Arg, had a bunch of screenshots I'm trying to figure out how to post
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Old World Succession Game
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Version: 0.1.37934 (5/12/2020)
Map Size: Small Difficulty: The Glorious Map Script: Seaside Leader choice: Random (Greece) Turns 1- 20 (Domino) Turn 1 Founding the empire: We spawned in a heavily forested mountain valley, with the river running to sea in on direction and off to where I hope to expand in two other directions. This seems like a good location to get most of our stone from, so I’ll set up quarries and the shrine of Hades once I get the chance. I choose the Patrons family to settle in the Capital. In part because I’m partial to the free workers that the “tutorial culture event provides”, but I also like their other bonuses for the capital. My tentative plan is patrons, statesmen and riders. With the pair of workers I begin work on a quarry and a farm, cutting trees as I go. I promote the warrior and assign Phillip as General so he can begin subduing barbarians as soon as I find some. Our ever useful scout discovers Rhetoric for us through the exploration of ruins. Turn 2 Alexander studies tactics, not because I think it’s the best meta choice but because if you give me Alexander the Great as a character, I think he deserves to lead units not science beakers. Exploration yields Aristocracy, at least I’m off to a good start when it comes to technology. My expansion plans are not going as well as I’d like. The river spur I explored is a dead end, I found a barbarian camp I’m moving Phillip to clear out, but it will be unconnected until we get roads or maybe we can build our Riders city there. There is another expansion revealed which at least has a river and will connect by sea, but other than mountains for even more stone, it doesn’t look promising yet. Turn 3 Phillip engages the filthy barbarians, and my scouts find another barbarian camp further south along the coast. Turn 4 A son is born, and according to the signs he will be …. Cunning. Work begins on more farms and quarries. Turn 5 The Settler finishes, and I bravely send them, unguarded, around the mountains to start a new city on the coast. After buying some food Athens starts on another settler. I’ve never played a small map, so I’m nervous about grabbing as much land as I can off the start. Turn 6 I clear the barbarian camp to the west, and my hardy settlers continue towards starting the next city. Turn 7 Sparta founded by the Statesman faction… which feels more than a little wrong. We did get some luxuries and silver within range, so that’s a bonus. I start them on settlers as well, but I’m anxious I may be undercutting defense and workers. Work begins on a camp, and my other worker gets some trees down before I run out of orders. Turn 8 Choices! I marry Alexander off to a righteous young lady. I’m happy to have a governor option that will help with unhappiness. I also get the choice of Centralization or Vassalage. I choose centralization, I’m curious what everyone else’ opinion is here. I’m used to the easier difficulties and I’m not sure how many troops we’ll need. Finally, I also get the choice of ambition, six quarries or four cities. I go with four cities as I’m already building the settlers. Turn 9 I finally scout upriver of my capital and find a barbarian camp. I may move Phillip there to introduce them to our “culture” next. Turn 10 I have finished the stone bonus research and with a little tree cutting I’ve got enough resources to build the hanging gardens. Again I worry about the viability on increased difficulty but getting a bonus to growth in all cities and one more point on the board seems a good contribution. Unfortunately I’m one order short of starting. Turn 11 I came very close to brushing her off, but I gotta do some time with the wife to keep her happy. Sorry empire and future rulers! Note to self, do events and exploration before spending orders/money on the wife. Glad I still had enough money left over to keep the peace Turn 12 A new settler takes off to the West to claim another city. I begin production of workers from Athens. Phillip takes some R&R to heald up, and we scout further out near Sparta Turn 13 Enough Civics for another decree. I got with Epics. We settle Corinth with Riders, I’m not tremendously enthusiastic about it, but it does have some good agricultural land. I begin working on workers as there is much to improve and I don’t have a clear direction for expansion yet after Sparta’s settler. Phillip sets off up river to clear the expansion for my soon to be ready settler. Turn 14 We meet Persia, who is located to our Southwest. They are already upset because we are “near” which to me seems to mean, “on the same map”. Turn 15 Fighting in the north with barbarians, Settlers from Sparta head there in expectation of Phillips victory Turn 16 We discover the Thracians, it’s tempting to respond with “If…” the perfect example of historical wit, but having done a poor job on our military, I take the safe approach and offer tribute of 4 food for 40 years. Turn 17 I've defeated the camp, there are still barbarians in the city area, but that doesn't stop me from settling. "Welcome settlers, to Thebes, your new home. If you could just step over the bodies there, and don’t mind