right around then end of his set. Still, we'll want our warriors pre-positioned to let the settler get there.

I'd recommend building a settler right after the worker finishes. Then, maybe warrior/barracks until size 3-4, settler? Since we have a little peninsula blocked off with at least one food source and some hills, I don't think we have a huge rush to settle, though Khan is close. Also, I don't know how barbs are on Emperor. Fortunately there's almost no fog left on the French Peninsula, so they should only be spawning between us and Khan - doesn't seem like they should be too much trouble.

It depends on the copper, but I really like the city site 1n of the corn. Two hills, 3 fp's+irrigated corn, and lots of forest+river. With the potential for 16-17 cottages, a lot on the river, it'd be a great commerce city. And, it settles towards the Khan. It's lack of production is mitigated by the numerous forests to cut down. It'd be a good place to run two scientists early on to discover Philosphy.

Depending on what's in the fog, I also like settling NEish of Paris and grabbing the floodplains with that city... it would have a bit better production early on.

I don't like the lack of happiness resources. I think early Monarchy is the way to go for HR+Wine.

With Khan this close, I think we should just focus our development on taking him out.

Techwise, AH next? What after that? I see: Writing (heading to Alphabet, library to for Philosphy/early Academy), Fishing (depending on if our peninsula has more seafood to the south), Mysticism (if we need a border expansion for our copper city, and on the path to Monarchy.)

Should we steal a worker from Khan?

Okay, my 2 cents for now

 

[eektor]

Hehe a little late but I agree with what's been done.

I liked settling in place. I know 2 south would have been better for a production city, but the first city needs to be good in research at least at the beginning and that extra health would help a lot too.

I definitely agree with getting Bronze Working asap. We should try to do an axeman rush on Kublai.

From practice games I've done, going worker first is always quicker, but in higher difficulties I like to go warrior first for extra security.

Stealing a worker is a big gamble. IIRC the AI's start with an archer and warrior as well as a worker. There is a good chance of you losing your warrior and then not being able to make peace for a while later.

 

[namliaM]

Stealing a worker... Hmz... well I didnt really setup for that (yet). I think we may just get crushed too if we do that....

Good news we got copper... Bad news Kublai got it too...

I was scouting East of Kublai, not much there... (more land over the water tho!!!!! Boat time!) And the warrior got stuck at the red dot as Kublai allready planted his second city there.

The fortified warrior jumped over the pond to his current possition (long live creative ) just as our other warrior draws first (lion) blood...


Oh I should mention that I allready spotted the first Barb Warrior Just east of Khans capitol...

We have 2 more neighbours who allready have the same religion

Cyrus is the founder of Budism by the way.... and the lowest of the 2 in score...
Order of scoring JC, Khan, Cyrus and VQb offcourse dead last.

I researched AH and set research to pottery for the granary. Next target should be writing I think.
I also took a stab at trying to plan some cities in...

The 2 K marked cities are both Kahn's cities, the second city seems to be awfully place by him. It picks up 4 resources, but 1 of fresh water and looks to be 1 of the coast... Note the land due east of him, but we allready need OBs with Kahn to get to that land. A priority in my book...

The "Corney hills" would be our base from which to spam some units I think. It has some nice hills. and food from the Corn. This I would build as the second city...

"Nothing river" (NE of Paris) has nothing real to offer but for a cottage spam there... The fish is just out of reach, but I dont think we want to miss out on the +2 health? Tho thinking about it, the fish beeing some nice +food (3 IIRC) would compensate easy for -2food from -2Health ... and we have an extra river tile to cottage...
By moveing it 1 east we lose
2 Dessert, 1 Grass (below the gold marker), a plains and an FP which would go to Corney Hills.
and pick up
1Fish, 1 dessert and 3 water tiles.

Clausville (SE of Paris) is not much more than a filler city. Very mediocre at best...

And the save is here

 

[Cosmichail]

Aye caramba......

We have JC/KK oh goody.....

Wow Kublai is already big and has elephants. Not good but this emporer right? So our second site if Corney hills for copper/production/corn.. Sounds good to me. Nothing river looks good too.

IMHO I do think we should expand towards KK first to keep him at bay and then settle Corney Hills. It really depends on our strategy. If we are going after KK right away with axes then keeping him at bay isn't so important. But KK is creative so won't his culture defense be quite strong meaning we will have to waste a lot of axemen. Do we have worker yet? Sure would be nice to work pigs for settler. Food/production good to get that moving.

Just pitching here.......

 

[namliaM]

Pig is 2 turns away from "completion"

Corney hill dont have Copper, but some hills.... Maybe, just maybe we want Corny Hill 1 South to pick up an extra hill???

Axemen with Combat1 + CR1 vs Unpromoted Archers... Is that a bad match?

If we can grab the Colossus and the LIghthouse that would be BIG... we allready have 5 cities planned to be coastal. 2, maybe even 3 will depend heavy on fishing to live/grow.

 

[armstrong]

Edit: Oh, this is a "got it."

Okay, looking at things.

"Corney Hills" unfortunately, if I'm looking at the right dot, can't work any hills until it get a border expansion. It does have tons of forests, though, but we'll need mysticism.

Having bronze is good, but I think we should get it with our second settler? It's 12 turns until our settler is out, I don't know what city sites are still going to be around... at least we have bronze roped off. If we go for bronze city 3rd, do we need to go hunting->archery? Or do you think the barbs will be quiet since we're so crowded?

Right now, I'd settle next to the corn, and then either on the bronze or 1w depending on the distribution of food resources (preferably 1w, though settling on it to get it hooked up faster could be more useful?) We can chop a second worker out of the corn city. That's assuming Khan doesn't grab the spot.

After that, full military production. Getting sailing before pottery could save us worker turns hooking up the bronze, and I don't see us building any cottages that soon. Of course, we don't want to delay alphabet for too long. Once we have a sufficient army, we could put Paris on Lighthouse/Great Lighthouse duty.