Unfinished business - SG for improving at Civ 4 (sic)

[Brian Shanahan]

Turn report

On the inherited interturn there was great excitement as... absolutely nothing happened. The Duke of Gergovia marched his men up a hill then marched them right back down again.

Turn 121
Brocken completes forge and decides to one turn a Library (mucho, mucho overflow).
I whip the spear at Christmas
Xmas and Bean both start on Axes.

Turn 122
Brocken Library>Market
Christmas Spear>Axe
Our culture hits 80% in Cuman

Turn 123
Christmas Axe>Axe
We see a bigger stack of Boudicas, also Durnovaria

Yaqob Barracks>Settler


Turn 124
Calendar>Meditation>Priesthood
Izzy re-Hindu's herself!!
Boudica kills the pasture at Xmas Present
Whip the Light houe in Flying Dutchman

Magrat gets a nice snack


Turn 125
Whip the Axe at Xmas Present for extra security (wanted to make sure, to be sure that we had enough bodies here)
Yaqob Settler>Settler (Overflow and 2 chops give me a 1 turn settler next turn)

Turn 126
Finishing Meditation essentially gives us all Priesthood's beakers. Yay!
Yaqob Settler>Axe

Turn 127
Priesthood>Code of Laws. Turn science off for one turn to ensure sufficient gold
Charlemagne turns Hindu himself!! (I believe now that he's made peace with Monty at this stage)
My biggest weed this set, I lost an Axe to a wandering archer from Cuman at 94.6odd%. He is revenged by a comrade

Turn 128
Yaqob Axe>Worker
Bean Axe>Worker
Christmas Aex>Mkt
We had a slightly decisive victory at the gates of Xmas

Edit: I had the defences set up like this, in the hope's she'd go on the flat:

And after mopping up a stray Axe we could get this peace:

Edit: here's what she looked like second time round. A day away from the game sweetened her up a bit:

which we took after consultation
Settle Bwca


Turn 129
Monty Wars Qin. He must really hate his religious brothers. Probably very boxed in.

Settle Moura Encantada


Turn 130

Hook up Iron
Get Cuman

1 turn out from getting Code of Laws

Monty has Pyramids, he adopted Police State during the set

Edit: Actually, thinking on this, doesn't the Pyramids often stunt the growth of the AI that builds it, being a big investment early. Monty may not have been hemmed in early but let his land get taken awa.

Advice, take the free sword from Cuman and at least five axes and go capture Chinook. That'll give us 11 decent to good cities, plus about three decent backline fillers before we even attack anybody.
As I said Monty could be boxed in very much, and I'd say he's stuck in the North East behind Qin, we need to find him.

Unless we're badly jonesing for the chain irrigation, I suggest we go for Literature next in order to get the Great Library.

I'll upload pics as soon as photobucket stops dicking with me, which'll probably be this evening (I've an AGM to attend).

[shallow_thought]

I've had a quick look around the save and am full of happiness .

Three more cities than when I left it, Calendar, nearly CoL, peace with Boudicca, YM finally allowed to grow (and with more tiles coming on line to grow onto), Brocken building up nicely. Just so nice to see. I also like the idea of trying to grab Chinook; if it doesn't work out we could try to  settle a filler north of Brocken to grab the cows.

We remain short on workers (duh), particularly at Cuman, but we're about to get two more.

[haphazard1]

Initial report sounds very good.

Monty is being the crazy war-mad Aztec we all know and love/hate. That he is boxed in, possibly with lots of border pressure, seems like a good guess. Usually he values religion enough to not fight his fellows in the faith, but with close borders negatives and lots of pressure to expand his actions make sense. Well, sort of, anyway, and as much as Monty ever makes sense.

Cheap organized courthouses soon, that should help the economy and start boosting your EP output. What kind of passive EP do you currently have? Who do you want to target?

Life in the ghostly empire is looking up.

[Zalson]

Haven't had a chance to take a look but I'll try to filling those remaining 3 cities

I'll try to make the call RE: civil service or literature. I was also thinking an early guilds. Well, early-ish.

I'll try to send the dot map tonight.

[Brian Shanahan]

Initial report sounds very good.

Monty is being the crazy war-mad Aztec we all know and love/hate. That he is boxed in, possibly with lots of border pressure, seems like a good guess. Usually he values religion enough to not fight his fellows in the faith, but with close borders negatives and lots of pressure to expand his actions make sense. Well, sort of, anyway, and as much as Monty ever makes sense.

Cheap organized courthouses soon, that should help the economy and start boosting your EP output. What kind of passive EP do you currently have? Who do you want to target?

Life in the ghostly empire is looking up.

In terms of EP we've just about enough to get graphs on everybody bar Qin and Charley. Qin becasuse we just met him, Charley because he put EP into us for a while and the threshold moved.

