Where to go from here (archipelago,immortal,isolation,finished astro)?

[Knightly_]

Hi Civfanatics,
i need some advice from you about my actual game. Settings were Shuffle map/normal speed/+1 civ/immortal/no goody huts/random civ/everything else standard. This resulted in an archipelago like map type with an isolated start. I randomed Hannibal of Carthage who is a quite good leader for water favoured maps. With some more settling time due to isolation i was able to construct the great lighthouse. I founded some cities and pretty much beelined towards astronomy. When i got optics i built about 10 caravels which give me a good map of the current world and got me the +1 circumvigation bonus. My question is where to go from here. My personal feeling is that im not as good on water maps than on others because i dont have a plan what exactly to do from here. Some screens and my thoughts about it:

Cities:

I have some nice cities and some of them have unhapiness which is ok since i plan to whip galleons there to speed up my expansion. Most of them were straight up cottages as they have nice food tiles. Growth is limited due to lack of more happiness resources and a religion.

Enemies and tech situation:

Darius and Asoka are clearly the tech leaders. Darius because of... well... financial and organized and Asoka caus he built collossus. Both beat me to astronomy by a few turns because i was unlucky with a great person (would have bulbed astro instead). As you can see i did not trade any techs yet mostly because of "you traded with our worst enemy" fear. I met the last civ just a few turns earlier. Zara has 15 cities but most of them are crap ice cities and he is far from getting astro. The others have not that many cities but i think this will change with astro expansion.


Expansion:


I have 5 settlers, 5 idle workers and 5 swordmen ready to be loaded into galleons and found new cities. You can see where i want to settle 4 of them as fast as possible. Its where the map is brighter due to vision of my caravels, each in every direction of my land mass.

WEST: First priority, because this city will give me gold and the land is reachable by Ragnar with galleys.

EAST: Second priority, because it will give me dye and the land is reachable by Sitting Bull with galleys.

NORTH,SOUTH: Both only reachable with galleons. First one should be the north position because Darius has astronomy although im not sure if he has explored that land yet.

I dont know about the fifth settler (and more)... first idea was to go for another city near sitting bull simply because there is much land. Other possibilty is to get more resources. Damn i found no place where to get silver AND fur. Andy advice ?

Teching and civics:

This is my biggest unknown... i just dont have a good plan from here. Currently im running only slavery. Backfil and go for lib? Free speech is helpful and i dont wanna adopt a religion because there are so many out there. Free speech is ok, i dont have any towns yet but about 30 in some time. Bureaucracy is out because my capital is not worth it. What after lib? I feel that i cant gain a sea domination with just navy. Maybe nukes ?

Finally glance:

Not much going on. Many of the other civs havent met yet. Darius is in WHEOOHRN mode, im pretty sure he will go for Ragnar.

So where to go from here... My more or less plan is: Settle new cities and expand, gain more land and resources. Go for lib then communism (workshop new founded cities... almost everywhere is enough seafood)... then nukes/para (havent tried this combination ever) or space race. Culture is out of question. Maybe sid sushi boosted population and making lots of friends for diplo victory is an option but i dont have enough experience to know if this works (5 different state religions out there atm). So what do you think about this game and what would you do ?

Greetings Knightly_

 

[kossin]

Just settler spam... each city will be profitable with foreign trade routes I'd think. The resources will be most useful as well.

Hope you have some GS stored away for Liberalism.

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, i would definitely trail for lib and PP , since you are running a good bunch of matured cottages in your core islands.

Your tech is not as bad as that ( you clearly beelined for Astro ... I'm not such a big fan of that, but given the land you have, it was most likely a good choice ), in spite of not having CoL and construction at this time is a little off ( BtW probaly you can buy these from Zara easily ) ... just don't go to lib via theo as the game suggests ( btw why did you cared to get mono if you don't have a religion? ), since CS is a far better tech for you : Beaurocracy and maces in case you need to defend yourself ( irrigation in this map a complicated issue ) , while theo gives a religion ( already founded ), a wonder that needs state religion ( that you don't have ), a civic you can't use efficiently and another wonder that you probably don't need.

I would consider to grab the green near SB first: grassland in archipelago is extremely valuable. The one near Ragnar is also a good target. The rest might be taken later.

A word of advice. Be very wary of making more than 3 cities in a landmass that does not contain the palace, Versailles or FP if you're playing with vassals on and not running SP, due to the colonial maintenance ( the function is roughly quadratic, so that part of maintenace will be almost the double if you add a 4th city ).

In diplo terms.... well, a lot of religions out there, so you will not be able to please a lot of people at the same time ... so I would forget about diplo ( unlesss it is nuke boosted diplo ). but if you are really going for nukes + paras ( and this map is perfect to smash any of the AI civs in 1 or 2 turns using this ) maybe you should reconsider the use of SP, given that the fallout and GW don't affect water tiles, making Sushi ( + Mining ) a good idea....

BTW can you post a save?