the screaming you hear to the west, we’re still mopping up a few barbarians" With this my ambition is complete. Turn 18 At some point I met the leader of Rome, and must have too been excited about other things to document it. However, not like that guy mattered, he’s dead. The Neighbors event kicks off and I choose to be humble. This should nicely improve relations with the new Queen. Turn 18 What do to with the rest of my life. Another ambition choice. We have 2 laws enacted already, so I pick to enact 4 laws. the Seleucids grumpy and are going to need some love by the next ruler, but this should put us well on the way to another ambition being completed. We clear out the rest of Barbarians, Athens starts one more worker. There is one last expansion spot, but I’m hoping the bonus settler card might pop up soon to fill that. Turn 19 Oh yay, I meet another nation (he says sarcastically). We’ll share freely with them. Shoring up relations should help. That reminds me I have an Ambassador slot which is probably what has the Seleucids upset. Sure enough Pericles is itching for the spot and hating me for not noticing him earlier. Whoops. I realize I’ve left a shortage on metal production. I’ll see if I can start at least one mine before moving on. Else my successor might curse exuberance for stone quarries Turn 20: Well damn….Alexander dies in brawl So much for the Great….I guess not in this timeline. You know who handles this news well.. Persia. I get an event from them which I picture as “I heard your son, military prodigy and future ruler died…. You want to give me some free troops that I probably, maybe won’t attack you with while you mourn?” Corinth completes it’s worker and I start farming and camps around there. Notes To my successor: I left production in Corinth on council so the next ruler can decide when they take over. Foreign relations should all be in a pretty good spot However, I didn’t build any mines or soldiers, so that’s a weakness that probably needs addressing. There is barbarian camp to the southwest that should be subdued and settled. Alexander the “not so great this time” died in a bar fight.
Do we have trapping at least for slingers? I usually go heavy mines early not only for emergency warriors but also for spearmen
Youtube Channel Twitch aka Mistoltin
Got it
So we currently have 6 workers for 4 cities, with 3 more in production. We have just one warrior for military. We're in good shape diplomatically, but even if no one attacks us, we need military to expand. So building military has to be the focus of my turnset. Probably a few slingers, as we can't currently build warriors due to lack of iron Did we skip the free settler research card? You didn't mention research choices in your report. I see we're currently on forestry, which I feel is not a great choice right now as lumbermills need iron to build I'll post some screenshots to show where we stand before starting the turnset
Here's our situation at the end of T20
Map overview  Here you can see our 4 cities (blue dots). We have neighbour two tribes, Thracians (orange/brown dots) in the north and Gauls (green dots) in the west. In the south we have a barbarian camp (red dot), and Persian capital further south (also a red dot? should bring it up....) One more thing clearly visible in the overview - connection between our capital (the city in the middle) and the two western cities can easily be disrupted. We have to go through the 2-tiles-wide passage between the mountains before turning either north or south. The southern city will eventually be reachable via water. But not yet Here's how it looks on the main map  And a closer look at the cities. The capital  A plentiful city, a lot of resources around, some of them not in its territory yet, but easy to grab. The forest to the east will eventually have every tree tile lumbermilled. Mountains restrict our options for building urban improvements, and it will be annoying in the long run, best way is probably to utilise existing urban tiles and expand in a general NE direction. There are also a lot of quarries, and the Shrine of Hades under construction, which will boost quarry output by 50%. Stone is perhaps the most important resource in the game, so it's good to see The capital is the seat of the Patrons family. The notable ability here is that family seat allows to hurry production with money - an option I will likely use on my turnset to get an extra unit produced To the south of Athens is the city of Sparta  A lot of hills - to me this means a lot of mines. This is where we will work to solve our iron problem. There are also some sea based resources, crabs (which are currently being improved) and dyes. Dyes is a luxury which we don't immediately need, it's not a preferred luxury of any of our families, but it may still be worth prioritising its improvement in order to have something to offer other empires in case they show up with trade proposals or demands I also see this city has walls - presumably from a culture event. This city is a little exposed with two Gaul camps nearby and difficult lines of supply from the capital, so I'm happy to see this Sparta is the seat of the Statesmen family, which gives us 1 order/turn from each of its cities, and also allows to construct Decree project, which also provides an order boost. This project is