What would you do here?

[groobz]

Noble - Marathon

Started as Japan. Year is 1330, i'm in last place. have just competed Civil Service for Samurai. My tech situation is not bad on par with everyone.

I have only 4 cities and desperately need to expand. North is complete tundra and peaks and East looks similar. I need to expand south / south east.

Zara (Ethiopia) and Roosevelt(America) are there. I'm Buddhist and Zara and Roosevelt are Confucius and are close allies. I don't think I can win a war against Ethiopia as they're too strong. Should I attack America and hope Zara doesn't join?

thanks!

 

[pob]

Others are plotting (the fist icon) so you could wait and see what happens and build up your army. You can part build units so you have many units close to completion; you can do this with whipping too, whip a unit at a point where there will be lots of overflow but then don't complete it. When a war erupts, you can quickly produce lots of units (maybe switch to theocracy and/or vassalage to at this point) and choose which side to join.

America are even stronger than Ethiopia, but neither are scarily strong on their own based on the demographics. If no other wars do break out and you need to start producing your prebuilt units as they are at risk of hammer decay, you should be ok against America. Get a peace treaty first with Ethiopia just before you declare by begging for a small amount of gold.

In the meantime, you could plant a city where you have already culturally stolen the food from your neighbours' cities. A city two east of the pigs would be an ok filler city.

 

[Snowygerry]

Prepare to be attacked yes - likely the US first, but they can easily bring in the Ethiopians - so build units and form into armies, put them in defendable positions.

Defend first then counterattack once you take out their stacks, on Noble - Marathon it should be doable.

You have horses but almost no cavalry - they're very useful running your defeated enemies from the field, (after your catapults weaken them)

 

[Fippy]

How high do you value ?
Pigs & wet rice should be settled first prolly, or split into 2 cities.
Any city with such resis is not filler.

 

[pob]

Filler as in filling the gap... if Matara and Seattle are likely to be taken by force soon, then filling the gap is less important. It's the only good visible city spot for the Settler being built in Osaka, but there still may be better alternatives out of shot.

 

[Fippy]

I meant settled as first city at game start
With Kyoto settled on pigs too i think groobz maybe never looked into S&T.

 

[Pangaea]

I strongly encourage you to read this thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/beginner-help-the-basics.648469/

 

[groobz]

Thanks for the help!! will definitely read that beginners thread.
I'm going to whip samurai and break out of my land via attacking America and hope Ethiopia stay out

 

[Gumbolt]

Not settling pigs and rice is a big mistake. Settling on pigs is very debateable. 1Se would of had 33 very strong food resources with a chance to share pigs with a corn site.

4 cities by 1330ad is very low! You had little or no economy here and you gave away the stone.

Wonder fail gold here would of really helped. More cities too with mids even better.

Breakout could work but really late for that kind of rush.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Well for one thing I would newer settle on top of a resource. Resources are primarily worth it for the tile yield. Loose that and you might as well not try.

 

[Fippy]

Depends..not on top of strong food resis usually.
But or sugar, wine and so on can be good tiles to settle on.
Best is prolly sugar, 4 improved only so if you can get 1 extra from turn 1 on that's nice.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

I newer settle on a resource as a matter of principal. It's just wasteful. The only time when it can sort of be justified is if you have a strategic resource on an island or something that you can't reasonably reach anyway so you make a throwaway city that will newer be profitable but works for that resource. I had that happen a couple times in my games on maps with loads of mountains. But even than. Waste not want not.

 

[sampsa]

A wise woman points to the moon...

 

[6K Man]

@PPQ_Purple - the point of settling on a resource is to give your capital's tile a bonus or or (ideally 2 ) that will benefit the capital immediately and for the long term. Early benefits like that have a disproportionate effect on the long term outcome of a game.

Grassland Sugar and Bananas, as Fippy said, give 3 when settled on, and you only get 4 or 5 after Calendar (or 4 if you irrigate them). You likely wouldn't do the same thing for Corn or Wheat (dry Rice is a maybe) because they can be improved quickly and they yield more when improved than, say, Sugar. Settling on Pigs is also dubious - Pastured (or Mined, if you don't have AH yet) Pigs are both good.

Settling on resources that only yield 1 or 0 food is also popular. You get the resource, a +1 or for the city square, and you don't have a food negative tile.

 

[sampsa]

Settle on grassland, work improved sugar. 2 city center, 4 from worked tile, generate 2+4-2=4 per turn.

Settle on sugar, work farmed grassland. 3 city center, 3 from worked tile, generate 3+3-2=4 per turn.

This means that you don't lose food by settling on sugar and makes especially jungled sugar an excellent tile to settle on. Also, having a farmed grassland as your best tile is the worst case scenario. Often you have another sugar for example, in which case settling on sugar and working a farmed sugar leads to fastest development of the city.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Early benefits like that have a disproportionate effect on the long term outcome of a game.

Do they really? I keep hearing people say that and other things like that a couple turns of revolution matter. But in my experience a game lasts so long that planing for the long term always outweighs any immediate benefits. Unless you get incredibly unlucky there simply isn't anything you can't make up for by optimizing for just a little bit later.

But I do tend to play on the largest mapsizes and slowest gamespeeds a mod provides. So maybe that's a consequence of that.

 

[Snowygerry]

Do they really? I keep hearing people say that and other things like that a couple turns of revolution matter.(...)

Well they matter when it comes to taking out your first target civ, a couple turns earlier for your stack(s) to arrive at the enemy capital may mean the difference between victory or defeat when things are otherwise closely matched,

then you add his lands to your own and that is what really starts "snowball" rolling...

That one extra food will not win the game, but it may win the first war - imho.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Well they matter when it comes to taking your first target civ, a couple turns earlier for your stack(s) to arrive at the enemy capital may mean the difference between victory or defeat when things are otherwise closely matched,

then you add his lands to your own and that is what really starts "snowball" rolling...

That one extra food will not win the game, but it may win the first war - imho.

Honestly I have newer been in a situation where a couple turns here and there made much of a difference. But I also don't do rushing very much. I am more of a builder.

 

[Snowygerry]

Well games that go in that much detail at the start are most often competitive ones - good players compare results on the same map or just high scoring games on high difficulty levels.

If you just play for your own enjoyment - it matters less, obviously

Edit, for example in the case of OP settling on the pig, would have made less of a difference than not settling the other pig and rice later on, the focus on marginal gains presupposes an otherwise well played game to make a meaningful difference.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Well games that go in that much detail at the start are most often competitive ones - good players compare results on the same map or just high scoring games on high difficulty levels.

Rushing is not the one and only way to play competitively. Some of us just like huge maps and slow game speeds that make rushing less appealing.

Edit, for example in the case of OP settling on the pig, would have made less of a difference than not settling the other pig and rice later on, the focus on marginal gains presupposes an otherwise well played game to make a meaningful difference.

But just one tile to the right there is a spot that would have given him the same general output AND allowed him to work the pig.