Xenon Wrote:I'd be careful about using diplomacy for such maneuvers, especially if they can later confirm we were pulling their leg. 1 or 2 strong backstabs should theoretically work much better than a number of smaller ones.
Of course, if it's worth it... go for it.
And depending on their C&D quality, they may know if we're building Workers/Settlers vs. Not Workers/Settlers in our capital. Or if they have visibility on one of our cities, and wonder why the Steal Treasury mission didn't change when they finish Henge.
scooter Wrote:You can subtly hint that you may or may not be pushing Stonehenge or any wonder without lying that "we will finish on Turn X"... Anything to make them nervous and make them pay more for it is a bonus, and it's just not possible for them to easily tell if you're being honest or not (not early anyways when you can't see hammers invested).
Is it time to try this out yet? Or are we too pleased with their info on team to be sneaky?
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
We need to think past Bronze Working here. The issue we still have is popping borders. We could do this with Monuments by teching Mysticism, but I'm wondering if we shouldn't be considering the religion + OR route. The downside is that's a lot of beakers that could be spent elsewhere, but I do believe we would get a religion if we angled for it. No religions have fallen yet, and teams are generally just not in a huge rush to lock them down right now. The gold will give us a nice boost to the tech rate, and as a result we can get to Monotheism at a reasonable rate. This would also put us right next to Monarchy, and HR would be great for us given that there's about 5 million riverside grass tiles and we're FIN.
One of the thing that sucks about this is it requires 2 turns in Anarchy - one for OR and one for religion. If we get to Monotheism quick enough though, we might be able to delay slavery until we can package it with OR. The alternative to delaying slavery is waiting on OR until we've teched Monarchy and packaging those together.
The other option I see is to push towards Maths for Hanging Gardens (settling for the stone) and/or Lit for Great Library. This will likely mean we'll have to use a combination of Monuments/Libraries to pop borders, but the upside is we can get a Library sooner and try to get an early Academy. I don't think an early Academy is overpowering here just because the map is Toroidal (so our slider will dip a bit lower than normal), but it's still a nice play here. Actually, much better than Great Library would be ignoring Lit and pushing towards Calendar for MoM. I'd slightly prefer to have MoM than Great Library. If we choose this route, it's a decision between Lit-> Music and Calendar though, so there's other factors in play besides just a straight MoM vs Great Library.
I'm not crazy about the Great Lighthouse here. There would definitely be some benefit to it as there's quite a few coastal spots, but this is a diplo game where embargoes are easier to negotiate. Also, it would bias us towards settling the coast, and I'm a little hesitant to do that and give up on some of this lush grassland when we could just backfill the coast later. Actually though to be fair, that coast is not terrible for us given that we're FIN and all, and we are Vikings so we have an advantage in exploring + settling islands. Just FWIW.
I don't know if Oracle is a valid option for us. It's very risky, Menagerie is the obvious threat for it given that there's no Marble around. We also have fast workers + micro whizzes just east of us, though they're likely to be focusing on Pyramids. I'm just a bit hesitant on Oracle, that's all, so my gut says we should skip it and ignore Priesthood.
One final thing to consider is the placement of copper. We have no real idea where it is, but the horse was terribly inconvenient, and I'm guessing the copper will be the same. If the copper was readily available but the horse in a bad spot, that would give an unfair advantage to pro-copper civs over pro-horse civs, so I suspect the map is designed so that we'll not be happy about the copper location. That is, there's no way it's near the gold site IMO. I'll be surprised if it is, anyways. If the copper is a notable distance away, we have a decision to make. Can we afford to settle straight for copper next if it's a similar distance as the horse? That would result in a very stretched core of cities, which is especially terrible given our current lack of border popping abilities. If the copper is hard to reach, there's an argument to be made for settling a closer spot and grabbing Archery as a stopgap. It's a question of if the beakers + opportunity cost of teching archery makes up for the efficiency we gain by settling the closer, superior spots. If copper is nice and close, forget it, we'll grab it. But I'm betting it won't be. Looking at this picture:
If I had to guess, I'd say it'd be south of us. The horse is in a backfill but distant location, so a similar approach is probably taken for the copper. This makes it seem likely that the copper will be south of us, probably on the coast. If that's the case, that seems like a really awkward location for a 3rd city when our 2nd city is clear on the other side, and I'd suggest considering settling our 3rd city north in that cow/sheep river valley, then pushing west for elephant, horse, and stone. If I'm the only one that loves that location (quite possible), we can adjust it to something else of course. Archery would be the stopgap in between so we'd have the ability to build something other than warriors. If the copper is close, this is irrelevant, but we need to discuss it now so we don't finish BW and then panic and just pick something and tech it. This also depends a bit on Menagerie and if they accept our NAP (I'm close to poking them about this). If they do, we can breathe a lot easier with NAPs on both sides and take risks a little more freely.
