Adventure 48 - Chauncey's deerly beloved

[chaunceymo]

What happens when a city has 15 deer tiles? Stay tuned to find out!

[Bruindane]

What happens when a city has 15 deer tiles? Stay tuned to find out!

It has lots of trees. Might there also be parades of elephants and a colony of beavers?

[chaunceymo]

This is the first Adventure I'm participating in and man, it's an odd one.

I know that given the settings (OCC, normal speed) the game is going to be a relative breeze to play. I plan on spending as much, maybe even more, total time planning than playing. Because of the victory condition and setup, in my opinion we are essentially being handed a game of solitaire. Interaction with the other civs will still be there, but ultimately success or failure will depend almost entirely on coming up with a good gameplan and terrain layout that assists that plan.

Looking at Sitting Bull and the Native Americans (Philosophical and zilch else in terms of economic advantages), it seems obvious that a specialist economy is going to be the way to go.

So, a specialist economy towards a space race in a OCC. That gives me a pretty clear path: grow as fast as our happy/health caps allow, beelining the world/national wonders/techs that constitute huge leaps forward in economy: Pyramids for Representation is a practically required, no idea what I'll do if I miss it, Great Library is almost as important for the early GS and academy, CS for Bureaucracy (possibly with the help of an Oracle slingshot, though I doubt it as that's taking a back seat to the Pyramids and GL), Heroic Epic for the GP boost, Oxford U, Biology for the National Park, and finally Environmentalism to add the +2 trade to preserves.

This brings me to tiles. I'm glad we don't have to worry about late game resources. We'd be spending most of the game getting nothing extra out of the tiles if we had to put them in our BFC. We need lots and lots of food, but flood plains are right out as health is going to be a massive issue. We also want forests on as many tiles as we can, initially for the health and later for the National Park boost. That, combined with the thematic appropriateness for Native Americans, seems to dictate grassland forests with Deer on every tile we can. We can Camp them early for massive food bonuses, then switch to preserves later, losing two food but gaining a free spec (offsetting the lost food), and gaining THREE commerce, two from Environmentalism plus the river bonus. Tiles that are effectively 5/2/3 are very nice.

Besides the deer we just want to maximize food, so each of the agriculture food resources will go a long way to doing that, along with giving us a nice early health boost. Stone and marble are necessary for the early wonders since we don't have Industrious. Forest on the marble but not on the stone as we'll want to quarry that pre-BW for the pyramids. Iron on the city square for the +hammer, early military and the Ironworks.

Here's what I ended up with:

[chaunceymo]

Deerfield (cough) was founded in 4000 BC.

I'll cut to the chase at this point: I played this game very half-assedly. I think the idea was sound, although from looking at other threads here not especially optimal (considered lake fish or grassland gold mines, didn't fully grasp how much better they were than the deer for the vast majority of the game).

Short version (long version to go up when I have the time): I lose to Hannibal, who somehow became an utter runaway on the other continent, by 10 turns in the space race, finishing my last SS part the same turn his landed.

Just took way too long to get my economy in gear, didn't get an academy built until turn 350 AD (built Oracle before Library/GL, kept not getting scientists despite high odds), didn't get preserves built fast enough once I had the tech, and got distracted when I saw how well Hannibal was doing and didn't beeline Medicine for the commerce boost. Any of these things happening just a little earlier would've been enough to win.

While I score no points, it was a great learning experience. I've never really been a power player at Civ4, beating Emperor pretty easily but having trouble against Immortal, and going back and replaying this with the same start but better MM was a great way to pick up a lot of good habits.

Thanks for hosting, T-Hawk, look forward to the next one!

[T-hawk]

in my opinion we are essentially being handed a game of solitaire.

That's exactly what the scoring system was designed to avert, to some extent. We do play solitaire-like games on occasion (Holiday Surprise, Speed Racer) and an OCC naturally tilts that way.

Yeah I saw the thread title and was wondering why in the world anyone would take deer over a bigger food resource. The camp being compatible with a forest is nice, but the 5-1-x early can also be reached by a simple plains corn/wheat. But I like the approach of the forest preserves, that's very original.

Forest on the marble but not on the stone as we'll want to quarry that pre-BW for the pyramids. Iron on the city square for the +hammer, early military and the Ironworks.

Just to pick a nit, switching the stone and iron was probably better. Then the stone gives the +1 city center hammer on turn 0 instead of at Iron Working; you will mine the iron later instead of the stone earlier when worker turns are scarce; and iron adds 1 more hammer to the actual tile.

Thanks for the report. I'm surprised at how many players reported that even losing this game was an enjoyable experience...!