SG1 - Anyone still want to get better at Civ4?

[The Reverend Doctor]

Hello again ladies and gentlemen. Let me tell you what happened during this turnset! (I played until turn 200 to get a nice round number)

Looking around the save a couple things spring to mind:
1. Wow, we have a lot of workers! Unfortunately I'll be adding no new cities for them to improve.
2. Wow, we have a lot of swordsmen! I'm not sure how useful they'll be, I imagine us attacking with elephants/hwachas/ maybe maces. But they're here, let's use them as hereditary rule happiness stat.
3. Our sentry net works well, only barb came from the city and did nothing but give one of our swords an extra promotion.

First two turns were spent microing cities to growth and teching polytheism.

Probably the most controversial part of what I did... the trades:
Gave Willem alphabet/currency for sailing/monotheism/monarchy
Gave Justinian alphabet currency for construction.

Both trades were at a beaker deficit, but I wanted OR/HR as soon as possible to grow grow grow with all our units sitting in the cities. Spent the next 3 turns in anarchy as I switch to OR/HR and adopt confuciansism.


A picture of that to break up the text.

For the last ten turns I built some missionaries so that all our cities are now or will soon be Confucian. I also had our bounty of workers road and cottage where it made sense to.

Speaking of workers, I thought I'd highlight the tiles around Border Control. Maybe we're getting too cottage happy here? I didn't undo it yet, but it might be beneficial to farm that tile east of the sheep. This city is already pretty stagnant and isn't exactly a commerce power house anyway.



Whipped a market in the capital before the anarchy so now it's set on farms and cottages to grow into its new happy cap of 17!

I researched Horseback Riding turning the turns for elephants. Research is set on code of laws (towards civil service?) next but no beakers have been put into it.

The southern silver city whipped a lighthouse that will complete when you hit enter and can start growing in earnest.

Border Control is set on a confucian missionary for the silver city.

Sealed Pigs and the capital are both building hwachas... figure we'll need plenty of those!

Copper is set on a war elephant, but that's basically a place holder if you'd like it changed.

For whoever is next: workers mostly need orders before you hit enter! Also, there is one missionary routed for the floodplains city, he will be there in two turns.

The tech situation:


Not bad! Although, as everyone has surely experienced before, Willem is somehow way ahead with only three cities. His production and power are very low though. Shouldn't be too long before we can take him out even with longbows in his cities.

The production chart:


The power chart:


Demographics:

Let's keep pushing that food, we have tons of happy to grow/whip into.

And lastly, a view of our continent:


On the getting better at CIV tip... let's talk about my tech trades. It can certainly be argued I lost out making uneven trades but not so uneven that we got relationship modifiers out of them. I generally will make such trades if it means getting civics/units quicker that I think I can leverage better than the AI. Discuss.

Also, too early to be building catapults? I think Willem's cities are better than most that we could expand to in our backyard... so maybe after the barb city is taken we should think about war before building more settlers? We should be able to beat Willem with pure numbers, we won't have a tech advantage.

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[The Reverend Doctor]

Oh yeah, Sareln is up.

[Sareln]

Got it. I would like more discussion on the stich before I play.

Initial thoughts are to go aggressive and create a ton of catapults/hwachas with double whips while researching towards code of laws, hopefully having an army ready for Whosit to use.

Justinian appears to have filled out the land between us. I'd feel more comfortable with another city around to shield our capital though in case Justinian gets antsy.

[Twinkletoes89]

Alphabet & Currency for Construction??? That's crazy! I personally would have kept Currency back from both of them if at all possible, but the Willem trade at least got us Mono & Sailing too.

Personally I would have gone for a Monotheism/Sailing for Alphabet deal with Justinian, and Monarchy for Alphabet & 50g with Willem. Then go back a bit later to Willem for Construction for Currency & see what else fits in & if Justinian then has something new we want. Don't worry, we all make errors (look at CC for mine! and the PBEMs). My main advice is this: Sink 1 turn of research at 0% on the tech they are willing to trade you and you normally get a much better deal. The Monarchy and 50 gold was for an equal tech in beaker cost which he wouldn't trade me until I had researched 1 turn of it. Keep the beaker level close and give them a much lesser advantage. Alphabet & Currency for Construction was too big an advantage to give away, especially to Justinian with his mass of cities suddenly becoming cheaper. Currency is much too valuable to give away like that.

Other than that, a good set.

I think we MUST start actively mobilizing to crush Willem. If we take his cities, there are shrines aplenty to be had and we need that gold boost badly. Those cities will fund our efforts to expand to the rest of our Western land. We should still have my spy on Willem's iron supply so if we keep that pillaged and use our Horse & Elephant advantage we should make a lot of headway!

I wouldn't worry too much at Justinian, I believe he will be at least Pleased with us for the shared religion and tech trades. Maybe set up a resource trade to get him up even
happier?

War has to be our focus now. Get one cities churning out a couple of spies and focus our EPs on Willem, if we can get the cities to revolt and remove their cultural defences, our conquest will be quicker and we will need less catapults!

[Twinkletoes89]

Also remember that we WILL have spies coming at us from both sides now they have Alphabet! Keep an eye out and if you are short on things to build, get some spies out for counter-espionage purposes if nothing else!

[The Reverend Doctor]

Alphabet & Currency for Construction??? That's crazy!

Heh. Luckily that was a bit of a typo.

Justinian was just currency for construction.

So note for Sareln, if it matters, Justinian still doesn't have alphabet.

Still an uneven beaker trade, but not quite as as I said!

[Twinkletoes89]

Heh. Luckily that was a bit of a typo.

Justinian was just currency for construction.

So note for Sareln, if it matters, Justinian still doesn't have alphabet.

Still an uneven beaker trade, but not quite as as I said!

Ah, well I can live with that (just). We need to sell him alphabet quick if we can and get something nice.

[Twinkletoes89]

Any news Sareln?

Building catapults seems to be what those who have posted want. Though I would like some more contributions, we need to keep moving!

[Sareln]

Any news Sareln?

Building catapults seems to be what those who have posted want. Though I would like some more contributions, we need to keep moving!

For what it's worth, I dreamed about playing the turns last night. Had a surprise homework assignment that ate the 3 hours set aside for CIV-ing yesterday. Should get to the game this afternoon (4 hours from time of posting).

[Sareln]

Do we want Horse Archers or War Elephants to go with those Hwachas? I assume HA's due to the extra mobility.