[SPOILERS] This Is Asgard! A Tale of Post-Ragnarok Midgard

[oledavy]

And the CoW vs Sullla/Speaker in PB 2. And that did earn them a ton of whining from Sullla. since they didn't succeed Sullla/Speaker later proved how right the action was by winning the game in a convincing way.

Good call, I didn't think of it. Though, moreso that the case I mentioned, this one was predicated on player skill rather than strictly geopolitical position (Which makes sense too, you should always be more concerned about the civ lead by Augustus Caeser than the one led by Dan Quayle).

[oledavy]

T-Hawk, why do you post in other people's threads, but not mine, even when I ask you a question?

Anyway.

Turn 19

Umm....well....not much happened.

A brute appeared southeast of Palenque, deciding for me where I was going to move my scout (Northeast to escape). I'm continuing to explore the foothills of the mountains (Need to come up with a snazzy Norse name for them). My warrior is still heading back to the cap, my worker completes is two turns. I hit the barb brute with my ranged attack again. Next turn I get to adopt a social policy (legalism) at least. I doubt I'll be finding any more ruins, only found three this game, two of them really crappy (barb camp locations and map of ocean).

So, I made you guys this snazzy map of where I want to settle.



The purple and red locations are my four core city locations. I've not decided in what order to settle them yet though. If I have a worker available, I'll settle marble first (four turns of transit). If I don't have labor available, I'll settle sugar first (three turns of transit). Just as a note in looking at the map, the southern city is on top of the sugar, and the easternmost one is on top of the citrus. No other luxuries are obscured by my markers.

The orange ones highlight three potential backfill locations.

The red squares are extremely crappy backfill spots, but settlable locations nonetheless.

The yellow one is a reach city for gems and silver which I may or may not settle depending on what Serdoa does.

Any questions?

End Turn.

[SadGit]

I guess my Q would be why would you ever settle sugar first?

I realise it gives you a headstart in claiming all that lovely dessert south of you cap. but which tiles will you work down there? A dessert stone? an uminp. cow? fish without workboats and lighthouse? When will that city start to contribute beyond the pop-science.
It is six roads away from the cap so traderoute wont be worth it before it hits around sixish pop. Stone adds a potential happy, but so does horse, working stone, 2fish and cow plus a spec or two isnt that hot as far as I recall. Sure there might be oil or metals in the sand, but thats far in the future.

Going marble gives you a shot of stealing the lux SE of Rios mountain or just buying it. It gives the same cow as the other city but the choise of horse instead or indeed the marble tile.

Do you expect neighbours south of you and want to block them off?

[SevenSpirits]

However, from their limited knowledge of the situation, I think it was the 'correct' move.

Hm, I guess I buy that.

[T-hawk]

T-Hawk, why do you post in other people's threads, but not mine, even when I ask you a question?

Oops. I think I saw the post right before running to a meeting at work, and forgot to come back to reply later.

T-Hawk, how does the tech discout work in Civ5? I know it discounts tech price, but by how much? And does meeting more than one civ that has researched the tech improve the discount?

I don't know the magnitude offhand. I think it's the same as Civ 4, N/30% for each of N civs, so yes on the last question. The F6 screen shows the current cost after discounts, although there's a bug that it only recalculates when the game is reloaded, though that's irrelevant in MP where you load every turn.

It does discount tech price as you say (rather than multiplying beakers as in Civ 4), meaning you get the full benefit of devaluation as soon as someone else discovers the tech, even if you discover it immediately after.

[oledavy]

I guess my Q would be why would you ever settle sugar first?

I realise it gives you a headstart in claiming all that lovely dessert south of you cap. but which tiles will you work down there? A dessert stone? an uminp. cow? fish without workboats and lighthouse? When will that city start to contribute beyond the pop-science.
It is six roads away from the cap so traderoute wont be worth it before it hits around sixish pop. Stone adds a potential happy, but so does horse, working stone, 2fish and cow plus a spec or two isnt that hot as far as I recall. Sure there might be oil or metals in the sand, but thats far in the future.

Going marble gives you a shot of stealing the lux SE of Rios mountain or just buying it. It gives the same cow as the other city but the choise of horse instead or indeed the marble tile.

Do you expect neighbours south of you and want to block them off?

The problem with Marble is that I need to get a worker over there to improve the marble, just to make it happiness neutral. Even if I have a worker available on the exact turn I settle the city, I will face a 3 turn (4 turn?) delay in getting happiness to allow me to grow it. Now I'm anticipating not facing this problem, and having both ivory and truffles improved by the time I settle it, thus allowing me to take the hit. However, if I get beset by barbs or attacked by Jowy (stranger things have happened), the sugar site is my back up. Happiness neutral settling on sugar, the city-center produces+ +1 gold, and I can work the cows and grow onto working a hill at size 2 for a quick start up to get some hammers coming in.

