RB Pitboss #1 SPOILER - Hatshepsut / India

[regoarrarr]

@Swiss - Yeah I agree. But I'm just worried that it doesn't mesh up well with my other techs.

For example, I wanted to get Pottery soon, to get Granaries onboard (as well as cottages). But getting Hunting (for my best tile - 2/3/1 ivory and a happy), Agriculture, The Wheel and Pottery is going to take me till T42 IIRC.

I have a few more thoughts on the subject, but no time to expound them right now. I have a few days I guess before I need to decide one way or the other.

[Dantski]

Hunting next is a no brainer, question is what to go for afterwards.

Options

Agriculture - Will need to get the extra food sooner rather than later by hooking up the rice (its rice right?), also cuts Animal Husbandry cost.

Archery - No Copper nearby? Probably a smart idea to get this with all the early UU's running around.

Tech's towards Oracle - We have the forests for chopping, will need other techs to get something really worthwhile.

I think those are the main 3 choices, not particularly enthusiastic about our Oracle chances considering we didn't choose whichever tech unlocks priesthood first.

[regoarrarr]

Logged in and played turn - warrior kept exploring in the NE. Next turn will be intereting as my 2nd warrior completes as well as growth to Size 2. I expect lots of people will grow to size 2.

Kodii / m_h increased score, indicating a new tech. They already had 8000 soldier points, and 8000 was still the max, so it couldn't be Hunting, so I am going with another choice of Fishing (And a coastal capital).

Someone (can't really tell who) built a warrior.

And I see that the turn just rolled over, so let me get back in!

[regoarrarr]

Screenies from Turn 8.

Big news - Warrior complete and growth to size 2. I am not alone in growing either - dsplaisted and Dreylin both have been working 3 food tiles since the start and join me in my growth. I can see now that each pop is worth 2 points, at least that is how it appears.

Imhotep is the lone person to gain a tech. 7 turns - I believe that would be Mining, which also accounts for the 2000 soldier points (the other ones are the 2 population increases)

I am still missing 2000 soldier points from Turn 7 - someone built a warrior but it's impossible to tell who. I have assigned that to ruff, though that is a total guess.

I have also confirmed with the Top 5 cities that there are 3 cities at size 2 - dreylin, dsplaisted and myself.

And look who's #1 in food and GNP - I'm winning baby!!!!

The north is going on for quite awhile as you can tell. Obviously that warrior isn't coming back for garrison duty so he will continue. I think I'm going to send him NW to check out the shores of East Fork lake.

Warrior #2 (@Anyone - care to suggest a naming convention) will head to the SW I think. In 6 turns I'll be in Slavery and therefore fairly safe from a single warrior rush (since I can 1-pop whip a warrior from scratch), but in the meantime I will keep him around. I'll fogbust the SW since I have plenty of visibility from the SE if anybody happens by - then probably send him E towards the cows.

[Sullla]

And look who's #1 in food and GNP - I'm winning baby!!!!

The world trembles before your eight units of food.

[regoarrarr]

The world trembles before your eight units of food.

And don't forget my 2 1-commerce tiles that I'm working!!!

[regoarrarr]

Okay. Time for some plan ramblings. I have not been impressed with my plan yet. I feel BW and Warrior->Worker was an okay start, but I am unclear as to what to do next. So I am writing this post to hopefully try and sort out my own thoughts and feelings on the subject as well as get some opinions for others (though I admit that may be hard to do for anyone other than Dantski since you're all reading other people's threads. Still, I think it is possible to comment on generic strategy, and I'll take what I can get!!!) I do feel like my biggest flaw as a Civ player (in SP games at least) is that I just rush through games just doing whatever I feel like and then it's only when I stop playing and take a step back to formulate a strategy that I play a bit better. Luckily a slow game like this is the perfect medium for doing just that!

So, first of all, let's take a step back and review where we're at. It's Turn 8 (well it just rolled over to Turn 9 but we'll ignore that for now - I'll play those turns when I get home). I am at size 2, with 2/24 food in the box. I have 1/60 into a worker, and am creating 6 food-hammers per turn. I have 104/180 into Bronze Working, and am researching at 13 bpt (10 commerce from Cincinnati + 1 free commerce * 1.2 pre-req bonus). BW is due in 6 turns (on T14), with 2 beakers of overflow. The worker is scheduled to complete naturally on T18, or I have the ability to whip it once BW comes in on T14 (which will drop me to population 1 and provide 7 hammers overflow). The terrain at my capital does not look particularly suited for copper. Tentative plan is to research Hunting next, which I will do at 11bpt, completing on T20. Though actually if I stay at size 2, I can complete it on T19 since I'll be at 12bpt instead of 11.

