How many turns in before I lose a city to barbs because I forget this isn’t Civ 6 and cities can’t defend themselves?
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[SPOILERS] Cornflakes Returns to Civ 4: Forget 1UPT, STACK OF DOOM!!!!!
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Your start
 Leaders:
Mods: RtR CtH
Pitboss: PB39, PB40, PB52, PB59 Useful Collections: Pickmethods, Mapmaking, Curious Civplayer Buy me a coffee
Let’s see ... food is wet wheat (but grassland instead of the usual plains), and clams. Can someone remind me what the farmed wheat yield will be? Will it be 6 food?
No hills to mine until first chopping the forests so after farming the worker will be idle until Pottery or Bronze Working. Khmer (hunting/mining) means I’ll need to research Agriculture + Fishing early, putting pottery and Bronze Working a long way off. Actually I’m not sure what starting techs would work best for this start. I need all of Agriculture, Fishing, [Bronze Working or Pottery] ASAP in order to improve the food and keep the worker busy. Isabella’s SPI/EXP is is tempting. I really like the thought of all the +100% production boosts on EXP, but the benefit of getting the worker out early will be wasted if the worker is just twiddling his thumbs waiting for tech. Financial just feels completely neutered in the mod. With all those riverside tiles FIN won’t do anything for a very long time. After thinking twice about Isabella I decide to REROLL ALL.
Wet grasswheat is 6, aye.
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Here is your second helping:
Leaders:
Mods: RtR CtH
Pitboss: PB39, PB40, PB52, PB59 Useful Collections: Pickmethods, Mapmaking, Curious Civplayer Buy me a coffee
April 8th, 2019, 19:19
(This post was last modified: April 9th, 2019, 07:07 by Cornflakes.)
Thanks Charriu!
Expansive as I've said previously seems underwhelming for this start. I've spreadsheet-simmed and even without EXP I can't avoid my worker standing around for a couple of turns. Worker first leaves the worker standing for a half dozen turns while I research Mining > BW (with no fishing yet). Alternatively I can go Fishing + WB and net the clams before builder, leaving the worker just 1 turn idle. EXP speeds up the WB and worker by 1 turn each, but then the worker stands around longer waiting for the tech. CRE renders Inca's UB irrelevant so I won't be taking both. IND/SPI I'm happy with. I'll likely keep that combo. Inca I'm not sure, not a whole lot of synergy between SPI/IND. With IND it would be easier to land Stonehenge, I can go for an earlier religion to take advantage of SPI religion swap and cheap temple happy and get border pops that way. But that still requires Monasteries or luck to spread religion. The devil you know is often better than the angel you don't. Starting techs are do-able. WB > Worker > Worker > Quechua > Settler, while researching Fishing > Mining > BW. Only quicker techs would be Fishing + Mining. But I have just as much chance of rolling slower techs. Quechua will allow me to connect Copper immediately while still building cheap MP. The +100% vs. Archery still isn't enough to get odds. But attacking 2:1 gets good hammer exchange. But a single Axe shuts that down. I'll probably stick with Inca/Rameses but I'll sleep on it and may roll the dice on a new civ. Also IND/SPI with Mysticism start probably will deter anyone from Hinduism and Oracle early gamble. I of course can't go straight there due to needing worker techs, but with that psychological deterrence I will likely be able to hit Hinduism > Oracle after BW, picking up Pottery while building Oracle for Metal Casting cheap IND forges.
April 9th, 2019, 07:06
(This post was last modified: April 9th, 2019, 07:07 by Cornflakes.)
LOCK INCA/RAMESES
What else can we say about the start? Tree graphics indicate we are in the Southern Hemisphere, but not too far south (right on the pine-line). Also I see tundra bleeding through in the south of the screenshot ... not that latitude means much on a toroidal. Maybe we'll find silver or furs in the tundra?
18 base hammers at size 6 working wheat + all 5 hills seems decent. Civ 6 has me eyeballing for production over everything else, hopefully my research doesn’t suffer as a result. 7 riverside tiles to cottage, but no way to share capital food with a 2nd city that can work the cottages  Need some food to the east so I can plant a 2nd/3rd city to grow cottages. (All that river underscores the uselessness of FIN). Size 13 to work all cottages + mines. This could be a beauty of a capital with some love and growth. Where to scout? I’m not going to move the capital, so the consideration is how to most efficiently defog for 2nd/3rd city sites rather than most tiles revealed T0. I’ll settle first to reveal a couple tiles over water to the southwest, and across the forest to the NE. I think T0 scout move will be SE-SE. Capital border pop will grab vision from both the 2nd ring hills to the south and the northeast. I want to scout down the river for a potential city site that can grow cottages for the capital, and I want to cover those flatland river tiles before barbs start appearing. This brings me to another consideration for this game: Emperor Difficult. The WiKi indicates the following for Emperor (parentheses note Monarch equivalents for comparison):
Here's a look at tentative mine and cottage improvements at the capital. City 3E of capital could work 5 cottages. I'm still puzzling over how to keep the worker busy in the early game. Pottery first and I can start growing cottages, but then I run into the happy cap and have no production without the whip. I just don't see how that works. Bronze Working first gets me the chop + whip, plus allows me to clear the hills for mining (and accelerates the early game through chop production). With my Agriculture/Mysticism start I can build a Work Boat first while researching Fishing [great change by the way allowing WB to be built while researching fishing!]. Follow that up with a worker while researching Mining > Bronze Working, and BW completes the turn after the worker farms the wheat. That's 1 turn idle but gives me a turn to move and choose any forest in the BFC as the first chop. Any other starting tech combo and the worker will sit around with nothing to do for the time it takes to research either Agriculture or Mining. If this was Civ 6 I'd skip the builder and work the forested hills at first, but that doesn't work here in Civ 4 
Picks are in! Let's do this yearbook style
Most likely weeping and gnashing of teeth: Elkad: Mehmed (EXP/ORG) of Germany ... too little, too late  Most conflicted: JR4: Pericles (CRE/PHI) of the Aztec ... do I specialist? Or do I whip?  Most likely to turn pirate: wetbandit: Napoleon (CHA/ORG) of the Vikings ... cheap lighthouses > cheap ships > amphibious assaults  Most likely to play in sandbox: Superdeath: Peter (EXP/PHI) of France ... many building modifiers, much bulb chasing, late game civ  Most scariest neighbor: Donovan Zoi: Catherine (CRE/IMP) of Zululand ... cheap settlers with free border pops defended by cheap spears  Most widest of girth: BGN/Mr. Cairo: Julius Caesar (IMP/ORG) of Greece ... cheap settlers and cheap maintenance, mass expansion  Most likely to chase shiny things: Cornflakes: Rameses (IND/SPI) of the Inca ... only IND, win condition is not chasing all the wonders 
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