Emulating Sir Robin: How to run away on Horseback

[Rawkking Goodguy]

Since everybody has gotten at least one dedlurker I have no problem with recruiting more, welcome aboard

Tech Plans

With a plains forest, riverside incense, and two plains forest hills in the BFC ancient chants -> mysticism seems to be the best next tech path to pick up the god king hammer/coin bonus as early as possible.

Micro

I sandboxed my starting area to try out build orders/worker micro and it seems that revolting to agrarianism immediately upon finishing calendar is superior to waiting till mysticism to double revolt. It's pretty amazing how important early food is in that regard.

To make sure I am planning this right, you can in fact micro something you have a hammer multiplier to (in my case an expansive settler) to give you a nice amount of overflow hammers into something you don't? Or do the overflow hammers not receive the trait boost?

If this is the case, I think I'm going to use overflow to quickly build an elder council or pagan temple after my first settler, microed to delay the settler a turn to get more overflow hammers. Elder council is the better building in general (cheaper, gives 2 free beakers/turn, anybody can make good use use of a great sage, scientists are a good specialist).

However, I might consider a pagan temple for this game since it'll give 1 happy with the capital incense. While not quite as good as a great sage I can make some use of great prophets (perhaps by bulbing that religion everyone seems to want ).

Edit: Actually, I probably want to micro the settler as such regardless of how overflow works to prevent growth past the happy cap.
Edit edit: Looking this up on civ fanatics reveals that the expansive bonus should get removed for this. Though now I'm curious if you can still do this for converting food to hammers with workers or settlers and a high-food city.

I believe its much more than that~ somewhere around 200... 197 iirc.

Checked the one game that I did manage to release brigit and you are correct, it's 197 exp for non-charismatic leaders. Was misled because my hero's exp total jumped quite a bit after getting lucky and killing about two AI heroes in a row

[Heisenberg]

I sandboxed my starting area to try out build orders/worker micro and it seems that revolting to agrarianism immediately upon finishing calendar is superior to waiting till mysticism to double revolt. It's pretty amazing how important early food is in that regard.

Agarianism is hence one of the civics you hardly swap out of in 90% of the games~

However, I might consider a pagan temple for this game since it'll give 1 happy with the capital incense. While not quite as good as a great sage I can make some use of great prophets (perhaps by bulbing that religion everyone seems to want ).

I guess you could, if you really need that Great Prophet, but Incense as a resource only becomes "usable" at Philosophy.

[Rawkking Goodguy]

Turn 1

Well I did some time fiddling around fiddling with worldbuilder and from the land scores it seems we're almost certainly on a large sized map. That means there's a good deal of land for everyone to settle peacefully and from my numerous map generations (on a Pangaea script so not entirely erebus continents) my nearest opponent is anywhere between 13-20 tiles from me!

I also took a good look at my tile bleed and discovered this

Another river! (In the northeast, also pictured is the river I previously noted). With the tundra to the north, the coast to our southeast, and the fact that rivers empty into oceans instead of lakes roughly 90% of the time, there's a fair chance that we're located on the far northeast of the supercontinent, meaning I should focus my scouting efforts to the southwest. Good thing there's a goody hut just in that direction!

Anyways with how large a map we have and animals/barbs not spawning in the fog till ~T8 I decide that our currently unnamed warrior can scout just a teeny bit more, heading northwest instead of northeast like previously planned. He does so and finds-

-AUGH!!!

Why is there a lizardman ruins four tiles from my capital . With a lizard already no less!

These jerks steal worker turns like nobody's business with their two move and tendency to just hang out right next to the capital doing nothing. If I ever get the opportunity to clear this lair early I'm going to take it.

My scout reveals something more pleasant.

Yet another start of a river! (look at the mountains in the southeast of the screenshot) It seems very likely I'm at the northeastern part of the map now.

Current state of the empire and movement plans of the Hippus Exploratory Forces:

Finally the turn 1 demographics:

I'll take a look at those later with some first attempts at C&D, have to keep in mind that only the clowns and Sheaim settled this turn besides me, and thus Keelyn has the 2 extra creative culture adding to GNP.

[Thoth]

Tech Plans

With a plains forest, riverside incense, and two plains forest hills in the BFC ancient chants -> mysticism seems to be the best next tech path to pick up the god king hammer/coin bonus as early as possible.

It may be worth skipping God King with this start. You'll be getting +100% boost to hammers when building settlers from your expansive trait anyway so the marginal increase is fairly minor. Skipping Myst in favour of an early run to Education and Code of Laws for Aristo farms is something to consider.

Since you've already got a sandbox set up, you could run some sims on alternate tech paths. Techs to consider: AH to improve the Cow (4f2h1c tiles are very good and it becomes a 4/4/1 when building settlers) and reveal horses. You've got access through your palace, but if there is a local horse resource it's a very powerful tile to work. AH also opens up the Subdue Animals promotion in the unlikely event that your scout actually survives long enough to get to 5xp (not likely, but it sometimes happens).

Crafting-->Mining would let you chop forests (8 base hammers/chop, 16 if you chop into a settler), reveal copper and let you mine your hills.

You will also want to slot Exploration into your tech path (preferably in time to get a road built to your second city).


Overflow hammers: When building an item with a production bonus, any overflow hammers are reduced by the amount of the bonus. ie: if you finish a settler with an extra 8h, only 4h are applied to your next build.

When overflowing into another build item you want to overflow into items that get a bonus.

Incence won't provide any happiness until you research Philosophy and build a Pagan/Order/OO/Empy temple.

Definitely agreed on the value of an early swap into Agrarianism. The extra food is well worth one turn of anarchy with a size 1 cap without tile improvements.

