RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - Locke and Cervantes

[Locke]

plako has captured Viking city. I guess thats what all the pause stuff was about. Find out after game probably.



Adlain capital and second city. Medina has pigs and gold. Good city then? Not really. Needs border expansion for both. So he has no food in city right now. Needs to build monument and then wait for 10 culture. That will take a long time LOL. So good city eventually but not for long time.

We plant cities next to food cause we have no culture stuff at all yet.

[Locke]

OK so it is Turn 50 and we do update like Krill say.

This is our empire I put it in spoilers tag cause it is big.

We have settler in Anasazi. It was just finished this turn in capital. Going to red X and found city Turn 53. We plan city after that for blue X.

There is Viking city not to far away east. That may be trouble later. Adlain is still kinda far. You can see his cities on minimap. We have NAP turn 90 with Adlain, good friends so far.

Why we pick city spots? Capital is easy because it has two deer and cows. For other cities we have no Mysticism and no culture. Have to get food in first ring. Spots we wanted are lake tile near rice and mountain next to fish. But cant settle there. So next best is rice and copper spot we have here whch is still pretty good. Must get copper first cause without metals you just die if someone attack. Then in east there is corn and two crabs which is really good. We probly get Maoi statues here. We can not go for gold tile with early cities cause theres no food there. Have to settle east of sheep to get sheep and gold in first ring. But that waste too many grassland near capital. We think that would be bad play. If we settle blue X to early, we just look like Adlain city above. No food no growth.



Here is capital. Finished settler and now another worker. We built lots of settlers workers recently. All improved tiles are deer and mines. So we dont get a lot of food right now. This is bad time to grow capital. So we build settlers workers now while research Pottery. Then grow capital when we have cottages to use. No point in trying to grow while can only work mines that dumb.

Other cities using improved tiles. Rice and copper and mine at Anasazi. Corn at Teoihuacan. Teo also working forest tile so that workboat done in 2 turns with forest chop. Not worth pictures. All three cities connect by road.

We have 5 warriors 2 scouts 1 spear 4 workers 1 settler. (Spear was warrior autoupgrade from warrior.) We have good map scouting to west and north. New scout going east to see Nakor land now. Just found Vinland city this turn.

Here are techs we research and why.

* Start Mining/Fishing: Mining was really good Fishing was kinda useless

* Hunting: cause we need it for deer

* Bronze Working: we use it to chop 4 forest at capital. Get 80 early hammer into settler and worker. Also see copper so we dont die LOL. 80 hammer from 4 chop is big early advantage. But tradeoff is we dont get AH tech and cant use cows. So basically is 80 early hammer better than working cows? Not sure but we think so cause early game is most important.

* Agriculture: cause we need it for rice and corn

* Wheel: need for roads and Potery

* Pottery: we have good Food and Prod but not good research. So Pottery is really important for research. We also Exp and get cheap granary. 1 pop whip granary. Thats super good. So we go for early Pottery to fix research rate.

We dont have AH tech. That probably will be next. Dont have Mysticism tech. No culture cant expand borders at all in cities LOL. We skip them cause other stuff is more imporant. Techs are expensive in this game. Have to make good picks or you get messed up. Like we need cottages more now than cow pasture. And you can skip culture for awhile if you get good city placements.

We would settle other places if we Creative but we not Creative this game.



Right now Food Prod are most important. We are very close to leader there. We have copper and Slavery so we are pretty safe from attack. Can whip axe or spear in any threatened city. GNP is not so good though. Hopefully will fix with cottages. It not quite so bad though cause a lot of teams get "GNP" from culture. plako get 8 GNP from being Creative with 4 cities. Parkin get 10 GNP from Stonehenge and obelisk. Adlain GNP sucks but he get Buddhism culture so it look much better. I think some teams settle at gold tiles and work them. That help early research but it slow down growth a lot.

We probably doing better than Population say. We have 9 pop which is a lot. I think we have most or really close. That stat lie cause size 5 city is worth like 100 size 1 cities LOL.

We know Nakor, Adlain, plako, and Moogle. Nakor is east. Adlain is west. plako east past Nakor. Moogle north of Adlain. Mackoti supposed to be north of us and we are exploring there. WarriorKnight supposed to be east of plako. They fight earlier and plako win. Other three teams must be far away.

I think we are doing OK so far. Luddite has done really well but he still doesnt have 3 cities. Maybe he go for Oracle or something. plako has 4 cities from winning war! Not sure about his tech though. He is Cre/Imp so he will expand fast and grab land. Glad not next to us. I think we are a little behind them but pretty close.

Nakor also doing pretty good. Parkin had noob Stonehenge build to start but now has 3 cities. Actually doing OK better than we thought. Other teams are falling behind already. They make silly moves or lose wars or whatever. Not sure what they are doing.