Barring a catastrophe though, I'm planning on settling marble first

I might actually move the sugar city one NW depending on what I find at the end of that peninsula, we'll see when my warrior gets down there.

[T-hawk]

Even if I have a worker available on the exact turn I settle the city, I will face a 3 turn (4 turn?) delay in getting happiness to allow me to grow it.

This delay is OK as long as you're not into negative happiness overall. Even at 0 happy, the food box still fills, and so the next citizen should grow just about as the plantation or quarry finishes. But it's a fine line, tipping over into negative happiness thanks to this one city will kill growth for them all, of course. Micromanaging this sort of thing is key to Civ 5 snowballing and what keeps me coming back to the game.

[oledavy]

Turn 23

So, been awhile since I updated. What's been going on?



I didn't think of it before this game, but barbs are a much bigger problem with the AI out of the picture.

You see, the AI starts out on Immortal (the difficulty that I usually play on and the difficulty this game is being played on) with 3 warriors and 2 archers iirc. During the early game, they clear many of the barb encampments. However, in MP everybody starts out with one warrior, and nobody really wants to dedicate significant efforts towards clearing camps very early on. So the barbs abound.

Here is the last updated map sent by my scout over in Serdoaland.



He was heading north, away from the barbs south of Serdoa's capital (a 2nd one popped up after I killed the first one), only to stumble right into range of a garrisoned barb encampment along with a 4th wandering brute. He met a bloody death.

Serdoa has some serious barb problems, with two camps very close to his capital.

Anyway, this is really really frustrating, as this significantly delays meeting the eastern civs and the remaining five city-states.

On the plus side though, at this point in PBEM 1, I had only met one CS and no civs at all, so I have made progress from there.

Anyway, back to barbs.

To the south, my warrior is working his way around a barb encampment to check out the peninsula before Jowy.



To the west, my scout has had to fortify to heal before pressing on westward to check out the lands west of Rio. Note the barb camp in the mountains blocking off access to a couple tiles (I'm hoping there are ruins back there).



That makes four barb camps total in my immediate area. One by Ragusa, one by Rio, one in the mountains, and one in the desert. Eventually, the City-States will begin issuing quests to pop them, and I can rake in tons of influence. Until that time, however, they're going to be a pain in the ass.

Meanwhile, south of my capital, some green-suited barbs appeared.



Jowy was kind and did not camp his warrior on the tile where he could threaten my worker, and force me to choose between trusting him and playing it safe. My worker is currently camping the truffles, leaving the forests on top because 1 hammer trumps 1 food at this capital (and in Civ5 in general).

Serdoa founded a pantheon:



A decent one, especially for a wide empire. I still think Fertility Rites would be better, 3 pop can take awhile to reach.

And my sad demos:



They're probably going to look a lot worse before they look any better, damn jungle.

The next challenge is going to be getting my two settlers (one being built and the other will be purchased) to their respective city-sites safely with only a warrior and scout. After that, I need to get the horses improved and a couple horsemen built. I should be in really good shape at that point. Pity Ragusa did not have its worker up when I passed through, it would have made things so much easier. Asgard will be building a library next, then a worker. My current worker will next improve the ivory, with my warrior coming back to cover him. My scout and warrior will then try to safely get my first settler to the horses, and my second to the sugar. Currently polishing off writing, then I'll be researching The Wheel -> Horseback Riding -> Calendar, though I might switch up the order a little bit depending on how things pan out. key thing with a tradition opening is to get your four cities out ASAP to capitalize on the policy benefits and begin growing - all the while avoiding negative happiness. I'm giving it my best here.



End Turn.

[oledavy]

Oye, 8 days without an update, a long time for me. Real life has just been crazy recently, between finals and lining up stuff for summer.

So, what's been going on? I've been playing a tactical movement game with the four barb brutes surrounding my capital, trying to protect my one improved tile, my worker, and to escort my settler south - all with a wounded warrior and red-lined scout.

Archer next, what's the point of building another worker if I can't even protect the tiles? Asgard finally reaches Size 4 next turn, and I'll have enough gold to buy my second settler outright in just a few more. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be the first out to three cities, my awful start non-withstanding. The excess of gold producing tiles has allowed me to accumulate money a lot faster than either of my neighbors. My capital is just under-sized and my production sucks.

On the plus side, it can only get better, but it has been a rough game so far between barbs and jungle.

[T-hawk]

That's actually pretty normal in Civ 5 in my (single-player) experience, three or four barbarian units approaching around this time. (And here you don't have AI free units spawnbusting for you.) At least two archers are pretty much mandatory by the time you start going anywhere beyond one settler.