[Rawkking Goodguy]

It may be worth skipping God King with this start. You'll be getting +100% boost to hammers when building settlers from your expansive trait anyway so the marginal increase is fairly minor. Skipping Myst in favour of an early run to Education and Code of Laws for Aristo farms is something to consider.

<and other tech plans deleted for space by rawkking>

Well 50% more hammers/gold is 50% more hammers/gold no matter how you slice it and no matter what other bonuses you may have, though not even more since multipliers are additive in civ. I guess the opportunity cost here is what matters?

With the discovery of the lizard ruins it seems almost certain I won't be able to improve my tiles nearly as fast tilting my opinion more towards godking, as it's going to be rather difficult to get fully improved tiles in a timely fashion at this point. It certainly won't hurt to run more sims I suppose. Getting really early horsemen to clear out the stupid lizards is also tempting though probably not wise.

Also as is probably apparent I can't directly respond to all your comments, but rest assured I am listening (as you may have noticed I paid attention to square leg and put on detailed city view this turn).

[Thoth]

I guess the opportunity cost here is what matters?

That was my thinking.

If I'm reading your screenshots correctly, there is a forested hill adjacent to the Lizard Ruins. A couple of warriors fortified on that hill will tend to soak up lizard attacks and help keep your workers improving tiles.

[Rawkking Goodguy]

If I'm reading your screenshots correctly, there is a forested hill adjacent to the Lizard Ruins. A couple of warriors fortified on that hill will tend to soak up lizard attacks and help keep your workers improving tiles.

[strike]Yes, that's indeed a tundra forest hill.[/strike] Yes, indeed there is a grasslands forest hill a mere three tiles from my capital and adjacent to the ruins that is ideal for warriors to fortify on!

I've done this in some other cases and learned that the AI tends to ignore their lair garrisoning requirements for some other part of their programming to kill the warriors. IE: If I stationed 2-3 warriors on the hill there's a good chance that when a second lizard pops, both lizards will attack and leave the ruin empty for fortifying on top or exploring.

I will also have to watch out for bears since that is the tundra up there. Shouldn't be too bad if a warrior can grab a guerilla promotion before any bear incursions.

Thanks to all of you for informing me that you can't get happy from incense until philosophy! Here I was assuming that the multiple requirements were just an either/or thing.

[Square Leg]

I tend to agree with Thoth that an early run for CoL is good, don't forget that your worldspell has a passive feature - people are shit-scared that you can use it! For example - if you are only running warriors for a while they are going to think twice before rushing you since those warriors can become formidable str4 move2 units at the click of a button. I guess what I am trying to say is that you will gain some added security passively if you run straight for CoL.

PBEM V spoiler that is widely known and Iskender can see but maybe not the other players although I'll be surprised if they didn't know it:

Check out what it did for the Sidar...

The other thing to remember is that, although god king give 50% extra hammers, that isn't as good if you are already getting +100%. Consider this:

You make 10 base hammers and build a settler (145h):

10h/t = 15t on normal without EXP or God King

15h/t = 10t on noraml without EXP but with God King

20h/t = 8t on normal without God King but with EXP

25h/t = 6t on normal with EXP and God King

So although you get an extra 5h/t and a little overflow (which will be chopped down as Thoth said) God King only speeds up the settler by 1t for EXP civs in this situation. I realise that there are other factors like food etc...

Another civic thing would be whether to run Pacifism when Philosophical.... Discuss!

[Jkaen]

Hi guys, I have joined the horse love cause too.

[Thoth]

The other thing to remember is that, although god king give 50% extra hammers, that isn't as good if you are already getting +100%. Consider this:

You make 10 base hammers and build a settler:

10h/t = 12t on normal without EXP or God King

15h/t = 8t on noraml without EXP but with God King

20h/t = 6t on normal without God King but with EXP

25h/t = 5t on normal with EXP and God King

So although you get an extra 5h/t and a little overflow (which will be chopped down as Thoth said) God King only speeds up the settler by 1t for EXP civs in this situation. I realise that there are other factors like food etc...

While I agree with the logic....the math is a little bit off. Settlers cost 145h on Quick speed.

Looking at the start position, if we work the Wheat (5f/0h with Agrarianism), Pastured Cows (4f/2h), Plantationed incence (1f/1h) and two forested plains hills (0f/3h) at size 5 we'll produce: 12 food (10 from tiles + 2 from the city square) + 11 h (9 from tiles, 1 from the city square and 1 from the Palace)

At size 5 we'll need 10 food to feed the population so the net production for settlers becomes: 2f + 11h = 13/turn.

With expansive, this becomes 24/turn = 6 turn settlers
Adding God King gets an extra 6h/turn=30 production/turn=5 turn settlers.

Workers will take 4 turns without GK, 3 turns with GK.

Once mining is in and we get a pair of PHs mined, our base production will go up to 2f/13h when building workers/settlers. Plus an extra commerce (one of the PHs is riverside)

Mysticism is ~200 beakers + 1 turn of anarchy to swap to GK. In order to make it worthwhile we would need to tech to Myst early which likely means forgoing Animal Husbandry and Crafting/mining for the moment. No AH means we'd need to farm the cows for the moment (5f/0h) under Agrarianism which is a decent tile, but nowhere near as powerful as a pastured cow for an expansive leader.

I'd recommend running a few sims in the sandbox up to t 60 or thereabouts using different tech paths. It will give you a better idea of how the different approaches play out.

Another civic thing would be whether to run Pacifism when Philosophical.... Discuss!

Sometimes.

Depends on the anarchy cost and how many base GPP you can produce.