I think the important thing is often to maximise the number of resource tiles you're working. And you can sort of think of the city tile as 1 (weakish) resource. So there's nothing wrong with working some unimproved tiles here or there in established cities, instead of a mine/farm/cottage, but you really need to have the workers ready to hook up those high value resource tiles in new cities ASAP or you're losing a lot of value.
Btw, your thread title is at that annoying length where I need to delete the Re: when replying.
well, I'll have to change my thread title, cause inconveniencing lurkers for the next 3 months to a year is a bad idea - changed it to remove the word Sometimes... since I've been posting a lot.
This gives a reasonable idea as to where I want my cities to be. An Imp civ makes 8 cities for every 5 cities a non-imp civ can make, which is a tremendous advantage when fighting for the best land. So much so that I'm debating making a 2nd scout, so I can find all the best spots.
These outermost locations lie at about the half-way mark between me and opponents, mostly on hills. I'd like very much to get these locations - they would give me a large advantage over my opponents. I suspect I can go north farther than I've marked and probably further SE and SW, as well. I think there's about 16 tiles between caps - I'd ideally like cities 8 tiles from my cap, which gives me more of the land than my opponents without settling right up on them. They might react badly to that - I certainly didn't like it when Molach settled similarly on me in PB18 - but I have protective archers, so that should help. granted, my opponents all seem to aggressive. None of them seem very pink-dottable right yet - maybe Barteq, as he neither religion nor creative to help him. that said, I dunno how much I want to get into a fight with a protective/aggressive civ, either.
If I have the chance, I'd probably like to pink dot the spots I put a pink dot. I don't think I can do either of them without A) pissing off a neighbor and B) way overextending myself. I would like to get a city on that southern ocean, but it may not be easy. I might have to hope I can beat both Adrien and Barteq to the point they would naturally meet. But it also might be terrible land. The land N & NE of Barteq looks nice.
I am thinking of settling my first southern city further south than I wanted and basically giving up any shot at sharing with the cap. I might be able to put in a helper city in their somewhere, but really, the land just S and SE of the cap is kinda crappy.
the red dots with yellow filled in are cities that I would consider to be major cities - the rest are essentially filler. The big ones will be allowed to grow large, the others will cap out enough to draft.
Who is Barteq, as suspected. Switched all espionage to Barteq to get his graphs as soon as I can. He seems to have a similar setup to me, but with fur as his near resource. I'll move south, because it seems possible that, with sailing, I can get trade routes with him with a city along my coast, which would be nice.
Not much else happens. Turn 25 feels like it should be significant, but it isn't. I mean, besides the fact that most everyone gets points for land.
Demos:
I will say that this land and mod seems to be set up almost ideally for a imp land grab civ. Cap gets slightly more commerce and starting techs are cheaper, making the path to currency slower. There is a lot of land per civ. And I've got 4 commerce boosters available early, all of which allow me to plop down cities with abandon.
In some order. Mystiicism would be nice for cheap border pops when I don't want to just create a lib. Mysticism might actually pay for itself or nearly so as a pre-req for Masonry, so that might just be a no-brainer, I dunno.
Currency is obviously important for my expansion. IW is too, subtley - would be nice to know where Iron is, though I expect I won't have any trouble having some in my lands, but the two silver might almost pay for it themselves. Masonry - well, I have both stone and marble and will be settling in ways that annoy my neighbors, so stone fueled protective walls would be nice to be able to whip in at a moments notice in border towns. And sailing would be nice, to get trade routes and maybe settle islands. it looks like Barteq has a little island there - it would sure be nice if we had one, as well.
I'm thinking Mysticism->Masonry->IW->Sailing->Currency might be a strong tech path after pottery->writing->Math. Perhaps try to get failgold from the Wall/Pyramids - I can spare a city to try to build wonders. I'll not come close to Stonehenge. Could maybe get the lighthouse. That would be interesting.
