Adv 19: Antoninus discovers steel and cannons

[Antoninus]

This was a great concept!

For the free technology, I decided on Steel, for both the cannons and the ironclads.
I mainly chose this for the fun factor. I’m not very good at warmongering. I can barely win a conquest game
at Prince level, and only if I have a smallish map, so I figured this would force me into warring with my neighbors.
It really helped me learn quite a bit about this aspect of the game.

But my first mistake came during my pregame thinking. (This is a record for me, I usually don’t make mistakes
until the game starts.) Ironclads, first off, require steam power to run them, and secondly need coal
as a resource. But Mau was not so lucky to have been granted those items at the beginning of the game.
So, what a noob move. I wouldn’t be able to build ironclads until the usual point in my game!

Oh well. I do have to discover iron before I can use the cannons, so I initially beelined to iron working.
Since I already have agriculture and mining, my worker will have plenty to do in the meantime.
I moved one square north (which may have been my second mistake) in order to get both the cows and
the corn in my FC. I get a measly 35 gold from the villagers on that square. But this cost me a turn to do it.
On Monarch, I can’t be giving up turns like this.

I decide to go worker first, since he can build both farms and mines. Might as well get those started.

But then I noticed that my lake tiles are not producing any gold. Oh yea, I haven’t researched fishing yet!
I decide to switch to that, in order to work the gold tiles and perhaps speed up my research to iron working.

In 3520 BC my one and only warrior is killed by the hostile villagers. Hmm. Rethinking that worker first idea
about now.

Copper discovered in Bejing. Nice. I tried building cannons out of copper, but the metal was too soft
and couldn’t withstand the heat. I’ll have to find some iron somewhere.
Of course, as luck would have it,
iron is nowhere to be seen, at least not within the territory that I’ve uncovered so far.
Losing that first warrior cripples one’s scouting efforts, ya know what I mean?

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men. Steel not looking like such a hot idea about now …

I stayed with the worker, then built another warrior, a settler, and another worker.

Discovered all the floodplains to the southwest. Since my capital wasn’t necessarily set up for cottage
spamming, I decided to make my second city my financial center, and cottage all the floodplains,
while using my capital for producing units and buildings. The functions of my first two cities are usually
reversed, so this should prove interesting.

Here are my two cities in 2160 BC:



Aha! Iron!



Looks like my first war will be against the Incans. They have my iron (to the south of my capital).
At this point I decide to build Axemen, at the expense of anything else, until that city falls, and iron is mine.

Wow. In 750 BC, just before declaring war on Hyuana I discover this in Bejing!



Iron!! This is huge! Bejing now has both iron and copper.



No war with the Incas, just to get access to iron. My finger was literally hovering over the “war” button
when this iron source was popped. I can now build a few more cities, and start a few cannons for later fun.

My first cannon, in 350 BC!



Cool.

I’ve now added two additional cities up north, so in 25 BC, here is what I have.



My neighbors have settled in close to me on all sides now, so I was forced to expand up north,
rather than east or west. Its getting crowded around here. I better make sure I have a few cannons
for the inevitable declaration of war.

On the religious front, pretty interesting: Confusionism and Budhism spread to me on the same turn.
I chose to go Budhist, because once I did, 5 of the 7 civilizations were now budhists! That’s huge,
hopefully my friends of the faith won’t try to conquer me any time soon.

Toku became my first target. Since most of us were budhists, Toku was the only hindu worshipper in my game.
Took 4 or 5 cities from him, mainly with cannons. This is fun.

Then a similar war against the Incans. I took the Incan city with the original iron:




After taking a few cities I made peace in 1440 AD. Here's what I looked like then:



Now that my second war was over, I needed this time to build up my economy and incorporate the new cities into my civ.

I built up until the 16th century, when I went after Montezuma, who had been leading the entire game.
Time to knock down the king a bit, pull him back towards the rest of us.

I didn’t do any exploring on my own, so I was surprised when I traded maps with someone and noticed
there was an entire hemisphere which had not been developed by anyone except the barbarians.

Two cities taken from Monty. First, Texcoco:



And Teotihuacan:



I’ve surprised even myself, because by the 1700’s I had moved from last to first. And since I picked
on the score leader, Montezuma had fallen to 5th out of 7. So I made peace, getting a technology
from him to boot.

I think that some of the RB players could easily have won this thing via conquest or domination
with the cannons. But for me, I’m too far from either goal, but I’m happy because I used the extra
technology to help me progress and become the leader in score.

I built the Taj Mahal in 1765, which may have been my first wonder. That’s good for me, because I
usually get wonder-struck and build too many of them (or at least try).

The end game was typical for me though: If I concentrate on building units, I fall behind in tech. So pretty soon
my cannons are trying to soften up Rifles, then Infantry. It happened here too. I knew that pretty soon the
others would discover Steel, and then its “bye bye cannon advantage” for me. Sure enough, remember how I
captured Teotihuacan from Monty? Well, here’s Teotihuacan being retaken by Monty with his brand
new shiny Infantry.



Notice Monty has Sam Infantry too.

And Macao, on the same turn, with his Calvary:



I didn’t have an answer for my neighbors’ military technology, so I slowly lost city after city.

I survived until the year 2050, but lost, being third in score behind Monty and Saladin.

This was a great game, and a fun concept. And although I learned a lot about the military aspect of the game,
I still have to find that sweet spot where I balance my production between producing a war machine and
keeping up tech wise with my neighbors.

Time loss.

[KMad]

"I decide to go worker first, since he can build both farms and mines. Might as well get those started."

i love how the farm and mine look in the 2160 BC screenshot. i hadn't noticed in other reports.

"I didn’t do any exploring on my own, so I was surprised when I traded maps with someone and noticed there was an entire hemisphere which had not been developed by anyone except the barbarians."

that was a big DOH in my own pregame thinking phase. some people based their tech choice on the fact that the map was terra, i didn't see it, and didn't even check F8 until i started meeting so many civs so fast. silly us!

"I survived until the year 2050, but lost, being third in score behind Monty and Saladin."

you made it through until the end, on a higher difficulty than you're used to, and a very different map and size! learned a lot in the process, including learning about what areas you need to improve on still, and had fun. what do the firaxis numbers know anyway . KMad scoring, for what it's worth, gives you a "Grats !!!"

[Antoninus]

Thanks for the kind giggles, KMad.

[meatbalz]

I moved one square north (which may have been my second mistake) in order to get both the cows and
the corn in my FC. I get a measly 35 gold from the villagers on that square. But this cost me a turn to do it.
On Monarch, I can’t be giving up turns like this.

I hope some of the more experienced members of the forums will back me up on this, but moving your Settler to get the cows in play from the start was, in my opinion, 100% the right way to go. I would say that, as your settler move was identical to mine 8)

[Kodii]

I took the same initial move, but I revolted to State Property in that time. I think anyone would be tempted to move 1N if the didn't know there was cattle to the south

[darrelljs]

The pop of the century ! It looks like you enjoyed the game...but to followup on the advantage provided by the muse you needed to blast your opponents into itty bitty pieces .

I hope some of the more experienced members of the forums will back me up on this, but moving your Settler to get the cows in play from the start was, in my opinion, 100% the right way to go.

I think grabbing the Cows is the right move, the question is N or NW? This was a multi-part question, in effect. From what you could see on the screen, N looks best, but if you use your Warrior to scout things out prior to settling, you'll probably want to go NW for better spacing with the Marble city.

Darrell