Washington (IC) Immortal Cookbook

[GKey]

@lymond

Spoiler :

If not go for coastal capital - yours is best. Only question: why Boston not at the gold site? Hope you will be there before Gilga.
Btw your save proves that Gilgamesh would grab sugar site fast.

 

[Gumbolt]

The voting has begun!!! The voting will last for 2 days and will close at approximately 6pm GMTon Tuesday. Please post a request for additional time needed to vote, but I would like to close by Tuesday at the latest to get the next round going. (The voting round could end sooner if everyone gets their votes in earlier)

Standard cookbook doctrine: Its not always about voting for the best save but the save that will be most interesting or challenging to play. Anyone that submitted a save is free to vote.

Please rank your top 3 in order.

First place 3 points.
Second place 2 points
Third place. 1 point.

PLEASE NOTE!! To keep voting fair you cant vote for your own save. You are expected to vote for 3 saves and give reasons for your voting. Remember this is a learning game. I would encourage everyone to act within the spirit that the cookbook is intended.

The saves:

Lymonds

Dhoomstriker Not a 100% sure what level you are winning at but we will include save.

Drlake

Fierabras

Norvin green (autosave)

Moroktonos

Gumbolt

Vranasm

Quaren

Gkey

Bobbyboy29

if one of these was a shadow please let me know asap.

 

[Gumbolt]

I think it will be interesting to see what people prefer.

Few questions.

Was a coastal capital the best move?

Is having copper a huge boost?

How important are the blocking cities with gilga so close?

How important is early granaries and libraries?

Lots to think about before you vote.

 

[Bibor]

It's not fair, more play immortal than monarch :-(
Can we cross-comment the submitted plays?

 

[kossin]

I think it will be interesting to see what people prefer.

Few questions.

Was a coastal capital the best move?

Is having copper a huge boost?

How important are the blocking cities with gilga so close?

How important is early granaries and libraries?

Lots to think about before you vote.

Spoiler :

Coastal was a gamble. The Plains Hill location was rather bad imo because of the lack of production. I even added the desert hills there as initially there were none
The north coastal locations has its merits, notably exploration.
Sailing>Writing on this map is pretty powerful!

Copper isn't really important in this situation. You are not land targets to Monty and attacking Gilgamesh is kinda hard in the early game.

Blocking cities are always important but not at the cost of an economy. Your 2nd/3rd city shouldn't be for blocking 12 tiles away.

Granaries/Libraries depends on strategy. If you're going Libraries, what's the point of granaries? You're not whipping.

 

[lymond]

It's not fair, more play immortal than monarch :-(
Can we cross-comment the submitted plays?

Well, it's not a huge difference. Some MC players did move up to IC this time around. Anyway, I see no reason why there can't be some cross-discussion post/pre rounds. There was some during the last cookbooks as well.

 

[Gumbolt]

It's not fair, more play immortal than monarch :-(
Can we cross-comment the submitted plays?

Historically the immortal version has struggled for players. I do think the SGOTM and other issues are encouraging to play as we all want to improve our game play. I think I am trying to cross the perception that immortal is not impossible to play.

 

[vranasm]

I reviewed again all provided saves, to refresh memory and get the impression with newest feelings.

I admit it's very tough to judge immortal positions since I never finished game on immortal and probably even didnt succesfully started. so the ones that feel i am not fair forgive me.

I will mention 2 saves that stand out, but fairly to say I kind of dont like them and explain why.

@dhoomstriker

Spoiler :

to be fair I think you provided strongest save, producing 6 settlers+galley in such short time is just wow. i just cant imagine how could i continue playing along. I understand that the religion will help with the tensions with Gilga, but damage was done and AIs dont forgive.

@gkey

Spoiler :

Your save stands out beacause of TGL. Fair to say I just cant judge your save. I know the power of TGL, but the 2xsugar city down there is too much. If you made it between rice+hill I would be much happier.

My votes for positions:

I valued higher positions with leaving capital at the initial river.

Quaren
strong - gilg perfectly blocked, good number of citiesm wri + library home.
weak - no myst (we are charismatic!!)
questionable - no pottery limits improvements choice, but since we have library it maybe is not that painful.