I'll post pics as soon as I get to a computer later today. I've taken a few overview shots as well.

[Brian Shanahan]

My report is now with pictures. Photobucket was acting strangely yesterday and earlier this morning.

Here's the overview shots at the end of the set:








And Demographics:

Graphs

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the overview shots! Very helpful.

What a miserable little junk city Durnovaria (sp?) is. Maybe there is some seafood in the fog, or a deer tile, or something. But probably not, and Boudica was just desperate to claim copper...even though she already has iron.

Demographics looking good. Land, food, hammers all tops, second in economy, and not bad at all in soldiers. Very nice. Monty is impfessively strong in military for a guy in last place for score.

[Zalson]

Spots I like:

Blue Dot
Fish in the fog spot (horses x)
Chinook
Lime Dot
Reach for the cows should be founded late when we have mercantilism/Statue of Liberty. It'll be like size 3 max, working a cottage and a workshop and building wealth. Oh, and keeping pink dot from flipping.

I think the priority will be Chinook, then ... Blue dot? At the end of my set, I'd like to have reach for the cows or fish in the fog as well.

I'll get it and have the dotmap incoming tonight and will play Tuesday.

[shallow_thought]

Spots I like:

Blue Dot
Fish in the fog spot (horses x)
Chinook
Lime Dot
Reach for the cows should be founded late when we have mercantilism/Statue of Liberty. It'll be like size 3 max, working a cottage and a workshop and building wealth. Oh, and keeping pink dot from flipping.

I think the priority will be Chinook, then ... Blue dot? At the end of my set, I'd like to have reach for the cows or fish in the fog as well.

I'll get it and have the dotmap incoming tonight and will play Tuesday.

Sounds sensible. Chinook because we are in some sort of race (it's next to Mansa's capital for crying out loud...), blue dot to grab the last food and the marble. I would look at whether a site one off the marble makes more sense than right on it. I don't think we're going to want to share any of YM's tiles now that we've got the happy cap up. Would be nice to save worker turns though.

I don't think that there actually are fish in the fog, sadly, but the horses make it an OK filler.

I placed the "reach for the cows" sign some turns back, as a backup in case we didn't get Chinook. It's certainly a very low priority if we do get the barb site, especially as we've settled the iron more directly.

I'm going to ramble on about strategy more in a separate post.

[shallow_thought]

This post is very much my thoughts, and very much up for change (by turnplayer or external events!)

Globally, all these religion switches have left us looking quite comfy short-term. I imagine our main risks are Mansa teching away from us if we bog down, or HRE swallowing half the world and covering it in Rathauses. The first can be dealt with by treachery and violence once we have a good enough base, for the second I think we need to get and keep a tech edge.

Strategically, I'd probably put grabbing land (Boudicca's, specifically) ahead of any high-cost wonders or a liberalism rush, unless we're going to target a non-violent victory after all.

 If so, I can see a spectrum of options:

1) Wellies, and cats (trade with Mansa for ivory) => construction, HBR (ASAP before her tech improves) [throw in archery for HAs as well, probably]
2) Knight "rush" - skip construction, beeline guilds => HBR, machinery, monarchy, feudalism, guilds (no collateral)
3) Knights + trebs and engineering movement => Construction, HBR, machinery, monarchy, feudalism, guilds, engineering
4) Grab Lit first, for HE and hopefully GLib => Aesthetics, Lit, Construction, HBR, machinery, monarchy, feudalism, guilds, engineering

Those tech lists start to look quite long at the end there...

I'd still not say no to MoM if we can slow-build it enough to do a 1t chop finish, but I suspect it's that or the GLib, not both, and the GLib is cheaper. I'm assuming that spending increasingly rare chops on failgold is sub-optimal.

(1) and (2) seem risky to me, but I tend to be overcautious. Both rely on getting a "good-enough" army into the field before Boudicca can get longbows, pikes and castles. I'd still be concerned about lots of guerilla defenders, but a fair few of her cities are on the flat. I suspect that by RB standards (2) is no sort of rush, so we might not make it. However, after (2) we're only one tech away from Gunpowder, which might tilt the scales a bit...
As for (3), I'd probably be happy to hit Boudicca on tech-even terms if absolutely necessary, once we had promoted two-movers and good city-busting collateral, but would worry about falling behind others.
(4) Looks doable to me; slower to crush Boudicca but keeps us competitive against Mansa / Charly. Also puts us closer to Mil Trad for the follow-up.

I actually have no feel for this. I'd almost certainly go (4) because it's pretty much what I always do, but I suspect that (1) or (2) might work, and then it's a question of whether we can use having the extra land sooner to make up for missed wonders.