[SPOILERS] 3 Players, 1 Civ, No Clues - Tatan, Nakor, and Serdoa are Darius of Rome

[Serdoa]

Alternatively, Monarchy for HR-happiness. We need some ways to grow our cities bigger. And it seems thats the only way. Calendar sometimes later of course as well, for the Dyes. But I think getting Colossus would be the best thing. Risky play of course, if we lose out on it the tech is a considerably weaker choice then Monarchy but we still have to take risks (a ton of them) to make something with this land.

[Serdoa]

Played and ended our turn, changed some stuff.

1.) Changed tiles so that cap grows and finished the spear this turn. Next turn a settler is started. We don't care that 1 citizen is unhappy that one turn, when you produce settlers/workers unhappy citizens don't eat food imo.

2.) I changed our research to Monarchy (via Myst, Medi, PH). We NEED happiness, like now. Maths and Calendar won't cut it, that one happy from the dyes isn't nearly enough to warrant going there. Hereditary rule will do the same for use, just for adopting it. And we produce enough military that we can already now get nearly 2 happy in every city.

3.) I loaded both workers from the main continent onto the galley. Maybe we have to change that.

4.) We can't build cheap warriors any longer. We should think about settling another city, so that we are able to do it again. We need them for when we have HR, to get our cities to work all the coast tiles they can. 1 unit shouldn't cost more then 1 gold, even after we have gone beyond free maintenance and getting 3 commerce in return (more like 2.7 as every new citizen raises maintenance by around 0.3) is a good deal - for us at least.

5.) I scouted along with the workboat.

Question: Should we try to settle the iron up in the north? It would be quite a stretch, but we could start with the junk city for the HR-warriors and see if anyone is near that spot. If not, move several units there (LBs if we move from Monarchy on to Feudalism) and get that iron. Not for a praet-rush (well beyond that against sunrise imo) but because without iron you are pretty fucked in this game till you reach Rifles. No Knights, no Pikes, no cannons. No fun!

[Tatan]

2.) I changed our research to Monarchy (via Myst, Medi, PH). We NEED happiness, like now. Maths and Calendar won't cut it, that one happy from the dyes isn't nearly enough to warrant going there. Hereditary rule will do the same for use, just for adopting it. And we produce enough military that we can already now get nearly 2 happy in every city.

Keep in mind we have those spices as well. I still agree with going for Monarchy, though. I'm not completely sure why we were researching Math earlier, maybe someone set it as a placeholder tech and then it didn't get changed?

4.) We can't build cheap warriors any longer. We should think about settling another city, so that we are able to do it again. We need them for when we have HR, to get our cities to work all the coast tiles they can. 1 unit shouldn't cost more then 1 gold, even after we have gone beyond free maintenance and getting 3 commerce in return (more like 2.7 as every new citizen raises maintenance by around 0.3) is a good deal - for us at least.

Sounds good in theory--but where would the metal-less city go? All coastal spots would have copper already connected to them, and the inland of the main continent is utter crap until we get windmills (then it's just regular crap).

Question: Should we try to settle the iron up in the north? It would be quite a stretch, but we could start with the junk city for the HR-warriors and see if anyone is near that spot. If not, move several units there (LBs if we move from Monarchy on to Feudalism) and get that iron. Not for a praet-rush (well beyond that against sunrise imo) but because without iron you are pretty fucked in this game till you reach Rifles. No Knights, no Pikes, no cannons. No fun!

Are you talking about the iron near Mali? Grabbing that would be suicide IMO, and I would be surprised if we could even physically place a city over there before Mali's culture overtakes it.

Not that I have any better solutions.

[Nakor]

Hey guys, way to tired to respond now. I'll be back friday...

[Nakor]

Here's the e-mail exchange I had with Serdoa during server downtime:

Vienna was great and the students behaved themselves.

Looked ingame and had to choose a build for Caesar. Put it on a Settler (whipable) but feel free to change it.

Things are looking good but we are way back in military... interesting game!

Kind regards,

Nakor

Well, I thought building military won't help us. If anyone wants to take our lands, they can. We are slowly but surely
reaching the stage where axes and chariots are old crap and not enough to keep us sufficiently safe (thats also a
reason for Monary, we can get Feudalism for LBs next). I'd like to check with the chariot in the north how good Mali is
defending the iron. Maybe we can take that city and stuff 2-3 LBs into it, though we'll probably need 20 more turns to
even reach LBs .

I agree with you. Getting to Feudalism will help us a lot and I think we can gamble untill then with a low military (unless Surises worker is building a road in the jungle).
I think we can settle that crap filler spot you marked for a forward Military production post.
But island cities will give us more in the short term... Think we should settle it in between, maybe with a settler from Caesar.