OK I hope this is what you want.

[Locke]

Now we have 4 cities. Capital has 2 cottages. Anasazi get another next turn. Teoihuacan whip granary for 1 pop and regrow next turn.

On big map expansion is key. So we focus on early expansion. Just have to expand and keep up tech rate. 4 of first 5 cities will be on grassland rivers so lots of cottages. Need gold resource next for more happiness.

[zakalwe]

Looking good. I like your highly focused tech path, sounds like you made some hard but good choices there.

[GrafvMonteDisco]

how many workers do you have so far and how many workers per city would you like to have in these early stages of the game?

[Locke]

OK I give you update now.



Scout find Nakor capital. He closer than we thought. Across water to east. Vinland get whipped this turn, probably for settler. We send email to Nakor and ask for border divide. He take copper/fish spot in north, we take sheep/whales spot in south. Hopefully he accept so we have good relations. We cant beat him to copper anyway. But we will get one of these spots regardless. Next city probably going near sheep to seal east. I like spot NE of sheep can work crabs tile from Teoihuacan. And eventually get whales.



This is current turn. We whip 5 pop in last 2 turns:

- Whip 2 Anasazi for settler. Overflow finished barracks.
- Whip 2 Teoihuacan for worker. Overflow finish work boat too.
- Whip 1 Olmec for granary. Finish monument next turn with overflow and forest chop.

So Demographics numbers suck right now. We are last in GNP, last in Production. Terrible! Thats what happen when you have 15 pop and whip away 5 of it. But we #2 in Food and growing back fast. Just founded Zapotec this turn at gold resource. Only other teams with 5 cities are plako and Parkin. 4 out of 5 cities have granaries, we regrow really fast from whips. Have 5 workers and 6 workers next turn after Teo finish build. We have 5 cottages so far and two at capital will grow to hamlet next turn. All cities connected by road. Gold resource connected next turn so capital can reach size 6. Think we have much better infrastructure than most teams. I post picture of Demographics in 3-4 more turns and we will look much better I promise.

Biggest problem is not much happy on map. After gold resource connected we have furs in extreme south (terrible spot) and wines in north. Dyes and sugar in extreme north jungle. We will be stuck at this happy for a while. Need more happy somewhere. Will try to go for Monarchy/HR or maybe religion soon. Probably keep expanding horizontal while wait for tech to get more happy and grow vertical. Writing is next tech and libraries/Scientists will help alot. Force early Great Scientist somewhere probably Teoihuacan.

[Locke]

OK so since I last update we have signed a deal with Nakor. He was building lots of axes and we worried he was going to attack us. We agree to NAP until Turn 110 and land division in east. We get sheep city on white dot on map. He can settle anywhere else. We got the only city we care about, if Nakor want to cram in little filler cities he can go ahaed.

Here is map I put in spoiler:

There is city we planting next. Nakor put down horse city with no food. It is terrible city but I guess he want horses. This also why we worried about him attacking. Nakor say straight out in diplo that we have NAP until Turn 110 so if he attack then he is a filthy liar and lurkers should post that in every thread. We are taking him at word but not totally defenseless. We have 3 production in axe in Teoihuacan. Can double whip axe at any time and overflow to second axe. We also go Masonry tech next so we can whip walls if needed. Probably wont stop if attacked by like 10 axes though.

We dont like to gamble but have to take some risks. Teoihuacan growing past happy cap right now to triple whip library at size 6. That gets border expansion and lets us work Scientists to start generating GS. Not as safe as whipping axes however. Cant go all military or we lose to teams growing in fog. We have to trust Nakor right now. Still worried he will break word and attack.



These are Demos. I tell you before that they would look real good in a few turns. Here they are LOL. #2 in Food behind plako. He pretty far ahead there unfortunately. #1 in Population probably really #2 behind plako. We are #4 in GNP at break-even science which means we are actually far above average. Many teams get free culture from Creative or religion or wonders that we dont have. We are probably one of the better techers. We have six cottages and four of them already grow to hamlet. We have good infra, six workers and four granaries and two monuments and barracks. I think lots of teams still working unimproved tile. Or they dont have much in their cities yet.

We also #3 in Power which sucks because plako is #2 and Nakor is #1. Why these teams have to start by us? Not fun. Only bad stat is Prod but thats fine because we working food and whipping for prod. Work cottage + grow + whip is better than work mines in this game.

If we not attacked then we be really strong in 25 turns. If Nakor attack then we lose cities and fall way behind. If that happen then he is lying jerk and we make our goal beating him in this game.

[Ellimist]

I wish more players were as blunt as you are.

[Cervantes]

Our land is bad.

[Cyneheard]

Our land is bad.

Care to explain? Is the problem:

1. Amount of land
2. Lack of grassland/forests/hills/a general type of tile
3. Lack of resources