Fierabras
strong - number of cities, city positions, gold, writing home
weak - no lib yet, some land tiles
questionable - cap position (no bureau cap)

Lymond
strong - great cap position, settler in 2T for gold, writing.
no particular weakness, but i think the above 2 saves are stronger for my continuation.

 

[GKey]

hard job to chose, many good saves there. I've even made excel table:

Spoiler :

And the winners are:
Bobbyboy29 -1st
Quaren and Dhoomstriker 2 and 3!

Hmm cant attach .xls files? Need to zip first?

 

[Gumbolt]

I did wonder if Dhoomstriker early DOW would upset the Sumerians. His vultures and protective traitis can be a pain. Do we want an army too early? Need to have a closer look at his save to see what benefit the 3 extras workers would bring.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@dhoomstriker

when you attach attachments to your message there is icon right of the happy face in the top toolbar, when you click it you can then place attachments to your message and if you place them in spoiler tags it will be there

something like that

Spoiler :

View attachment 263662

it makes [ ATTACH... number [/ ATTACH tag

Awesome, vranasm! That approach worked like a charm! Once you've got all of your images uploaded, the Attachments icon shows a list that lets you add the attachments' thumbnails and links (images and even other attachments like saved games) individually.

What's even better is that there is an "Insert All" link at the end of the list of individual attachments, that inserts them all into your message at the place of your cursor in the Message's text field.

It's a bit of manual work to delete the spacing that gets inserted between multiple attachments inserted using the Insert All functionality. With that bit of manual deletion of spacing, you can thus make the attachments show up on the same row as each other, with a maximum of 5 attachments on the first row, just like the automatic thumbnail-placing process. But the important part is that the technique works!

 

[Gumbolt]

I didn't have a huge issue with the images. I think a lot of people use www.photobucket.com for images.

 

[Bibor]

I think it will be interesting to see what people prefer.

Few questions.

Was a coastal capital the best move?

Is having copper a huge boost?

How important are the blocking cities with gilga so close?

How important is early granaries and libraries?

Lots to think about before you vote.

1. Capital to coast - yes I think it was a good move. Equally powerful maybe was to move 1W (so that there can be a crab/fish city).

2. Having copper is a huge boost in production, but not strategically I think. Macemen require copper but the "ooh, shiny" ones require iron, so... I don't know.

3. Blocking Gilgamesh at the gates of peninsula is a very strong move imo, but the sugar city is a stretch too far: hard to defend, depending on whips for production, huge borders with Gilgamesh who will have no room to expand anyway, lots of jungle and chops required, basically all these things scream "take me from Gilgamesh").

4. Libraries important, granaries not that much. Production cities have production, food cities have *plenty* of food to regrow the whip without granaries at start. Monuments > Workboats > Libraries > Granaries on this start imo.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

First of all, I don't know if we still need to spoiler things for this voting period, now that submissions appear to be closed, but I'll stick with the spoiler tags until told otherwise.

Suggestions of how to play out my saved game

Spoiler :

Diplomatic Effects of an Early Declaration of War on Gilgamesh

I did wonder if Dhoomstriker early DOW would upset the Sumerians. His vultures and protective traitis can be a pain. Do we want an army too early? Need to have a closer look at his save to see what benefit the 3 extras workers would bring.

I don't think that you have to go to war "too early." There are ways to plan the game out properly for war, to set yourself up for success, while I'll try to touch upon below.

We also don't necessarily need to go to war, since we'll only have a net -1 Diplomacy modifier with Gilgamesh after the Peace Treaty expires, and that value will continue to adjust over time thanks to sharing a common Religion. So, a peaceful approach is still quite viable, too.


Description of the Cities in my game
My save is definitely more on the "Granaries, whipping, and victory through war" side of things. That said, I'm still chasing after Writing and I would still aim to get a Library in the capital and in the Commerce Cities.

