Alexis the Monarch - Trying BtS For The First Time

[GermanJoey]

Major (mine) has the cows so I thought that made sense.

That plains cow is a salivatingly good tile for a Imp leader, but it doesn't really count as a food tile. Think of it more as a mine with a food bonus rather than a farm with a hammer bonus.

That spot will be AWESOME for pumping settlers early. For either spot, at size 3, the city can work the cow, the gold, and the copper, on what I believe is a plains hill plant, for a whopping 1+12*1.5 = 19 hammers per turn. That's nearly a 5 turn settler pump already, and simply working an ordinary mine instead of the gold turns it into the real deal. Your original spot grows to size 3 too more slowly - 3 turns slower, nothing to sneeze at, a city like this MUST get online quickly with as little worker involvement as possible - as it can work two 3 food unimproved tiles, and its fine to let it sit at size 3 for awhile just pumping settlers and workers. So, in some sense, you shouldn't really worry what the city does after that. However, if we did want to look beyond that, the spot I suggested will eventually be able to break free of its poverty by using the rice and lakeside farms to grow when the capital doesn't need them.

[LexiSilva]

I guess I should change the title of this to: "Alexis Learns CivIV"

Anyway, It is 1000 BC and I have X (Major-2E) (St.Petersburg) and X (Scout) (Novgorod) settled.

I have a slight lead on the AI's, and my strategy right now is one more city (Probably X Minor) and then pumping out workers in between infrastructure.

   
   

[Lord Parkin]

Three cities all sharing the same Rice? Interesting. Not sure if that's how I'd play it, but not bad.

[LexiSilva]

Three cities all sharing the same Rice? Interesting. Not sure if that's how I'd play it, but not bad.

For me, this is as much micro as I would ever do at this point. Moscow has enough food to satisfy itself without the rice (going to St. Petersburg) and the southernmost clams (Novgorod). I was blessed by the map generation with so much food.

[LexiSilva]

Okay, explain why CivIV hates me. For at least 10 turns, I have to fend off barbarians, whipping and building up military in all of my cities, only to have all but one-per-city wiped out, and then Temujin declare war as soon as the barb threat ends and 3 turns after wanting open borders!?!?! *ragequit*

[GermanJoey]

Well, that happens sometimes. The AIs in civ4 all have different personalities, and Genghis has one of the most warmongering ones of all. With a neighbor like that, you just gotta keep an eye out for him, especially if he doesn't have any neighbords besides you.

This map is also pretty tough with respect to barbs because of all that open desert. You can use warriors to "spawn-bust" them in certain spots to help with this - barbs will never spawn within 2 tiles of a unit or a civ's borders. With a wide open map like this, you won't be able to spawn-bust all of them but at least enough so that you don't have to worry about attacks on all sides. A couple axes or chariots will be enough to take care of the rest.

[LexiSilva]

Yeah, I understood the personalities a little bit, but the problem was that my military already got wiped because of the barbarians, which WAS my fault. All the cities worked on military and even then, poor Rostov with one archer and warrior would've faced 3 axes and 2 spears. ;-;

[haphazard1]

Catching up on this thread again. A couple thoughts:

- My rule of thumb is that plains cows don't count as a food source. It is a good tile, but only barely better than self-feeding. As GermanJojo said, better to think of it as a mine with a small food boost.

- I would have placed the copper city on the hill NE of the rice. Plains hill (I think?) bonus hammer, and rice/copper/cows all in the first ring so no border pop needed. (Although you are Catherine and CRE, so that doesn't matter all that much.)

- Barbs can be a serious problem when you have a lot of open land like the desert and especially all that tundra/ice to your north and west. And it looks like the land sort of forms a funnel, with your cities right in the narrow part where all the barbs will come together. Not much to be done about it except build lots of military. Fog busting can help a bit, but with that much open space it would mostly just give you some early warning.

- Temujin is just an insanely aggressive warmonger. And with your barb troubles I expect your power rating was very low, and thus he felt you would be an easy target. The AIs are good at spotting weakness, and love to pile on when you are already in trouble. But Temujin is a ticking bomb anyway, and would almost certainly attack at some point unless you managed to get shared religion or favorite civic bonus to keep him happy.

[LexiSilva]

Yeah. I just found out about Polycast and watching their old episodes.
Makes me think that I shouldn't only play Civ at high difficulties or I will burn out... :/