Adventure 54 - Timski (Partial)

[timski]

I started too late to complete this, and wasn't originally intending to be scored, just play the unusual map. However I documented my thoughts and progress as I played, so there may be something useful here, even though I only just reached the AD-years:

http://www.capsu.org/civ4/adventure_54/

Summary of scoring, such as it is:

• Fastest to research Machinery: Turn 116 (25 AD)
  
• Fastest to build any world wonder other than Stonehenge/Oracle: Colossus, Turn 86 (725 BC)
  
• Most population by 1 AD: 44
  
• Fastest to produce 88 beakers per turn: Turn 92 (575 BC)

[T-hawk]

Nice writeup, especially the pregame analysis. Everything you wrote there was spot on. Nice calls on roads before settlers, the sugar mine (in a general sense, giving a Calendar resource a wrong improvement early is almost always worthwhile, like farming sugar on a normal map), and settling towards Catherine.

With a Metal Casting hut pop, I would've screamed towards Oracle-Machinery as fast as possible. But worker labor for the windmills would have been a serious constraint too. As you said, it's hard to tell how early Machinery is actually helpful and how early to prioritize windmills.

"Hill Valley" didn't refer to anything on the map, just came to mind as a catchy reference with "hill" in it. LKendter was also looking for a hidden valley to find, but sorry there wasn't any.

[Lewwyn]

Agree with the interesting dissection timski.

The thing about Machinery is that the windmills are just okay as improvements early on. Even after I got Machinery I was still building some mines just because they were useful. Now later on I converted every mine to a windmill but that was later on.

Also I actually never intentionally worked a Scientist in the early game because I was more focused on simply out producing everyone. I needed the pop to build military but also to build wealth.

[timski]

Oracling Machinery would have been an excellent, if risky strategy: The Wonder was built in 900BC (predictable, given the speed at which the early religions fell), which would have given about 40 turns to tech up to Priesthood and get the Wonder built. That's a lot of eggs in one basket, since if the Oracle was lost, we'd have largely wasted those research turns. Still, should have at least been considered. For future reference, when I find myself thinking "would like to be able to reload here and try some options", I should translate that into, "let's sleep on it, because there are options here as yet unseen!"

I shall read the other reports later, although I did notice that you built a lot more mines, Lewwyn. I found that intriguing, given that the one thing that wasn't in short supply on the map were hammers. My assumption that mines still add +2 "something", which is a decent early game numeric bonus on the output of each citizen, while mid-game building wealth/research was almost as good as working under-developed Cottages... or Windmills. Was also pleased to see you biting the bullet and putting down a crap coastal city in the northern tundra, just to chop out a few Wonders. I pondered that briefly, and thought better of it, being of the opinion that bad second cities slow everything else down too much, so I'm glad to see that worked out for you.