North Korea Part II- The Final Naming Scheme

[Oxyphenbutazone]

He founded his first city t36, I'll try to retool my micro plan to get more worker labor in the south for settling horses first, but it may not be worth it.

[MindyMcCready]

So presumably that was the "Woww' site.

What timeline are you intending for your Chariot, alpha-strike? Sisu's going to want culture in that city for the 2 flood plains and the dry corn so I don't think that you have a lot of time to make an effective strike.

Even a single warrior has a pretty strong chance of surviving your chariot attack once that city has culture. 25% unit ability + 25% hills + 20% culture + 25% fortify.

So I'd say that you have to get the horse site next. Or commit a larger force than you've originally outlined.

Or appear peaceful.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

So presumably that was the "Woww' site.

What timeline are you intending for your Chariot, alpha-strike? Sisu's going to want culture in that city for the 2 flood plains and the dry corn so I don't think that you have a lot of time to make an effective strike.

Even a single warrior has a pretty strong chance of surviving your chariot attack once that city has culture. 25% unit ability + 25% hills + 20% culture + 25% fortify.

So I'd say that you have to get the horse site next. Or commit a larger force than you've originally outlined.

Or appear peaceful.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm reconsidering the idea, I still think a scouting chariot with some nefarious intentions would work

But, we shouldn't count on razing a city

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Sorry for the sparse reporting guys, finals are coming up

Anyway, we founded our third city this turn, 4th to 3rd

Azza still hasn't founded his second city I guess he lost a settler to a wolf? Or maybe a failed SH build? Oh, and retep whipped again. I really hope that's a worker whip to overflow into a settler and not another settler because that would just depress me.

Next turn I'll do a comprehensive turn 50 report

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Oxyphenbutazone's Turn 50 Report!!!

Overview:

We're up to a healthy three cities, which is just about right for turn 50. The overflow from the settler whip went into a worker at the capital, who will arrive just in time for pottery (I dialed research back to 0% before ending my turn). I think our expansion has been very good and we'll have 2 workers completing over the next couple turns. Game mechanics question: I assumed that roading the tile marked with X would establish a trade connection between the capital and Libria, but in my sandbox, I did not get a 1c trade route in Libria. Is there a cap on how many trade routes a size 3 city can give or is roading the tile not enough to connect the cities?

The Cities:

Airstrip One




Our beautiful capital rocking that +9 food surplus. It is currently finishing a worker and then will start construction on a granary while growing to size 6. After that, I'll double whip a settler which will in turn finish construction on the granary. I'll do a couple other similar whips here until Code of Laws and Monarchy come in where we'll start going vertical and grow onto plains cottages and we'll pave over that FP farm. Considering this will be a rare cottage cheese site in our commerce-starved empire, an academy and bureaucracy will be paramount in keeping us competitive in research. Our first cottage will be layed down in 7 turns on that grassland 1S and then another one in 9 turns will come on the FP. Longer term, Oxford will go here.

Malacandra




Our second city, working it's only good tiles and a meh grassland forest. Unfortunately, It'll take a little bit to build a mine on the plains hill wine tile. Because this city has two really amazing tiles and then nothing after that, I've elected it to build a library for a quick PHI GS which in turn will build an academy in the capital. I'm pretty sure I'll head for writing next, unless I hear any serious complaints from my ded-lurker. After it has produced that academy(around turn 75) I'll grow the city a little bit and then stagnate working a bunch of mines, making 12 fhpt and 11cpt at size 6 and pumping out workers and settlers. Longer term, this will be a mediocre production city, which I guess is a possible candidate for the heroic epic, I haven't thought it through yet.

Libria




The nascent city of Libria, founded just 1 turn before and already about to complete it's monument. A forest chop was funneled into the city on its first turn of existence. After the monument, I'll alternate between the plains forest, the floodplain and the PH mine to complete the workboat in exactly 9 turns so we can work one of the crabs ASAP. After that, a second chop will come in to complete a second workboat. Then we'll grow to size 6 building a warrior or two and then a granary. From there, we'll double whip a settler and dump the overflow into an axe or a chariot. Once sailing comes in, we'll build a lighthouse and grow onto the riverside plains cottages. Then, once monarchy comes in, we can grow to size 8, working a FP farm, the two crabs and 5 merchant specialists. We'll give away the incubated cottages to Airstrip One and Neo-Seoul. The first Great Merchant will bulb Metal casting. The second one will bulb civil service right after we discover alphabet. Alternatively, if we miss Confucianism, I'll try to get a GS for a phillosophy builb. Longer term, I see this as a decent commerce city as the surrounding terrain is actually quite poor for the National epic unless we steal the capital's rice.

Scouting:





Some more tiles our warrior has managed to reveal

Zoomed out shot of discovered land

Demographics




I'm very happy with these. The gold mine has predictably improved our GNP dramatically, I'm pretty sure rival best is xenu who has stonehenge. CY is even better than it looks here, because we are emphasizing mines right now.

Foreign Policy

Sisu- Sisu is our IND/FIN neighbor to the east with disgustingly good land, albeit his civ is essentially blank. He has gotten off to a good start expansion-wise settling his third city 2 turns before us. Much of the good land in our area is heavily contested with him, so we're going to be pushing expansion hard in the east, backing it up with a strong army. I'd rank him as a major threat to us simply because we both have our eyes set on the same patch of land and I really doubt we can co-exist peacefully.

