would anyone like to shadow my game

[Evil Beejeebers]

Hi,

I am trying to improve my play especially at warring, I am playing Churchill on a Pangea. I just want to try and find out when I start falling behind. and to compare my build orders to others.

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

I got to turn 50, and I think I have two pretty decent cites, and two sources of bronze. I have only met Gandhi so far, he should make easy pickings.

 

[Keilah]

map size, # of civs, settings, etc etc

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Units. Units, units units.

Not "I'll just finish this next building, then train some units".

Turn 50, and you have trained no military units. It really shows in the lack of scouting you have achieved so far.

York suffers from the lack of a food tile (the cottaged floodplain does not cut it), and a library is a really expensive way to border pop. A placement to the east (between the copper and the pigs?) might have been better, but again -- you haven't scouted enough to know.

With no culture in York, and Writing on the horizon, it looks as though you were planning to follow up the granary with a Library there? Gah -- units!

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

just standard for size, civs, etc.

yeah I have been using I did not go for hunting as I had no resources which required it. I had thought about settling near the pigs, but I felt the hill would allow more cottages. I wiped out Gandhi and I am consolidating at the minute, I don't know whether to go for william next or mali?

 

[The Oz-Man]

What difficulty? Presumably low if you're axe-rushing people?

 

[lymond]

Post some screenshots too. It entices folks to join in the discussion.

Also, play shorter turnsets to get advice - more like 20 turns. It will prevent you from making mistakes like York.

So, on the game:

There's some good things here. You tech path is not bad, for Noble. If teching Masonry, consider grabbing Myst first - predecessor techs give a bonus on subsequent techs and Myst gives you border pops. However, as VoU mentioned you really should have built some warriors while growing. Obviously your first one died, but you need more scouting here and spawnbusting barbs. This is especially the case down south. You really don't have enough info on where to put your next city.

As for York, the problem here is not settling for food first. In fact, you could have settled to get pigs and copper in first ring with fish later for a very nice city. Or settle closer to London such that the two cities can share tiles early, like working cottages. Settling food first allows you to get cities up and running quicker.

Anyway, at this point you need to start thinking about your next city.

Don't be afraid to build warriors. Sometimes it's the only unit you have for some time. They are cheap and more effective than you think.

 

[vranasm]

run very quick shadow providing saves T50, 80, 100 and 1 AD

 

[barbertje]

Actually, York isn't too bad, because the capital culture will expand in 1 more turn, getting the pigs into range. York would be good as a third city, so you could have the pig inmproved before you settle it. I can't see a bettre location, but that is because of the lack of scouting.

 

[coanda]

Ok I'm going to split this into two parts. First, I went ahead and played the first 50 turns (52, actually, because it was a good breaking point). I'm gonna put it in spoiler tag; it will have quite a few map spoilers for you if you look at the screenshots, so you might want to play out to turn 80-100 yourself before reading it.

Spoiler :

I'll try to give my thought process; note that a lot of this is fairly instinctive - it's not like you should literally be thinking through every one of these steps consciously every game.

I look at this start and see two Agriculture food resources; that answers the question of what the first tech will be. It also answers the question of what my first build will be. I'll be going worker-first, agriculture first. I'm not going to move anywhere that gives up the rice or corn on this start. The warrior can't scout to the south or east. You could make a case for moving the warrior either 1NE or 1SW before settling; I chose 1SW on the off chance I found something beautiful that would persuade me to settle 1W.

Warrior finds stone in SIP (settle in place) BFC (big fat cross, workable city tiles), but nothing of interest further west. So I settle in place. As I said, first tech is Agriculture, first unit is worker.

This is why I turn huts off. Turn 9, and I've already gotten a huge boost - I popped bronze working from the very first hut I ran into. This means I know my capital has copper, and already know there's a good city site just south of my capital which will likely be my second city. It's also just a lot of beakers for free; I'm thrown well ahead of the AIs in tech.

I started Animal Husbandry after Agriculture because I was hoping to find horses, and was already looking at that Pig as a potential second city site depending on what was down there. The other obvious option would have been Bronze Working; as it turns out, I got lucky and get that for free. If I hadn't, my tech path would have been AGR -> AH -> BW.

Turn 10, I meet Gandhi. Being the bloody-minded sort that I am, I take one look at his pacifist smile and consider killing him early - an axe rush looks like a strong option here (given that it's Noble difficulty and Pangaea, I could have just warrior rushed but that's a bit too cheesy). Note how I added a map notation (alt-s) at the spot where I met him marking the turn. It's not necessary, but I find stuff like this useful for keeping rough estimates of how far off AIs are early in the game before I find their borders, and it's particularly useful if you're going to post screenshots to the forum and ask for advice (so other people can judge where the AIs are roughly).