not very good at low culture levels, but we can't really spare city production for it at the moment, so it's ok. It will certainly come into play later in the game. +1 order per city is handy now, and is probably the reason why this is the family which already has two cities Here's the other city of the Statesmen family, Thebes in the NW  This city looks new, I guess it's the last one founded. Notably it already has 2 citizens - presumably the second one came from an event. There are two iron sources near this city, in the mid-term it will be a major iron producer. Not right now though - they're both currently outside city borders. This city will be hit if Babylonia decides to attack, so we better be prepared... Finally, there's Corinth in the east  This is the seat of our military family, the Riders, which (unsurprisingly) gives a bonus to mounted units built in this city. The family also gives a small bonus to military production, so we will want to optimise this city for unit building So how do I see our position? The good: 4 cities by T20 is great. As you can see from victory points, this puts us on par with Babylonia and ahead of Persia. Given AI's head start, being even with them on city number so early is awesome We have a very strong stone income. Stone is needed for a lot of buildings as well as for roads, you can't really have too much stone in this game. But 415 stone reserve will last us for quite a while, and 41 stone/turn is great to ensure we don't run out 32 beakers/turn is a good research rate this early, although a lot of it comes from the monarchs who aren't young (king is 58, queen is 51), so we can expect to lose some of it relatively soon We have good relationships both with our families and with other empires. We should be able to stay out of conflict for a little while The bad: We already talked about it earlier today - but we're playing the ultimate farmer's gambit here. Only having a single warrior as our entire army scares me to no end. The problem is that in Old World one can get severely punished for running farmer's gambit - we would like to claim the barbarian camp in the SW for our next city, but don't have the units to clear it, and may well lose it to Persia as a result. Our good diplomatic situation means it's not a huge concern - but it is a concern Our iron situation is not awful (partly because we only have 1 warrior and don't have to pay too much maintenance), but it is pretty bad We're researching Forestry, an expensive tech which will not give us any immediate benefits, while there are important early game techs (Husbandry, Administration, Military Drill) still not researched. This may have been forced - I don't know what our research options were. But the next 4 turns of research are not going to be immediately useful to us Plans for my turnset I'm going to overrule the worker in the capital. There's such a thing as too many workers in Old World. You don't just spend orders moving workers around - each turn a worker spends building an improvement uses up an order. Out of 14 orders/turn we're getting, we're currently spending 6 on building tile improvements. We can support this, but we cannot support many more workers. The one in Sparta is almost finished, and we definitely need one to build all the mines I want. Thebes doesn't have any workers in its territory, finishing one there is also worthwhile. But another one in the capital would definitely be excessive So I will switch Athens to a slinger, and will start a slinger in Corinth as well. I think we should start building roads between our cities, since we're starting with a small military we need to ensure we can move units between the cities quickly should the need arise. Research-wise I will focus on backfilling - I think the three techs I mentioned above (Husbandry, Administration, Military Drill) are the priority. Amongst expensive techs, I think Composite Bow is the only one worth picking up if offered and there's no better alternatives. Archers are OP and don't require iron, so that's a tech I would consider, even if 200 beakers is a lot This pains me, but we may have to pass on the free settler card - it may take a while to clear a site for the next city, and I doubt taking the free settler and having it sit in the capital and eat food in maintenance is worthwhile If there are no objections, I will play the turn tomorrow morning
Urban planning.
Capital: I don't agree with eventual lumbermills on everything. It needs to expand Eastward for all the urban tiles (minimum of 3 hamlets and theaters) by starting with a hamlet on the tile NW of horse. Sparta: Needs to push W bigtime for urban tiles also starting with hamlet to W of city. Thebes: Probably build hamlets and theaters eastward to get iron tile. Getting Northern iron is rough to be rough. Corinth: need to push urbanism SW to avoid clashing with capital. Potential Mines W of horse in cap, SW and 2S and 2E of Sparta, All tiles S of Thebes, 3 hills adjacent to Corinth (cancel the worker building the wheat farm) Have one of the workers in cap start clearing brush/trees for needed wood. What are the tech options besides lumber mills? I would really not prefer to pass on the settler card given how long it can take to build one. Youtube Channel Twitch aka Mistoltin
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