[SPOILERS] Ceiliazul's First Dance: Louis of the Ottomen

[Commodore]

Whoa. I think that officially you need about one billion more settlers. Good plan going for WB-to-settler and BW, you need to be whipping and chopping out settlers and workers like they're going out of style. Never too early to plan for the Pyramids, either.

[Ceiliazul]

That's the reason for the unorthodox opening... the land is just too good!

With the Eastern wheat and clams, I'm a little nervous about not having explored that way. If the land that direction is equally good, well, I have no idea what I'd do about it. Gotta keep cities relatively near to each other, and I'm pretty focused on the West for the near future... the East may get neglected for a while.

[Ceiliazul]

whipping and chopping out settlers and workers like they're going out of style.

Settlers are, in fact, doomed to go out of style. I expect this cramped map will largely fill up before the AD years. It'll be very tense for a while...

[Commodore]

'ey Sanca, you ded man?

[Ceiliazul]

'ey Sanca, you ded man?

no, just nothing to report. Catwalk's thread is hopping, but i have no idea what they're talking about. In game, 2 turns of scouting has me standing on the desert hill with nothing of additional interest in sight.

i havent been idle though, my sims are yielding game-changing results. Details at 11. ;-)

[Ceiliazul]

'ey Sanca, you ded man?

FYI, I lol'd at the reference. kind of embarassing, I was in the car with the boss.

[Ceiliazul]

My Sim (RED for reduced confusion):



The Capital will build workboat on t17, settler on t21. Before the settler is built, a site must be prepared:

Lower Green: triple food resource, but too much labor to get started. Just connecting a trade route is 4 roads on rough terrain. The deer aren't accessible enough for my lonely worker to fix up.

Middle Green: triple food, if you count the pig. The pig is actually powerful in my sims, allowing cool things by swapping between 2 (or 3) cities.

Upper Green: possible paradise, but gotta scout next turn. Known fresh water, that's as good sign.

Eastern Yellow: A great site, but not where we're going for city 2. We'll look East soon enough, no doubt.

Currently the middle dot is the front runner, but depends on the discoveries next turn.

[Ceiliazul]

Using the amazing tool that Novice described in the newbie thread, I created the sim with accurate conditions. My civ is RED in the sim from now on, in hopes of reducing confusion, both for readers and myself.

After some casual sims, an urgent observation:

Maintenance is beyond insane! In my sims, I expanded out to the 3 green dots asap, and here's my expenses:



-10 civic upkeep
-6 number of cities maint
-16 distance maintenance!

GAH! Research is a bit behind schedule there Ottomania.

Each city (except capital) is costing ~7 gold in maintenance. These are first ring cities at size 3! Ye Gods...

This is practically a variant, and will change the game dramatically. Economic stagnation is a real threat, no REXing allowed. Tech pace will be quite a bit slower than I expected with this lush land, at least until our core matures.

Now, it's not all bad. For one thing, this will likely limit the early warring. No one can keep far-flung cities, and just supplying an army will take bites out of the ol' tech rate. I hope that's a benefit for my Ottomen, who are not geared for early war. We're actually better prepared for vertical growth.

The horses site takes precedence, for early economy. And thank the seven Spirits for that gold!

I see expansion to 4 cities quickly, and stopping there until math/CoL are complete. The Oracle may be able to help with that last part...

[Commodore]

Whoa, that is practically variant play if that's accurate. So I take it you're currently thinking of Oracle - CoL? Decent play, especially if Confucianism has yet to fall. OR will be a painful increase to costs, though, careful about crashing the economy.

I take it you're considering Upper then Middle? The gold is a big boost, but be careful, consider shifting around the dotmap if there's no food available, as you don't want your second city to stagnate. I suppose early masonry and maths is a good play for vertical growth. Get a ton of cottages down! Every riverside tile that can be working towards those towns should, ASAP. Which is why I'd be cautious about Upper Green, again, farming over a couple flood plains would suck.

Your dismissal of Yellow frightens and confuses me, a fine third site if you can't make it second. What's even scarier, though, is the little green alien fellow staring at me in the upper left of that economy screen.

[novice]

REXing