The capital has a lot of surplus Food that it doesn't have to share with any other Cities. It also has a lot of beautiful cottageable land. Although there's only 1 Cottage laid down at present, there are 3 Workers right beside the capital with movement points available to them, so you can start Cottaging-over Flood Plains Farms, if that's your preference, or else get to work on putting down a couple of more Grassland Cottages. I'd probably even lay down some Plains Cottages for Boston, to help it get a bit more production while also maturing some extra Cottages.

Either way, the capital has potential to be either a strong Great Person Farm or a strong Commerce-producer with Bureaucracy.

New York is set up to be a production City and thus it's about to start on a Barracks. It can pump military units once the Horse is online. Before the Barracks is complete and after it's grown a bit, it would also make for a great Worker pump, as we get free Hammers when building Workers for every multiple of 4 Hammers that we put into a Worker on a turn. As another example for other people's games, those who have the Gold Mined could also get a free Hammer from building a Worker in the Gold City, since the Gold provides 3 Hammers and the City Centre square gives us that 4th Hammer, netting us a free Hammer for every turn spent building a Worker.

Boston can be a supplemental production City, with its 2 Hills squares and sufficient Food to be able to potentially whip regularly or to help it work a bunch of Plains Cottages squares.

Philadelphia and Atlanta are both placed to have several Cottageable Grassland squares and would make for decent Commerce Cities, each having enough production to build Libraries, but not a lot of produciton for massing units.

Philadelphia, with its Corn and Fish, could also whip some Military units, but I'd probably use that City to make defensive units, like Archers.

We've bought Peace with Gilgamesh and he's only got 3 Cities on the mainland, so there is plenty of time to expand to some of the southern locations, like the Gold and the Jungle areas.


War with Gilgamesh--probably somewhere between Turns 170 and 200
One way to deal with the fact that Gilgamesh won't like us a lot is to plan to go to war with him. Since he's only got 3 Cities that can field units, he won't be able to put up as much of a fight as in the games where he has 6 Cities.


Alternatively, try to Aggressively Settle Gilgamesh's Land
Another way to deal with him is to EXTREMELY aggressively settle his land. Forget our nearby Gold... there is another Gold and other Resources to the west of Gilgamesh's capital. Send a couple of Settlers (one is currently being built in the capital, while you could build yet another Settler there next, and New York could be tasked to build one, too, after it grows to City Size 3 or 4) to aggressively settle the area to the WEST of Giglamesh. Since he only has 3 mainland Cities, this action should be possible. We also have enough Cities up that are starting to lay down Cottages for this approach to be economically viable.


Look at bobbyboy29's game to see the land to the west of Gilgamesh
You might as well take a look at bobbyboy29's saved game while you're at it. He's got some solid exploration of the land to the west of Gilgamesh, so you can have a couple of plans for where to send a Settler there before you arrive. That way, if your chosen spot is taken, you'll have a backup or two in mind that you can settle. On the Coast would be best, so that said City is connected to our Trade Network.


Look at Montezuma's Coast in my game
I've also mapped out Montezuma's Coast, so once either Monte or we get Writing, we should be able to reap the rewards of International + Intercontinental Trade Routes.

For playing other people's games, especially those that already have Writing, I strongly suggest that you get a Work Boat built and sent to the west AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, so that we can take advantage of this Trade Route source of Commerce. It will be a HUGE bonus to our empire's Commerce. You might as well look at Montezuma's coastline in my game--hey, it's free intelligence--and then use that knowledge in whatever game we end up playing.


How Trade Routes work in Civ 4 Beyond The Sword
In BTS, Sailing-based Trade Routes with AIs require you to have line-of-sight along the Coastline to their Cities. Road-based Trade Routes DO NOT require you to have line-of-sight to their Cities.

It's a bit confusing, but if you can get line-of-sight all along the Coastline between one of your Cities (that is connected to your Trade Network) all the way to one of the AI's Cities that is connected to his/her other Cities by Roads, then you'll have Trade Route connections to all of his/her Cities. But, if you only have a line-of-sight path uncovered to an AI's City that is connected to the rest of said AI's Cities by Sailing-based Trade Routes, then you will only get a Trade Route with that single AI City.

It takes a while to get used to thinking about, but the simplest way to think about it is that for a map like this one, you want to uncover the hidden squares along a Coastal route to the AIs' Cities. The squares can be in the fog of war--you just need to have explored there (or gotten a World Map trade) in order to reveal the hidden squares.