My land - I have 2 warriors out and about. One is in the far NE. It seems like there has to be another civ up here since that seems like an awful lot of land for just me. He has found no resources except the sheep and clam just to the north of Cincinnati. The capital has 2 forested silks, an ivory, and a rice. Judging by the number of coastal capitals and the number of people researching Fishing, I seem to be one of the few without a seafood resource in the capital. Warrior 2 is going to do a bit of exploring in the south but I need to be sure to not open myself up to any chance of an early rush.

Then, let's talk about my unique strengths. I'm Spiritual and Creative, and start with Mining and Mysticism. I also have the fast worker, who can move 3 tiles per turn. Probably the biggest strength of that in the early game is that I can move to a forest and start chopping the same turn, or move to a hill and start mining on the same turn (but not to a forested hill). Spiritual gives me 1/2 price temples and no anarchy when swapping civics. Creative gives 1/2 price Theaters, Colosseums and Libraries, and of course the +2 culture gives me automatic border pops at new cities. Starting with Mysticism (along with 4 other leaders) gives me a jump on founding a religion. My suspicion is that Broker33's tech on T9 that I haven't logged in to see is Meditation but we shall see. If either of the early 2 religions are still available in a few turns that might be an option. The Oracle might be an option too, but I think it will fall pretty early. My other starting tech is Mining, which gives me a leg up on the BW / IW path. I do expect to be the first to Bronze Working which is always nice for the chopping and whipping (no slave revolts since events are turned off). I also have both the pre-requisites to Masonry.

My neighbors - All civs are reachable by land or galley. While CivStats states that this is a Continents game, I'm not sure how accurate that would be. I do kind of think that Sullla would make it so there are no PAL-type Civs, that have an enormous leg up on the contact (and thus tech) brokering. I do think it is important to find as many neighbors as I can as fast as I can. As we can see in the email game, being able to turn a tech into 4 (or 10!) additional techs is huge. And civs that duplicate research get left behind. I do plan on being very involved in the diplomatic presses to leverage the brokering. I am not that good of a Civ player, as I have stated before, but I AM a very good Diplomacy (big D) player, and so I think that will be an additional (out-of-game) strength for me.

So, potential plans:

Scouting: After Hunting completes on T19/20, build (chop?) out a scout or 3. Send them to find my neighbors, and reveal the map. This is less of a great strategy given that there are no huts, but still valuable.
Fishing / Sailing: Less for the seafood resources (which I have only seen one) but more for the exploring workboats / galleys. Not as useful since I will not be working any seafood any time soon and since so many people have Fishing already (by my count there are now 7 civs with it), once I meet them it will be very cheap. Though I guess it's only a 20% boost but still.
Iron Working: This is capitalizing on my strengths - I could be the first to Iron Working for sure, but again, my terrain is not that suited to iron, at least not in the capital, and I have yet to see any jungle.
Animal Husbandry / Horseback Riding: I do have sheep and cows visible, and my terrain looks kind of like there might be horses nearby. Also HBR is much more useful in MP. In SP, I barely research it, but I'll definitely want it earlier in this game. Not to mention my jumbos require it.
Religious branch: We'll see in the next few turns if anyone else is chasing it. As Dantski said upthread, chances of pursuing the Oracle are less since we didn't go for Med / Poly right off the bat. Still, this is one of my strengths as a Spiritual civ that started with Mysticism.
Ag/Wheel/Pottery - This is the branch I like to do in most of my games. I think Granaries are one of the most important buildings, and that really before them food is worth 1/2 as much. That is one reason I'm leaning against whipping too much in this game - I don't have a granary and I don't have a lot of food. One reason to go down this line is the riverside rice that I have at the capital, not to mention the very cottageable floodplains (and river silk, which has 2 base commerce). But I have none of the techs on this branch, and in my sims, it will be T41 before I get all 3 of them. That seems like an awful long time.
Oh I forgot Archery - if Copper is not close I'm probably going to need that sooner rather than later.

With 11 players in this game, I think deep beelining will be important. It's much better to research down the tree, to techs that no (or few) other civs have. Researching all the first and second level techs myself is likely to get me frozen out of the tech trading loop, which will obviously be no good. But, it is going to be awhile till we can trade for things and obviously I need my worker techs. As a comparison, in the email game, Alphabet was researched by soooo on T52.