It would have been tempting to send a warrior scouting north to investigate Gandhi's lands now, but my warrior was way south so I just keep scouting that way with him and figure I'll use my second warrior to scout north.

Worker finishes. First priority is the corn - it's a 61 tile, which is the best first tile I'm going to get. Second priority is the copper - if I had worker turns to spare, I might get the rice first. But my one worker is going to be hard-pressed to keep up with capital growth off just the corn anyways, so copper then rice. Capital starts a warrior, to scout north a bit then come back and garrison.

I didn't meet any other neighbors until turn 29. Gandhi founded Buddhism, which makes rushing him even more interesting. It'll mean a bit more cultural defense, but he doesn't unit-spam and isn't Aggressive or Protective; he tends to be a pushover actually. By this point I've pretty much decided I will rush him, so my priorities are: 2 workers, 1 settler, 1 barracks in the capital, 2 warriors (to garrison the two cities) and a bunch of axes. On higher difficulties I'd probably try for 8-10 axes; on Noble, 5 axes is likely plenty but I'm gonna get 7 to be safe.

Meanwhile, my starting warrior has continued scouting and has mapped out quite a bit of the south and west, as well as getting me Writing and about 100 gold from good huts.

I got a second worker after my warrior (which I finished at size 3) while I farmed the rice, then I chopped out a settler with those workers. One of my workers hooked up the copper with a road, then starts chopping more trees to accelerate axe production. The other worker goes south to help the second city get set up.

Second city has priorities pigs then copper, building a warrior then just axes (no need for a barracks in this city; I don't need promotions on all my axes). After the copper, that worker will chop the one forest the second city has available to accelerate things as well. Both cities are just building axeman* until I get to 7 at this point.

And here we are - turn 52. I've got 7 axes in the capital, who will leave next turn. It wasn't my most careful play - I should have taken the first one of those axes and be scouting Gandhi right now (I got open borders with him, but forgot to use it). The capital is size-5 with 12 turns of whip anger and 1 unhappy citizen (again I could have done a bit better if I was careful). And I should be improving that stone, not the plains-hill my worker is mining right now. The stone is simply a better tile!

However, overall I'm happy with the shape of this game given the difficulty level. The axes will most certainly grab me another city or two from Gandhi; they should conquer his capital on turn 62 if I've counted correctly. Going forward from here, I might see if things looked promising to get Pyramids off Mathematics -> Masonry then chopping the final two forests in the capital BFC - that, plus an overflow whip, could get me 40% of the way there almost immediately; then 10 turns working on it, followed by a second whip, would finish it. That'd be finishing around turn 80-90, which should be perfectly safe on Noble. My tiles are significantly under-improved at the moment so I'm getting another worker in the capital immediately now that I have the axes for my rush. Representation plus the religion from my conquered holy city plus a Charismatic leader would give me a huge early happy cap, and the extra beakers from specialists would mean I could use scientists to ensure good teching while I spam settlers and workers to expand rapidly.

If you glance at my minimap, you'll also see that my starting warrior scouted WAY out to the south and west before he died to a barbarian. There are several good sites to the southwest for blocking cities that would keep Mansa Musa from expanding into my land, so I should be able to happily expand to 10 or more cities after killing Gandhi. Part of that is just luck that he survived so long, but part of it is trying to get your warrior to move through hills, forests, and on the coast to make it less likely he'll die to barbarians... and if he hadn't gotten very far, I'd have made another one to scout with instead. I'm not going to put up screenshots of what I found out there because it isn't really affecting my early decision-making much (no nearby backstabbing warmonger there, no ridiculously good city sites. Keep doing what I was going to do anyways.). In the 60-100 turn range, that terrain I scouted out there will likely become much more important as I start settling more cities.

My second city is hurrying out a library; it's going to work pigs, copper, and two scientists to get me my first Great Scientist (who will probably make an Academy in my capital, although he might go to Gandhi's capital if it has good land). The second city can make a good early GP farm - fish plus pigs will give it enough surplus food for 5 specialists. Meanwhile, the capital will be a powerhouse settler-and-worker pump for expanding, although I haven't decided what to do with it down the line.

Technology wise, I'm going Mathematics to Currency. Math for better chops, Currency to fuel expansion. I expect my treasury will be depleted right about the same time that I hit Currency, but I can build wealth in cities if need be to keep expanding until I've got the land I want.