Summary of my Suggested Approaches for carrying my game forward
So, those would be my two suggested approches to playing my saved game:
1) Settle the next two Cities (Gold and Jungle) close by and prepare a large stack of Chariots to go after Gilgamesh. You'll also want to research Iron Working after Writing, to see if we can find an Iron Resource (Kossin seems to have hinted that one exists) and to help the Workers clear the Jungles around the Jungle City that you place, so that it will be easy to counter Gilgamesh's counter-attack. That probably means building a few more Workers before going crazy on the Military units, so heavy Military Unit production probably doesn't have to happen until after about 50 turns or so.

2) Continue to pump out Settlers from the capital and New York for a while (I'd let New York grow back to Size 3 or 4 first, which should be quick with its Granary), and aggressively settle a City or two to the west of Gilgamesh. That way, we'd be taking advantage of his slow settling pace to be able to Peacefully grab more of his land. Follow that up by settling a Jungle City and the Gold City.

Then spam Workers and built Cottages like there's no tomorrow, to keep the economy afloat. After that point, you'll likely have about double the number of mainland Cities that Gilgamesh has, which should put you in a strong position to win with any victory condition.


There would be other ways to play my saved game, but those would be my suggestions as to the best ways of taking advantage of the position that it puts us in.


Other People's Games
Certainly, a lot of the saved games have interesting approaches and I'd enjoy playing forward with any of them, even those where people don't think that they did so well, to see how the game could potentially play out.

That said, if we can only go forward with one game, I'll have to check out lymond's save and then cast my votes.

 

[Quaren]

Spoiler :

In my opinion Dhooms is by far the best. Not only does he have more stuff then the rest of us but he he has also slowed Gilgs expansion with the war so I think we have a good shot at the rice/gold city. Thinking this might be a bit too good and shouldn't be chosen because of that but not sure.
Lymonds stands out as well since we get the very nice capital and the 2 western hills aren't spoiled like in my and the other SIP games. The 3-4 leftover FPs can be grabbed with a central city while still getting the nice GP farm spot and the northern fish. Very unsure if we can beat Gilg to the gold/rice(atleast the rice and then the culture will be a pain)
Gkeys is nice aswell with the GLH and the 2 blocks but not sure if he is a bit too much behind on other things like workers.
Alot of the others are all fairly even but still strong. Will be hard to decide which games are the best. SIP gets us a better cap but wastes the northern fish and the 2 hills. Coast opens up for a nice production city in the west but I don't really like the hill capital that almost everyone made(can be moved but still).

Will sleep on my decision but its very hard.

 

[Gumbolt]

We don't need spoiler in the voting stage.

 

[Gumbolt]

Major downside of worker steal is Gilga has 3-4 + vultures. You get a -3 you declared war on us modifier. Also 'you are our worst enemy'. We really only have chariots to fend off his vultures. I guess that would work.

You do get +1 for religion. I am not sure how you would get Gilga to pleased. He won't even open borders.

Do Chariots get bonus vs vultures?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

@lymond
I updated my comments on everyone else's games message to include comments on your game.


Shared Religion

Major downside of worker steal is Gilga has 3-4 + vultures. You get a -3 you declared war on us modifier.

We have a +1 Shared Religion modifier with him and that value should go up to as high as +5 after another 40 turns.

Since he Opens Borders with others at the default relationship value, we'll be able to get out of the Diplo hole thanks to a shared Religion.


Worst Enemy Status

Also 'you are our worst enemy'.

That fact will disappear once our relationship improves from Annoyed back to Cautious.

He was Cautious with us at the beginning of the game, so at worst case, it will take another 21 turns for this Worst Enemy status to go away.


Chariots counter Vultures

We really only have chariots to fend off his vultures. I guess that would work.

Chariots are THE counter to Vultures, at least if you get to attack.

The trick is to ensure that you chop the Forest and Jungles in between you and the attacking Vultures, so that they don't get defensive terrain bonuses.