We now have 3 size 4 cities. I guess I may have one of the earlier cities after all - I had assumed that I would be later, but anyone who is size 4 is probably 2 pop whipping, and they are going to need 4 or 5 turns to set it up. I guess I am imperialistic, which is a large advantage.
2 turns to my settler and to seeing copper! very future excited!!
Bets as to the first person to settle and when they settle? Also, bets as to where copper is?
Huh. I don't have everyone's trait's written down anywhere. Well, I'll guess Krill and next turn. Then I'll do an actual analysis later and come up with a real answer
Copper I'm guessing is:
One of these 4 places:
My best guess is one of the places in the capitol, but the southern spots are kind of interesting, too. Why? Because they are low on resources. If copper isn't down there, I'm pretty sure something is. The map is filled with resource tiles - it seems that every other tile is either a resource or a floodplain.
I'm hoping it's one of the two in the cap, or the hill nearer the coast to the south, since I think that city #5 goes down there, anyway.
Why there? Well, I don't see a lot of other obvious places nearish the cap. I am pretty sure everyone has copper near their cap - either in the 1st or 2nd ring. i dont' think it's in the desert up by the sheep - that area already has horse and
Damn - I shoulda bet on the first whip. It was Krill (technically, it was Gaspar), doing a 1 pop whip, presumably for a 2nd worker, though maybe for a settler.
Grimace is the first to 2 cities!! Grimace is Boudica of Japan, so not Expansive or Imperialistic. Very impressive, getting the first settler down. I get mine next turn and get it settled in 3.
What did I do?
Not much interesting - this is a fairly long spit of land - am guessing that Barteq's Moai goes down here.
Demos
btw - one of the things that I'll find interesting is where I'm completely wrong about what happens in this game. At least I got the turn correct
Where do I put my 4th city? Right now, I am planning on putting it on the jungle grass tile with a brown circle. now, this city is meant to be a helper city for my 2nd city - share food and grow cottages.
The problem with that site is that if I am not able to keep the rice, the site sucks long term. There's no food once city #2 grows big and it's got multiple desert tiles. And it's very easy for Molach to deny the rice - just plop a city next to it and he'll take it over eventually.
So I'm debating alternate sites:
Red circle gives up on the rice and hill defense, but opens up the silver hill faster, gives me a cow and allows me to grow a cottage on a plains tile for city #2 which is nice for it.
Blue Circle means I keep the rice unless Molach gives an enormous cutlure push and gets the cow, but only shares 2 tiles and will likely piss off Molach. It is on a PH, so it will make a nice forward military base. Maybe that's ok with protective archers and cheap walls.
Green Circle basically punts on everything. I kind of hate that tile - it also makes a city on the hill W of the pig impossible, which may be good or bad - that's a real stretch goal for me, cause it will infuriate Molach (I presume),
I think my original site is going to perturb him, but he'll be ok with it (pro archers on a hill will help) Red will upset him less. green he won't care about. Blue might cause war.
I don't have any conclusions - I think I'm leaning towards red, but depending on what molach does with expansion, I might even stay brown. If he doesnt' go west, for instance, which he might not since he can't improve the gold till IW anyway
We finish Bronzeworking!!! Do I win my bet? Kind of - I have 2 coppers near me, one easily accessible by both city #2 and city #5
My internal debate about where to put that city continues - I am now leaning to the desert hill (I was leaning to the sheep, for faster growth), because the extra food from the FP will help now that I want to work that copper.
It's almost enough to change my tech path to go myst first so I can build a monument there. I dunno.
My exploration around Barteq:
I'll head back north next turn and probably head west at that point to explore more.
Speaking of Adrien, I think he got BW last turn:
Thats a pretty big spike and he's in slavery.
Speaking of slavery, I made my settler, moved it to the ivory and revolted. The worker started the road in the forest and will finish it tomorrow in time for the settler to move to the wheat along with the warrior and then settle. The warrior will move west at that time to meet Molach and then south to find a route to adrien and see where our borders will end up.
- changed it to remove the word Sometimes... since I've been posting a lot.