I've attached my save if you want to poke around, although again I warn you that it has some spoilers for you at this point in your game.

So much for my game. I also took a look at your save after I was done shadowing 52 turns; here are my thoughts on that. Also, a screenshot for those who want to comment but don't want to open the game themself.

You didn't get as lucky with huts as I did, so you're behind in tech compared to my save. But your tech path was also a bit dubious. AGR -> Wheel -> Masonry -> BW has a few problems. First, it gets Wheel way before you need it. You don't need any roads for a long time. Second, it pushes back getting Bronze Working and/or Animal Husbandry, which are valuable techs for helping you scout and decide where to put your second city (and how early you should be getting that second settler). Following up Pottery -> AH was a solid choice; if you do that, you should be planning on a granary followed by heavy use of whipping, leveraging the corn and the rice. Going AH -> Pottery could also be argued; if you aren't planning on early cottages or granary, AH -> Pottery would be a better choice because it'll show you where horses are.

The second thing I'd address is worker micro. You have way too many roads. You don't need the stone connected by a road this early. You don't need the corn and the rice connected by a road yet (I built a road on the corn in my game, but only to save 1 turn on a rush). And given the placement of York, two roads heading southwest from your capital would have connected it to your trade network - so you actually only needed to build 3 of the 9 roads you've built so far. Over-building roads early is a common problem for beginners, but you should try to avoid it - only build a road if you can see why you need that road right now. Also, I'm not a huge fan of your two cottages. With these cities, I'd focus on production and expansion to found better commerce cities.

Third issue is scouting. I don't know what happened to your starting warrior, but you need far more map knowledge at this point. If your first warrior dies early, you have to get a second warrior fairly quickly to scout.

City priorities. Your capital has a granary, which is fine only if you're going to be whipping a lot... but you currently have no whip unhappiness there. It should be bouncing back and forth between size-5 and size-6 every 10 turns as you whip. Your second city is working on a granary when what it really needs is a border pop to get those pigs. Either tech Mysticism earlier and whip a monument there, or chop out a library quickly. Neither city has a warrior garrison, which they both should have by now. You're building an axeman in the capital, which is a waste of hammers - you can get two warriors for 30 hammers instead of 1 axe for 35, and the two warriors will keep your cities perfectly happy. Then you can get an axe a bit later to defend against barbs when they start to actually be a threat.

Aaand... York. York is a disaster. You have an absolutely beautiful city site just 2 tiles east of it - easy trade route connection to capital, no need for border pop to get pigs and copper, early sea access so it can get workboats for later cities too if you find more good coastal city sites, and it gets a fish as well which makes it a powerful city site. York manages to miss most of those benefits, which is slowing your game a great deal. When placing early cities, try hard to find a spot where they are immediately adjacent to a food resource. If you can't get such a spot without huge sacrifices, at least try to grab several food resources instead of just one if you can. It's not about total number of tiles; it's about having a handful of really good tiles.

 

[Ghpstage]

York really should have been 2E. Production is what fuels your initial expansion so your first city should look to high yield food/hammer resources that you can use quickly, this goes doubly if you intend on early war!
Commerce this early isn't so important, especially at this level, and cottages outside the capital with a non-financial leader aren't that great anyway!

I played the first 50 turns without itent to attack anyone in a hurry. Like Coanda I had some hut luck, but it came in the form of extra warriors, no techs.

Spoiler :

Agree with the generally prefered second city site between copper and pig, its a very nice spot. Liked the other spot taken by a Vranasm to so I took something very near that as my next spot.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Actually, York isn't too bad, because the capital culture will expand in 1 more turn, getting the pigs into range.

I had overlooked that - using the border pop to score third ring food is a good play.

 

[Archon_Wing]

What a sweet opening. And one really badly placed city from me :S

Spoiler :

BFC copper and stone, with a soft target with a great capital and 2 holy cities up north, eh? Holy crap. Only trouble is land south is kinda poop so many barbs will come there

 

[The Oz-Man]

This map loved me.

Spoiler :

Gandhi was garrisoning his two cities with a Warrior apiece when I axe-rushed him at T58. No more Gandhi by T64. With plenty of food and easy Pyramids, tech rate was ridiculous. HA rushed Catherine and Alex off the map, then used Cuirs to vassalify Mansa and Willem. Didn't even get Lib since I was putting it off for Rifling or even beyond that. With the Pyramids and everybody in the north's nice land to myself, no one was going to stop me. Win came in the late-1200's with Willem's capitulation--Catherine, Gandhi, and Alex were dead, and Mansa was my vassal. Sury was basically a non-factor since Willem wouldn't open borders, but he would've been trounced without much hassle.