With no promotions attacking a Vulture in the open (i.e. without terrain bonuses), you will get more than a 75% chance to win, plus a chance to retreat. The same is true if the Vulture has a Combat I promotion (the odds are more like 78% and 75.9% or so).

If your Chariot has a Combat I promotion, the odds go up to more than a 87% chance to win, plus a chance to reatreat. The same is true if that Vulture has a Combat I promotion.


Axemen are better on defence against Vultures
If your Chariot is defending, though, it's not going to be a very good defender against a Vulture.

On defence, you will want an Axeman. An unpromoted Axeman vs an unpromoted Vulture will be equal in strength. The odds slightly favour a Vulture as more promotions are involved, but the AI is less likely to be "smart" enough to assign its Vultures with Combat I + Shock, while you can be "smart" enough to promote any Axemen that get 4 experience points (Barracks + win ANY battle) with these 2 promotions. Of course, we'll need to find ourselves Iron before we can build Axemen.

Or, try and aggressively send a Settler down to the area west of Gilgamesh, to see if the Copper is still yet unsettled there.

If you are able to build Axemen, you'll likely be smart enough to defend from within a City or on good defensive terrain, so you'll likely have better than 50% odds of winning the battle. Fortifying in one place (say, in a border City) will also boost your defensive bonus and thus increase your odds of winning a defensive battle.


Iron Working for Axemen--not for Swordsmen (at least for against Gilgamesh and Montezuma)
Note that while I advocate learning Iron Working if you want to go for war, I DO NOT recommend building Swordsmen against a Leader like Gilgamesh, since he likes to spam Vultures, and Vultures are the counter-unit to Swordsmen. Axemen + Chariots + Catapults (if you can get that far). Horse Archers are also an option to replace Catapults--they don't get any special benefit against Vultures, but they also don't have a weakness towards vultures, either. Still, I'd prefer to get the Catapults over the Horse Archers, if given a choice.

War without Catapults or Horse Archers would be best played defensively until you have overwhelming odds for taking a City (a stack of 20+ units that have gotten promotions from fighting battles in our territory). The Charismatic Trait favours this approach, as you only need to win 1 fight with a Barracks-built unit in order to get 2 promotions.


Positive Diplo Modifiers for Religion

You do get +1 for religion. I am not sure how you would get Gilga to pleased. He won't even open borders.

+1 now, +1 more in another 10 turns, and +1 more in yet another 10 turns. Wait a turn (for a total of 21 turns) and the Worst Enemy modifier should wear off, at which point he'll Open Borders with us.


My Votes
The decision was very tough and like I said, I'd be happy to play anyone's game forward. That said, I tried to pick games that would put the average player in a good position going forwards.

Fierabras' game = 3 points

Upsides
- If we use our Work Boat to explore Gilgamesh's Coast, we are only 5 turns away from having Foreign Trade Routes, since that's how long it will take to learn Sailing.
- Our capital's location allows us to use both of the Fish to the east of our starting location, if we choose to do so.
- We have our Horse Resource connected and we already have a Chariot.
- There are a lot of Forests remaining that can be harvested (Chopped).
- All of our Cities are connected to our Trade Network.
- We're decent on the tech pace, with Writing under our belt and Sailing on its way.
- We have a Settler ready-to-go, so you have a lot of freedom as to where you want to place your 5th City.
- Most, but not all, of our citizens are working improved squares.
- Gilgamesh has a Religion and a Wonder (The Oracle) that can get him Great Prophet points. So, he'll likely spread his Religion to us and then create a Holy Shrine that we can potentially capture later in the game.

Downsides
- Our Gold City is going to take a bit of time to grow to Size 2 and thus become feasible to work the Gold Resource long-term.
- There are gaps in our Barb spawn-busting, but we at least have a Chariot to make up for this fact. Still, it should become a priority to plug these spawn-busting gaps (moreso in the north, but also in the SE, just to the north of Gilgamesh's area).
- We are reasonably short on infrastructure (buildings).
- We only have 4 Workers and none are being constructed.
- We didn't settle a Jungle + Rice City to block Gilgamesh, but that could be an upside if you don't want to settle in the Jungle.


