WOTM 72 First Spoiler

[Deckhand]

WOTM 72 First Spoiler

Use this thread to tell us what happened in your game, up to 1AD!


Stop! If you are participating in WOTM 72, then you MUST NOT read this thread unless EITHER

• You have reached at least 1 AD in your game, OR
• You have submitted your entry

Posting Restrictions

• Please do not disclose ANY events or information gained post 1 AD.
• Please do not reveal your final result if that happened after 1 AD.
• Please do not discuss the location of resources that may not show up before 1 AD. (Iron is OK, coal and oil are not)
• Please do not reveal names or locations of any civilization not accessible by galleys.
• Do not post any savegame file from the game. Discussions and screenshots are fine but not actual games

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I settled in place. Moving to the Plains Hills square could have also worked as it was quite a while before I was able to use all of the Seafood Resources (I'm pretty sure that I hadn't managed to use them all until after 1 AD).

We were given a nice Unique Unit, but the immediate neighbours got the same, so going to war wasn't an easy decision.

Ultimately, I decided that I enjoy playing with Jaguars so much that I just had to try war. I had to fight several Unique Units from my neighbours, though, so it was slow going.

I delayed Wonders and as a result, lost out on getting any early ones and was instead offered Failure Gold. That tradeoff was acceptable and helped me to fund research far enough to not completely crash the economy when I pushed the economy into the hole with massive Whipping and City captures.

It wasn't too hard to take a couple of border Cities, but then the warring dragged out for a long time and it took a while for me to get my first AI capital, probably after 1 AD, so I won't say more on that subject.

There are some good City locations mixed in with a sizeable amount of Desert, so it's not the total Grassland (under Jungle) paradise that I'm used to seeing with maps where I play as Montezuma.

The Sacrificial Altars are quite useful, although there is an initial investment that needs to be paid... they shorten the Whipping Unhappiness, but you likely already have a large amount of it, and then you add to it in order to whip your Sacrificial Altar. So, you whip your City into the ground and then can barely afford to whip some more, and yet you do it anyway!

That said, the Sacrificial Altars came in at about the right time for me, at least for a couple of key Cities, and if you trade +1 Unhappiness for 5 turns (probably 6 turns for the Sacrificial Altar itself, due to the way that rounding works) and lose 3 population points in order to improve your economy and speed up your Happiness recovery, it's quite worth the investment. I certainly built more Courthouse-equivalent Buildings than I normally do early on; the fact that their special ability works retroactively was just too good of a benefit to pass up.

This map is far from ideal for Space, but that's where I'd like to head.

 

[Minou]

SIP. After founding city 2 there was pretty much no good land left to expand peacefully into, so I built 6 Jags and they captured the awesome 3FP/Gold/Horse/Wheat Roman capital and a second decent Ivory city. Founded my own third city by Pig/Bronze/Rivers and then rolled over America's two poorly defended western cities which were very far from their capital (I did not even discover the capital until a few centuries later). I also snatched a coastal city with Fish/Spice/Cow from Kublai with a quick attack during this war.

So far I have only used Jaguars and have bounced back and forth between great and horrible luck, alternatively winning <33% battles to take cities without a loss and dying 4 in a row at >75% odds to stall a war. The army will probably run out of steam against the American capital since it is on a hill with 50% culture.

At 1AD I have 11 cities (51 pop), including 2 each captured from Caesar, Kublai, and Washington and 1 captured from Bararians. My science rate is down to 0% though and some Sacrificial Alters are in queued up to start fixing this.

Not sure where to go from here, but most likely I will try to sail over and conquer the other continent for a Conquest or Domination win. One GS is saved up and two more on the way in the near future (hopefully one from the capital with a small GP chance and another from the Great Lib / Heroic Epic city to follow quickly on its heels). I will probably use all three to bulb towards Astronomy.