[BTS] Civ IV Newbie Succession Game - Monarch - Beginning now!

[Tasunke]

Well, I now have the ability to play the save (computer got fixed) ... so yay! :D

Will war more likely be during this turnset or the next?

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EDIT: Where is the save? I assume its a dropbox site somewhere? I had thought the link would have been earlier in the thread but can't find it. Might as well let me know so I don't have to keep asking you to post it to the thread

[Dhalphir]

we're attaching it to the end of each turn report usually.

[Tasunke]

Alright sounds good. Since hart already has the save and is thinking about it, how about he plays the save this time and I'll take his spot for the second time.

[Dhalphir]

yep, that's what we're doing

[Hart]

I apologise for not getting around to this yesterday, its a silly time for me.

Looking at the save now, all of Brian's suggested sites are excellent. Our priority this set of turns is to expand toward the east, in particular the two cities on the river south of Korhal and the one directly east, and possibly begin the northwestern expansion effort. War with Shaka or Saladin is probably not advisable until can consolidate our land. At that rate, a Knight push is probably viable.

I've always found that striking a balance between rapid expansion and protecting that claimed territory is harder than I expect it to be. I'm going to need a bit of advice from our other players and lurkers on that front. Should I build like an AI and have an Archer and an Axemen ready for each city to be built? Or just reshuffle what we currently have...

I have some other questions:
Tech - Where should we go from here? I'm thinking Construction next. Should we backfill some techs after that? We have almost no military tech at all besides Bronze Working. Calendar, for the extra happy factor?
Civics - Should we swap out of Slavery and into Caste System? Using an artist at size 1 results in very quick border pops for only a turn or two. We don't want to be swapping back and forth though!
Workers - We currently have 10, do we need more? Keeping things at a reasonable ratio of 2 per city until we start to have every site settled is probably a good idea.
Great Scientist - Where should he put down his Academy?

I'm going to plan these turns in detail, spreadsheets and everything. I want OPTIMAL PLAY, and that means planning.

This has been sitting in my browser for almost a day.

[BaII]

I think Academy should go down at the captial, and we should also have axemen from our backlines, come out and serve as CG and have those axemen get replaced by warriors(pretty sure we can still build them), I think Metal Casting to get up some forges would be nice, as we are starting to run out of infra to build. Afterwards Archery maybe? However we should almost definitely be getting hunting soon as we are extremely vulnerable to chariots. Or we could go for Calender then MC MoM, is a very worthwhile wonder to build, as well as the extra happiness.

[Brian Shanahan]

Well my thoughts are along the lines of:

Tech wise, I think we should go Maths>Currency after finishing CoL. Going back to Mono for the 'Mids is a sucker's game this late IMO, and we'll probably see them fall soon. After that I'm liking Civil Service and then on to Construction. Maces and Cats on either Sally or Shaka will probably be the winning move. Alpha for tech trading will also be nice.

And I think it is still the way to go. Catapults will keep us safe defensively with Axes (we can emergency whip enough units), and pushing on to civil service gives us the goal of:
a) getting Bearo (still a good enough idea),
b) staying on the beeline to Lib,
and most importantly c) unlocks maces for medieval pwnage (and if we take over Shaka, maces/phants/cats).

Regarding vulnerability to chariots, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the AI doesn't build too many of them. It usually goes for Axes, spears and cats.

[Dhalphir]

not for attacking, no - the AI normally has a few chariots for counterattacking and pillaging, but they don't attack or defend with them.

[Dhalphir]

Tech - Civil Service and Construction after Currency/Maths
Civics - stay in slavery, in my opinion. Caste system is nice when you can run 5-6 specialists of one type but aren't allowed to, but at the moment we still want to be growing our cities, not using pop points on specialists, and there's still cities that need infrastructure but lack good production
Workers - 2 per city is a good number, I think. The cities can't grow faster than 1-2 workers per city can build improvements. We might want to build a spare worker or two to get started on expanding our road network.
Great Scientist - I usually just check the domestic screen to see which city produces the most beakers at 100% science (it's nearly always the capital, unless a nearby city has a ton of food and a river) and put the academy there. The only exception is if I have a city that WILL produce more beakers than the capital within 30-40 turns before I can get another great scientist.

[Hart]

Waaaaah. I apologise folks, I forgot to play this yesterday, but today I'm just dead on my feet. Can we see if Tasunke wouldn't mind taking the save? I've played a couple turns but BLEGH. Brain cannot think.