Research on Maths was my idea. We have 2 calender happy resources for grabs, so that should help with the happy cap and is on the road towards Currency.
But let's tech towards Feudalism first. Then we can do Calender/Currency and such.
We need to think about a Great Scientist as well. Maybe building a library in Nero and run 2 scientist?
If we're left alone long enough we might be able to get back into the game with TGL/Finance fueled research.
Regards,
Nakor

I agree on the forward crap spot. Either settle it later on or we go for it right now and try to fight through Mali. But we would need to surprise them to stand a chance. I would not recommend full out war, but a quick strike to take the iron city might be worth it. Depends what we can field though and I fear they can outproduce us in the long run, so probably it isn't worth it. And sunrise is so far ahead that even Praets would right now not help at all. Someone will have to take care of him, but thats certainly not us. So yeah, settle that crap spot sometimes in between, more as a forward base then anything else.

Research on Maths was a good idea in itself, but we had still no way to pop borders, so even with Maths and Calendar we still would have need a border-pop to get the dyes (imo - or was that second city on the island meant to have it 1st-ring? Can't remember). Anyhow, I think both are valid routes and I doubt my own judgment here tbh, especially switching so late, as it didn't make much difference at that point in raw research time to get Maths -> Calendar or Monarchy. Anyhow, I think we are fine as it is. We can switch to HR as soon as we have Monarchy, grow our cities a little bit (well, those who can grow, not like our copper-crap ) and use the hopefully higher research to either finish Maths -> Calendar in a few turns or take Feudalism. Have to see how the world looks like then. I'd really like to get LBs sooner then later, just because sunrise might finally realize that he could easily take us out and get TGL - would be a nice prize for him imo and worth it.

Lastly you are right about the GS. We really should get a Library quickly and run 2 scientists. An academy would be nice, especially when our cap can grow beyond 5 finally.

Kind regards,
Serdoa

I don't think attacking is an option at this time.

Just settle the crap city and wait untill we have better tech (should that ever happen).
I agree that we're in no position to take care of the bigger powers. We just need to hang in there and get our civ in a better shape tech wise. The longer we can avoid active war, the longer we can tech our way back up.
Then we might be able to finish top 8...

Border pops will always be a problem untill we research Music... and with Dyes aroun, going up the tree after Feudalism isn't that bad an option. After Maths - Calender, of course...

Will you play the rest of the turn and take a look at Caesar?
Once the forum is up we can post these messages for Tatan.

Ok, finished the turn. Mali has moved a warrior next to our chariot (1NE of it) and as we had 71.9% odds I attacked. We won and have a promotion available for the chariot next turn. I moved the other chariot (from the horse-city) next to ours, just in case the warrior was his city garrison. Though I expect to see spears / skirms. I just poke around though, you are right that attacking won't work. But no reason to let them near our city. Give them the feeling we are strong, no matter that we aren't

And we might indeed finish 8th, simply because no one wants that atrocious land from us :D

I left Caesar with the settler btw. No one can double move it imo (nor should anyone be interested in doing it), so I think we are fine. We might have to change to an axe and double-pop-whip it later on, but I hope not.

[Nakor]

And a picture update:



Crap city location and Mali's Iron:


Central lands, note the Galley with a Settler and Axe:


Island plans:


And further west:

[Tatan]

Uhh, guys, considering the fact that we want to avoid a hot war, did we really need to kill that warrior?

And honestly, I firmly believe that attempting to attack Mali to secure that iron is pure suicide. We have a miniscule military and Mali has the cheapest defense-spam unit in the entire game. Plus it's almost turn 100. Any attack on them at this point will fail and probably just alert them to the fact that we don't have praetorians, unless you guys have some ungodly general skills you haven't told me about.

I think turtling with LBs is flat-out the only viable military option at this point if we want to survive and develop to the late-game. If we tech Feudalism, then Math -> Currency+Calendar, we might be able to develop something resembling an economy. This leaves us with no good way to pop borders forever, but practically none of our cities need to.

[Serdoa]

Well, thats my doing Tatan. I am one of the most aggressive players here at RB and if I see a weak unit, I will kill it. But hey, they killed our chariot in return, so at least they feared us enough for a "double-move". Or at least I think that is what happened, as I tried to take a position which they cannot reach in one move. Not sure if the chariot was already dead when you logged in the first time though. We should try to not let that happen with the other chariot as well btw.

Apart from that I changed worked tiles as we really don't need production right now imo, we won't get anything from producing yet another one or two axes. We need research.

Nothing else of importance happened. I'll keep away from turn playing again, now that Nakor is back. Just wanted to make sure the turn could roll as apart from us only 2 other civs hadn't played yet.

[Nakor]

Thanks, Serdoa! I agree with your aggressive attitude in this game.
If you like to remain as turn player, I'm ok with that as well. Maybe we can all take a few turns and rotate?

[Nakor]

Okay, started on the turn but ran into a problem.
Why are we building a WB on our "next c" when the seafood aren't in the first ring? We need a border pop to get the BFC working, meaning a monument (NOT!) or Library...

So I stopped playing the turn then. Settler is still on the Galley but should unload somewhere.

Started Caligula on a Granary but that can be changed to a lighthouse.