Molach- Molach has probably the scariest civ/leader combination in the game, at least for the first 100 turns. We met his scout at our capital, coming from the west. Now a lot of you are probably wondering why I've made a bunch of posts concerning my IND/FIN Russia neighbor, but none about my AGG/CRE Rome neighbor. The simple answer is that there's nothing that I can do if Molach decides to prat-rush me. Sure I could build a huge military of axes and rush to build walls in all of my eastern cities, but I'm playing to win. And there's not a single preventive measure I can take against Molach knocking on my doorstep with 10 shock prats at turn 80 that wouldn't lose me the game regardless in the long run. Instead, I need to appear as prickly and unappetizing as possible. I doubt I'll settle more west than Malacandra and Neo-Seoul. In addition, I'll keep a decently-sized standing army to let him know that attacking me will be very costly for him and if I have a spare lux, I'll probably trade it away to him so he'll be even less likely to attack me. It makes far more sense to settle aggressively against HC of Russia who has no war mongering traits and will probably want to farmer's gambit as much as possible as opposed to AGG Rome who simply can not be attacked before maces. Hopefully this is all for naught and Molach wandered his scout far away from his capital. Or even better, Commodre screwed him on iron.

Xenu/Brick/Boldly- Not a lot to say about this team. I met their scout close to Sisu's capital so they're probably either to the north or south of him. They built the Stonehenge, which makes a lot of sense considering they're IND/CHA and start with myst/wheel. They were able to plant a second city before building the wonder. The early wonderbuild+crappy starting techs has probably slowed down their growth curve, but I still think SH was the right play here.

Azza- I really think that Azza lost a settler to a wolf, there's simply no other explanation for no second city before turn 50. Maybe if it was a complete noob who really did not understand basic game mechanics, but Azza seems like a decent enough player, though I guess he probably should have covered his settlers better. We met his scout from the west a little before Molach, and it would be really awesome if he was our western neighbour considering how bad his growth curve must be. That is, assuming he doesn't react the way Commodore did when he lost a settler in PB5.

Macro Thoughts


I've already detailed most of this in the previous sections, but the general idea is to utilize our high-production land to go into EXPANSION MODE, while using an early academy and gold resource to fuel research. There appear to be absolutely no wonder doubler resources in our immediate vicinity, so I doubt we'll be going for wonder's any time soon. The pros of this start are high happy cap and high-production. The cons are low food and low commerce. This set-up calls for horizontal growth to squeeze the most out of our land, so that's what I'm planning to do. Tentative Tech Path:

Potter->Writing->Polytheism->Priesthood->Code of Laws-> Sailing->Hunting->Archery->Masonry->Monotheism->Monarchy->Math-> Currency

Obviously, subject to change

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Both Hinduism and Buddhism have not been discovered...should we go polytheism before writing?

[Oxyphenbutazone]

Hey Mindy, are you still reading this thread?

[MindyMcCready]

Yeah,...still waiting for an update to that 'alpha strike'. You have yet to post any type of timeline or an update on your intentions there.

Your T50 report is light on details other than settling East which I agree with so no comment there.

Religions are nice and definately worth it in general and especially for a spiritual. But given that you're pushing hard for Code of Laws it might not be necessary. Still, WilliamLP/Mehmed, retep/Asoka, lolSut/Frederick are Organized so they might beeline Code of Laws,....so probably worth the diversion.

As for the growing horizontal:
1. Our scouting to the West Needs Improvement. D-. It's pretty important to know who our neighbours are. Low growth Azza or aggressive Rome (or other) is a very important question to answer before determining how to expand.
2. That 'X' spot to our NW is very tempting depending on our neighbours. Regardless of neighbours the spot 1S seems better for security reasons.
3. For some reason it feels like Sisu is close to us. I just checked the PB9 game and our capital is about the same distance awy as my sample of 1 there. Most of the civs got upwards of 12 cities in that game before borders naturally started rubbing. Maybe its the water in that game that makes it feel different. Anyway, growing horizontal is fine but if land is scarce then if you haven't nabbed your share of the land you'll get into a hard fight for every additional city.

Oh yes,...Yes, I am still reading.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

I'm sorry, I realize that comment seemed exasperated/annoyed when I really didn't mean it that way. Unfortunatly, this game has gotten a little boring recently or at least more mundane, hence the dearth of updates. We actually found WilliamLP to out northwest, so will update with that soon.

[Oxyphenbutazone]

As I mentioned, we met WilliamLP this turn and as you can see he is using a humorously egocentric worker scheme. Anyway, let's look at the contested land between us, I'm assuming for now that we're looking at the borders of his second or third city because he has first-ring jungle tiles.




I just don't see how we can really contest him for any land in the west in a way that would be profitable. There's a perfect stretch of plains/desert for him which makes settling up on him not feasible because any of said cities would be indefensible and require a lot of worker labor. I think we're just going to have to give up all of the land to the east of my proposed "Harding" spot.

As for scouting to the west, I sent a warrior out to do just that, but he was sidetracked by a bear I'll try to swing him around to see whether Azza or Molach or even someone else is there. Speaking of Azza, he just planted his third city this turn as well, so I really have no idea how he played his opening. Either it was amazing and he just happened to lose his settler to a wolf, or it was atrocious and he's just now making up for it.