Alright, how's that for a long, meandering strategy post. Weigh in, I'd like to hear a lot of thoughts from everyone on this.
- Improved military of some kind
- Ability to pop borders
- Increased happy cap
This mostly overlaps scooter's list of course, but I wanted to specifically note the third point as scooter only mentioned it indirectly and I think it is important so we can grow larger cities and work more cottages.
I agree with the thoughts on copper -- it is probably going to be a reach to get some, if there is any at all nearby. So we either face a distant/costly settlement to control it, or we need to fall back on horse (which will also grab some other useful resources) or archers. I think I favor the horse route if we don't go for (or have) copper, although we will need to decide exactly where to place cities to our west. But the additional resources of pretty much any western city will be useful, plus of course horses.
For popping borders, libraries provide scientist slots and bonus beakers as well as culture but are quite expensive. Monuments are a possibility but I hate sinking hammers into them. So, religion might be the way to go. Plus it will help with the happy cap directly and with getting closer to Monarchy for HR, tying into the third goal. I think I like the idea of going for a religion.
Boosting the happy cap can tie into religion as already noted, plus Monarchy and/or Calendar. We have the gold soon to come online, plus ivory, then two calendar resources (silk and sugar). The silk will come into our control with the next border pop at the capital but the sugar will require a city, and unless copper turns up nearby that area is not likely to be a priority for some time. This reduces the attractiveness of Calendar and MoM compared to other options like Lit and G.Library.
I am not a fan of teaching archery. Not sure where I stand on everything else.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
I dont tink its a good decizion taking religious path without a spiritual civ, way to many revolts.With calendar we have happy cap at 8 ,9 for capitol , good enough for me for a while.
So my opinion lets get math, calendar and i think a academy will be realy strong.
OK, I've been thinking about this. I'm really cooling on the religious path in the short-term. The more I think about all the revolts, the more I think Mackoti was right. Either way, let's finish BW next turn at minimum slider and we can have a turn saving gold to decide what we do next - that'll give us a turn to process the copper location. If Copper is in a bad spot, I have no problem teching Archery if it means we can settle more optimally. We'll also want to grab Mysticism at some point regardless, but it can wait a little longer as we aren't interested in a Monument yet. Writing next seems best, with the Archery detour being a possibility.
I do think we want to push for the horse. Settling that direction is ideal for a lot of reasons, and we can wait on copper if we get chariots. My gut is to just settle straight towards horses, I just wonder if we would need Archery as a stopgap. If copper is convenient, nevermind all this.
Haphazard - I actually think you made a nice case FOR Calendar even though you want to nudge away from it. Yes the Sugar needs a city that we'll probably want to delay, but there are three sources of happy before we will need to worry about that. By the time we need that 4th happy, settling that Sugar will probably make sense.
My other thought on culture is there's no reason we can't use a combination of library/Monument. Cottage cheese sites get a library, otherwise Monument.
I believe the horse city could be a very powerful city, even ignoring its military implications. Where would we put it, however? 1S of the horses? 1NW?
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
![[Image: Civ4ScreenShot0684.JPG]](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-Henu5yIkZiI/UCZzDdRpt9I/AAAAAAAADFk/Q7k1CxOUgsM/s720/Civ4ScreenShot0684.JPG)