Quaren's game = 2 points

Upsides
- We have 4 Cities and other than the capital, they are in pretty great locations. We still have room for an additional 3 decent City locations.
- We have a Library coupled with our Palace's bonus and we have some Gold saved up, so in a turn or two, we can switch to 100% Science on our way to learning our next tech.
- We're working on generating our first Great Scientist, which will be quite useful to get.
- Most Cities are working improved squares with their citizens, so the Worker allocation has been well-balanced.
- If we research Sailing next, we'll be able to get Foreign Trade Routes with Gilgamesh.

Downsides
- We've done a lot of clear-cutting of the Forests, so not much Forest regrowth is possible, while a lot more Forests have been used up than in other games, so that one-time production boost has already been used up. Still, it appears that it was used in good ways (chopping Libraries), so it's not that big of a downside.
- We don't really have a great location for building additional Settlers. The empire is going to be stuck at 4 Cities for quite some time.
- The capital's Flood Plains are not improved, so we haven't started to work any Cottages yet.
- Neither Gilgamesh nor Montezuma has any Wonders for us to be able to capture. This fact could change, though, as The Great Lighthouse has yet to be built (but we're too far away from it tech-wise to be able to build it, lacking both Sailing and Masonry).


GKey's game = 1 point

Upsides
- We have The Great Lighthouse. That Wonder is excellent for this map and it means that we can spam a bunch of Cities without killing our economy. This entire game will be built around that fact.
- We have the Gold being worked, but that City will stagnate for a while. It will probably be best used as a Worker-pumping City for quite some time to come.
- Our blocking City in the Jungle is about to have its borders expand, so we'll be able to work the Rice soon.
- We're working on a Galley, so we could feasibly settle our 4th (probably better for our 5th) City off-continent, for a very solid boost to our Trade Route income.
- Gilgamesh has a Holy City and The Oracle, so he'll likely build us a Holy Shrine and will likely spam Missionaries our way, which will help in making the capture of his lands a more valuable enterprise.
- We ALMOST have the Heroic Epic unlocked with a Woodsman II Warrior. It just needs to win 1 more fight, and, unlike many other games, there is room for Barb units to spawn.
- The gap in our spawn-busting can be closed by moving 3 of our Warriors towards the gap. We don't need our Woodsman II Warrior where he is (he can move 1 square north) since Gilgamesh's culture can "see" over the Lake to reveal the PFor S + S of our Warrior.
- We have a lot of options as to where to settle our Cities, so, for those of you who don't like how others settled, this saved game gives you a lot of flexibility.

Downsides
- We're quite far off from learning Writing, so we'll have to rely on an AI to get it for us in order to get some Foreign Trade Routes.
- We're very low on the number of Workers, which is going to be a bit of a problem. Settler + Worker spam is going to have to be your focus for the next 50 turns, in order to best leverage The Great Lighthouse's value.
- Our Jungle City does not have a Hills square, so while it serves the purpose of blocking Gilgamesh from settling in our direction, it's not a very great short-term City location.
- We have a gap in our spawn-busting line that is pretty wide. If a Barb Axeman spawns, we're going to be up a creek without a paddle, since we don't have a City by the Horse and are still researching Animal Husbandry (so we techincally don't "know" where the Horse is located, although we really DO know, hehe).
- Until we get our 4th City settled or until Gilgamesh gets Writing, we won't be leveraging the full value of The Great Lighthouse. After that point, though, this game will really start to take off in a positive way.

 

[Moroktonos]

Wow. 11 Submissions! Each with its own merits and demerits. How to chose between them?
By asking ourselves what are the most important elements of the game given our current situation, and determining which saves address them the best. Is it more important to have a lot of cities? Is it more important to have intelligently placed cities? Is it more important to have pottery / writing?'

The key decision that we must make this round concerns what we are going to do about Gilgamesh. Are we going to attack him now, or wait for the rennaisance era? If you wish to attack him now, with what are you going to attack him? HA's? Swords? Catapults (need masonry??? for catapults! Plus, I have pottery and writing so )? If you are going to wait for the rennaissance era, what steps can you take now to secure the land we need to do this, and remain competitive technologically?