Sooooo (pardon the pun), as Kylearan and T-hawk and such like to say, what can wait must wait. So what is it that can't wait?

* Defense - need to guard against an early warrior choke / rush, and in the med. term, an early Immortal / Quechua / Skirmisher / Vulture / Impi / Praetorian / Num. Cavalry rush.
* Scouting - need to find my neighbors
* Commerce - build my cities and military up. Cincinnati has a happy cap of 6 with ivory, so the sooner I can get there the better. Whipping does not seem to be that useful on this map, given the lack of much food and no early granary. By my calcs, I can get to size 6 on T45 with no whipping, at which point, working the rice, ivory, FP, plains hill and 2 grass hills I generate 15 hammers and 5 commerce with a +2 food surplus. Though that would mean no settlers and no worker past the first one, so I'm not sure if I need to do it quite that fast. Still at size 6, Cincinnati would be making 6 turn settlers and 3.5 turn workers.

So I think my plan will be to not whip the worker but let it complete naturally on T18. Hunting comes in on T19, at which point I will build (and probably chop) 2 scouts, to send SW and SE from the capital, on T25 and T26 (the 2nd with a chop). I'll look at possibly chopping before camping which would get the scouts out a bit earlier at a loss of 3 turns of a 2/3/1 tile. Next will be Agriculture and then probably Archery or the Wheel, followed by Pottery. My thought then would be to head to AH and then maybe Writing (on the way to Math / Construction)

I will revisit this every few turns.

Thoughts?

[Dantski]

What occurred to me when you wrote this

So I think my plan will be to not whip the worker but let it complete naturally on T18. Hunting comes in on T19, at which point I will build (and probably chop) 2 scouts, to send SW and SE from the capital, on T25 and T26 (the 2nd with a chop). I'll look at possibly chopping before camping which would get the scouts out a bit earlier at a loss of 3 turns of a 2/3/1 tile. Next will be Agriculture and then probably Archery or the Wheel, followed by Pottery. My thought then would be to head to AH and then maybe Writing (on the way to Math / Construction

Agree with not whipping worker.

2 scouts seems excessive, 1 will be fine.

Techwise I'm really not sure about your proposed Agri > Archery > Wheel route. I think we need to accept that in order to protect ourselves from early aggression we will have to shoot ourselves in the foot with builds and techs.

So I suggest this...

Hunting > Agri > Poly > Priesthood

...and look to pick up Judaism if its still available when we can research Monotheism.

I'm happy going Hunting then Agriculture, after that we can take Archery if we have no copper and have hostile neighbours, or go a peaceful tech route if we have builder neighbours.

The warmongers will have to hurt their growth to get an army out, if we could convince one to work with us it would be great and we can swap our builder techs for their military ones

[regoarrarr]

Okay. So it sounds like we are at least set till T18 or so. That will put us with our worker out, with 1 turn to go on Hunting.

Agree on trying to team up with a warmonger - that had been one of my thoughts as well. If we can show a good defense, and therefore not a useful target, that we would be a very attractive partner to someone like that.

We'll have to see if we find anyone and who by T18 to finalize our tech path after that though taking a run at Judaism is attractive (and also Org Rel for 25% hammer bonus). We'll need Masonry though but not Priesthood (though Phood is always nice for the Oracle)

But what should we be building? With any realistic tech path, we're going to spend the next 30-40 turns not being able to build anything but

Settlers / Workers
Warriors / Archers
Barracks
Scouts
Stonehenge

I was a bit hesitant to build a lot of warriors since they go obsolete so quickly but maybe they would be good for Hereditary Rule happiness? And they'll certainly last longer scouting than scouts (though slower, obviously)

Thoughts?

[regoarrarr]

We have first contact!!!

Hi regoarrarr+Dantski,

Pleased to meet you. I hope your start is bountiful and your early exploration fruitful. I've had nothing but maps and money from huts so far. What about you?

Your friendly neighbour,
shadyforce (Persia)

I replied with

Well hello there! I have not logged into the game yet today (I will in about an hour or two) so I don't even know where we met!! To borrow something from someone in the email game, if I've I made it to your lands, then "it looks nice" - if you've come my way then "welcome!" or if our scouts have passed in the night then "fair traveling" :-D

I am assuming your note about the maps and gold is a joke since I thought huts were off. If not, then I've had some really poor scouting luck!! :-D

I'm glad that you sent an email off quick - I think one of the keys to this game will be good communication between teams. Have you found anyone else yet?

dan.
regoarrarr
India