 

[bhavv]

Settler spam and claim as many fish resources as you can, even in tundra, glaciers and small islands.

Build up granary / lighthouse / cothon / courthouse / library / forge in each city using slavery, whip as soon as you can, then stick onto wealth / research, building a strong navy from your productive cities to defend.

With the GLH, each new city should bring in about 5 as soon as its built, and more once the rest is up. Even if you find spaces with no production and just water tiles, building a city there will still provide 5+ per turn, despite growing really slowly.

Then later on, found sids sushi co and spread it to all your cities. Even those little tiny ones will now start booming and be able to whip out your infrastructure.

You want to run representation, then later Universal Sufferage once you can afford to buy your infrastructure, Slavery for whips, Beurocracy, Free Market and Usually Pacifism for your GLH city which should also have Sushi Co and Wall Street (and sometimes collosus, stonehenge, and any other GM point generating wonder that you can build), and you settle all your GMs there.

War is never a good thing for this, you should always try to avoid war, and make sure you have a strong navy as getting all those island cities protected is often too much more than you can handle and they are easy targets for the AI.

Try to spread up to the gold / silvers / seafood in the north, and the furs / barb city in the south.

Usually on such maps with Hannibal + GLH, you can have around 10-16 cities placed by 0 AD, with a 30-40% science rate which completely speeds through the remaining tech tree, but your map doesnt allow such a spread so you have to wait for galleons.

 

[raxid]

So a couple of things worry me. You acknowledge that you are restricted due to happiness yet you didn't bother diverting for the bonus that HR would give you? Now since there is no save its difficult to see, but according to your report that seems like a mistake.

Also researching civil service for buero (vs running no other civic) is ALWAYS worth it. And from that screenie your capitol has 4-5 cottages, is a port town, your hannibal with the GLH and you now have astro. buero is probably worth a LOT more than you think

Again a save would help determine that...

 

[bhavv]

A strong Beuro capital / GM farm is the backbone behind Hannibal's archipelago rex. You should never skip getting Beurocracy ASAP when playing Hannibal on a water map, I usually tech for Stonehenge > GLH > Collosus > Cothons > Beuro > Pacifism > Liberalism > Astronomy > Economics > Sushi Co, and then your set for a strong win as long as you can defend yourself and have lots of cities.

 

[Knightly_]

Hey folks,
thx for all your tips.

@rolo:
The screenshots are acutally two or three rounds after i finished astro(dunno why) and i one-round researched poly and mono i think. I was planning to go for CS route to lib and not that suggested one by the game (i think it takes the shortest way in terms of beakers). I played some more turns and i think SP was the way to go, it gave me such an incredible boost because of the lowered maintenance costs. Currently im 1670AD and almost the entire world is in war with each other (well all but me ).

@bhavv:
I generally agree with you that sid sushi on achipelago maps owns. But in this case i feel that when i settle all those useless cities now it would slow me down too much. Thats the reason why i went straight SP. I dont have lots of experience with oversea cooporations but the costs are really scaring arent they ?

@raxid:
I did not have any happiness problems for a long time when i got astro. I was able to make some deals with the AI and the new settlements will give me a lot new resources. I agree i rarely had a non-pyra game where i did not adopt HR at some point.
Concerning the bureucracy bonus you are right. I think i have underestimated the bonus from it (completely forgot to think about trade routes income...duh!). Anyway the benefit from it would be small in my game because i will go straight for lib and with my research rate i will be there not long after CS. Going for CS before astro is another thing of course.

Two savefiles are attacked but i think its not the actual version (3.17 and BUg 4.0).

Greetings Knightly_

 

[Knightly_]

Hey again,
i finished the game with a space race victory in 1944:

In fact it was easier than i thought. My workshopped new cities were able to boost their infrastructure in no time. About the time of electricity i was starting to overtake the AIs with my research, about 1500 bpt iirc. I was even able to build a lot of modern wonders: Hollywood, Eiffel Tower, Christo, RocknRoll, UN, Internet, Space Elevator. I got only DoWed by Victoria one time but i only saw some galleons and killed them. When i was UN leader i tried for a diplo victory... closest vote was 740 votes (760 neeed), but i wasnt able to get Victoria to Friendly. Btw is it true that you gain the "You have wisely chosen your civics" relation boost only when the AI is running that civic by itself ? I was trying to get Victoria to friendly and adopted representation but it did not give me any relation boost (she was running HR for whatever reason). Anyway, at some point Darius granted some cities independence and since the brand new game AI Saladin would vote for Darius a non-nuke diplo victory was out of hand. I then just went for space. As you can see on the picture Asoka messed up his third culture city... its WAY behind the others. I gave him some juicy techs for making war with Ragnar and Ghengis because i did not want to take the risk. The time for his third city to become legendary then dropped from 30 to 50+ turns.

Thx again for your advice.

Greetings Knightly_

 

[UWHabs]

Yes, the diplo bonus you both need to be running it. Bribing her into it might have been enough to get her to vote for you, if you were that close.