Personally, I am inclined to kill the little punk. Perhaps I am a warmonger at heart; we are CHM afterall! True. Gilgamesh is creative and protective, and though definitely not a Shaka or a Ragnar, a considerable unit spammer nevertheless. He is far enough away to conceivably wait for the rennaisance, but our land (saving Washington, but only for those of us who weren't lured to the coast) is pretty mediocre. We do not have stone or marble for building wonders, however. I'd be much happier waiting to attack Gilgamesh if we could sit back and turn out the aesthetics line wonders, or be working on the 'mids considering that these wonders both help our own tech pace considerably, and slow down the AI by denial. Without them, waiting for the rennaisance seems a slightly weaker option. Plus, I feel a little better spamming troops with Montezuma off shore -- he is virtually impossible to get to friendly, and we are definitely his easiest target. Despite all this, some of the landgrab saves were executed quite well, and I would be fine going forward with them.

There are only two saves I'd really feel comfortable warring out of, however. My own, and Dhoomstrikers. Incedently...

Dhoomstriker: Though I am voting him in first place, this save does have some issues and I really don't think that it is head and shoulders above the rest. Because this save is clearly geared towards warring, the diplomatic hit with Gilgamesh is inconsequential (I'm more worried about the diplo hit we'll take with the 'Zuma for declaring...). That Gilgamesh is weak is perhaps the greatest strength of this game, though the numerous cities (they're small, but they'll grow quickly and large with granaries) all connected to the trade network, with monuments in place, and working improved tiles is surely nice too. We'll need even more workers to really get going, however, but fortunately they are cheap for us. He moved his capital, which I don't like, but redeemed it by settling New York as a good production city. The overall dotmap is good, but I'm very worried that pumping out more settlers will cripple an already weak economy; we don't even have writing yet. True, we can cottage our land, but other saves are already in considerably better teching positions; if we really want to take out Gilgamesh, we are going to need better units than chariots, and we will never get them unless we have a good tech pace. City upkeep costs are steep on immortal; if we do go with this save, we will need to be very careful. I do like the scouting, but its nothing the rest of us weren't going to do eventually.

BobbyBoy: Quaren's save so far seems to be the more popular landgrabber save, but I prefer this one. BobbyBoy got the better long term cities and the lux resources, and is in a better tech position. Also, Bobbyboy took pottery over writing, and researched mysticism. Writing before pottery would have been a better move if we weren't surrounded by land begging for cottages, if we were creative or philosophical, or if we didn't get cheap granaries. Popping borders with libraries (no mysticism) feels like a highly questionable move with a charismatic leader. We will need IW asap, but this save is generally in a good position.

Ah... Who to put third. A tough call between Gumbolt, Lymond, and Fierabras. Lymond has the best capital location of us all, but I really don't like his position of NY, or that Boston's borders aren't gonna pop for ages (outside choping won't finish it... it'll probably have to be slaved off an unfarmable grassland tile. Atrocious. Being from around Boston myself, I am highly offended . In your own words, you've played much better.) Gumbolt and Fierabras both moved to the plains hill, turning their capitals into crapitals (okay, an exageration, but I like it anyway). They are both in respectable tech positions. Of the two, I greatly prefer Fierabras's city locations, even if he could use more workers, he won't be able to afford another city for a while, and he has some tile improvement to do. So...
Fierabras.

General comment: I'd be more impressed by sheer city count if we had currency and CoL. At this stage in the game, additional cities are generally dead weight -- I'll happily take 3 well improved cities and a good tech rate (provided there's room to eventually get more) over a larger number of far-flung cities and a poor one.

 

[Gumbolt]

I love fact you give so much details in your reports Dhoom.

You are right on your save. The religion will add more happiness long term. Chariots should hold off the vultures assuming he does not build spears. Gilga does have a lot of room to expand and the borders are not close. I don't understand how he got that city on that 1 square island. Bizarre.

Don't get me wrong i often do worker steals on emperor level. Just not sure how wise it is on immortal level. You have got him to make peace.

The question is do we have iron? Kossin stated last time you normally start with 2 out of 3 military resources.