Incidentally, I love when an AI trapped behind closed borders declares war on me. Poor Sury, shaking his tiny yellow fists in impotent fury.

I think using the stone to build the Pyramids is a sound strategy here. With Churchill, isn't really a problem at all, so cottaging up Gandhi's nice land, moving the capital up there (mine was a pig/FP city between London and Delhi), and letting Bureau craziness fuel the reaping works particularly well. London made a very nice HE city, especially once I found Iron in the hills randomly because--again--this map loved me.

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

I had overlooked that - using the border pop to score third ring food is a good play.

That was not deliberate. the reason I settled York where it was, is to maximise the amount of workable tiles desert is no good and I don't know if it adds. I went on to win the game but I have learned quite a bit from you guys as well.

the reason I went for masonry early was because I had stone, I usually go for bronze working ASAP. I really need to work on my whipping I know that is major weakness in my game. I have been trying to use it more as I know how powerful it can be.

here is a save mid game I went on to win from here very easily by domination. I got to liberalism and then chose riffling.

Spoiler :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=318255&stc=1&d=1333708920

Spoiler :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=318254&stc=1&d=1333708920

I have no idea how to add screenshot.

 

[coanda]

Glancing at your 1540 screenshots, another tip - don't build units just to have multiple garrisons in a city. If you aren't in Hereditary Rule, you want only 1 unit per city garrisoning your core cities. 1-3 units in border cities, depending on how risky that border seems. Beyond that, build a large stack or two of units if and when you are ready to use it; they should stick together mostly and be used to crush groups of enemy units or take enemy cities.

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

OK I am happy with what I learned here, I feel I can take the step up to prince now. So I intend to do that. I will use a similar but a bit more structured approach to recording that game so you can all follow and help me with that.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Mm, you kinda went fast; should have more intermediate saves and take some time.

But congrats on your win. From that 1500 save, I think you would have been much better off getting Nationalism and switching to Nationhood instead of vassalage; draft rifle would easily beat police state/vassalage. I'm not too sure if Merc is a good idea unless the others are in, but that's not really a bad idea.

As for my own playing; I should have really finished the game earlier, and screwed around a bit too much; I didn't even get anything resembling an attack force til the 1400s myself, though the game kinda ended before I could declare war anyways... Had #1 in soldiers with 2 cities building units.

Spoiler :

I expanded very little. (Only 6 cities at 1 AD!) because there was so much blank space that I could take my time with. Barb cities were made, so a few swords could capture them, and I found Mansa on the other side but he was just mediocre this game. After that I spammed a bunch of settlers, though I took a short detour to feudalism as the Dutch planned war. I took another one to build the Apostolic Palace since Buddhism was dominant and I will have a lot of pop.

Besides the early rush on Gandhi, I'm closing on 40% world pop without war! However, libbing MT wasn't needed since I didn't bother building units anyways for a long while.

Willem plots war, but gives up for some reason. Maybe it has to do with those cavs I'm collecting near him. Maintenance sucked so I went into State Property. However, before I can attack, I'm not too far away from AP diplo (Wilem was the only one without the religion.... and I haven't even spread it to all my cities yet). So all I really need to win is to keep spreading some more religion, and Cathy's willing to peacevassal as she was involved in a long war with Alex that ended. I take her in once the winning vote was held to bloat my score a little bit more. Still a low score since I didn't bother with any actual conquest, but it's not like that was going to be a problem anyways. Just spare those poor souls.

 

[Evil Beejeebers]

how do you guys get liberalism so early? I felt I was easily ahead of the computer this game but nowhere near 840 ad.

could anyone give me a list of key techs and when a good time to get them is?

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well, you took Rifling with lib though. I only took Military Tradition. If I went for Rifling myself it'd probably be quite a bit later. I still didn't bother with Rifling til 1300 AD in that game.

And this map was just good for tech; I usually don't hit Lib til 1000 since Noble/Prince tech pace is slow and it's hard to trade for anything good.

Spoiler :

On noble/prince, I'm very generous with tech trades, so they'll tech something useful for me finally. The pace for this game was fast for the AIs as well-- Cathy founded Taoism in 1 AD. Also, this map had some very excellent commerce sites so that helped research. It also helped that the stone let me build the mids for Representation. I also used the engineer from the mids to get the Great Library. The main key to getting Lib is bulbing-- I used two scientists to bulb philosophy and education. Philo bulb isn't always necessary but since I eventually had more G scientists than I ever needed, I just went with it.