Overviews for myself, report will be in following posts.
Moved the cap over to be in range for coastal, doesn't seem to give up much for it.
Went Scout -> Scout, met 2 city states
Tech path Pottery -> Mining
Got a civics inspiration for the new continent.
Did some pre-lim planning of districts, found a barb camp.
City state quests: Jakarta -> Gold -> Build Campus; Kabul -> Unit Production -> Build Spearman
Place the settler overlay to see potential expansions. North seems strong, as does south. 3 different luxury types means we can support quite a lot of cities on this alone.
Turns 001 - 009
I decided to move one left as after moving the warrior I saw coast, and figured the harbor/commercial district opportunities for my cap would be good, and also there wasn't much loss it seemed moving. Also moved closer to the jade, which is improveable at mining instead of irrigation for tea and therefore a quicker first luxury. I wanted to do a scout -> scout build order to get out into the world and grab as many goody huts as possible, before inevitably having to swap over to slingers for barb control (cheap, 30G upgrade into the archer, can hide in the city for extra HP, etc.)
Turn: 001
Start Position:
Settle:
Techs:
Turn: 002
Continents:
Being on the split between two continents gave us the foreign trade boost, better for China since 60% instead of 50%. This is good, as it means I can research the boosted civic and take advantage of that since my worker/builder will be late as I focus on early game units.
Turn: 004
Barb Scout:
Barbs already here!
Turn: 005
Chase:
The scout hasn't touched my central city district yet, so I chase it with the warrior. If I can pin it between my city and the warrior, I can get the kill and not end up with extra barb spawns too early.
Turn: 006
Pins:
When I played CIV V and CIV IV at the same time in SP, I really badly missed the ability to place map annotations, these are okay and I'll be using them to mark barb encampments, potential city sites, and potential district sites.
Turn: 007
Scout and Chase:
The first scout pops out and heads south to see if there is a killer city site down there. The warrior also continue to chase the barb scout.
Turn: 008
CS Bonus Jakarta:
CS Bonus Kabul:
Meet CS Jakarta 1:
Meet CS Jakarta 2:
Meet CS Kabul:
Camp Spotted:
Micro 1:
Micro 2:
I met both Jakarta and Kabul, which is a welcome boost as I'm building units right now and the gold will give me enough income to consider buying my builder or extra tiles. There seems to be much more use for gold now and it also comes in vast quantities, so spend it if we've got it. I also set up the capital for maximum production, we can grow later, we need units now, as our scout has spotted a camp in the south with 2 silver. Between the jade, tea, and silver we can support 4 cities easily, and really in the early game probably many more (8) than that since cities have a hard time growing too tall before aqueducts.
Turn: 009
Overview:
Our turn 9 sees us continuing to try and pin barb scouts, while building units to deal with these nearby camps.
Turns 010 - 024
These next sets of turns, from 10 - 24 were about fending off the barbarian threat. I was pretty happy with the performance of my pair'd slinger builds, and I caught a lucky break when I was able to sacrifice my starting warrior to sack the camp after it had only spawned 2 horsemen and a horse archer. A scout did yeoman's work here too, mostly out of necessity with the loss of my warrior. Civics also played a key role, as +5 str vs. barbs is a +50% improvement for scouts, and a +33% improvement for slingers. I decided to not run +1 production, but instead god-king for the faith and gold, as I want to land a pantheon and later a religion. The bonus production from Kabul also means the +1 production from the civic is less of a deal (I'm building units so it gives me +2 Production and total cap production is in the 10 range).
We also meet our closest neighbor, Cleopatra, far to the north. I will want to prioritize settling towards her to grab the landbridge in order to access the land past Jakarta.
In this set of turns I got significantly more scouting done and used my military to keep beating down barb camps as they appeared. I was able to ride the wave of inspiration and eureka bonuses for a number of key techs and also speed my progress onto the next government type. I did have to hold the god-king policy longer than I wanted to b/c of wanting to land a pantheon, though the pantheon options didn't really have a good faith generator for me so it felt like a mistake. On the bright side, I've bought 2 workers so far, the scaling isn't so bad right now 200 -> 215 GP each and was able to use them to efficiently trigger inspirations & eurekas while also keeping production up. With the fortuitous boost to Early Empire from a goody hut, I was able to swap over to the settler policy (50% production bonus) and squeeze out what felt like an ultra fast 4T settler. Here scaling will hurt, as the next settler will take 6 turns, ouch.
Turn: 025
Purchase Rice Plot for Irrigation Eureaka:
Scout Promotion to Ranger:
Turn: 026
Builder Dividends:
Move to Clear South Camp:
Turn: 027
Scouting Egypt:
Turn: 028
Finish Archery:
Turn: 029
Start Writing Build Monument:
Attacking Camp 2:
Turn: 030
Clear Camp 2:
First Builder 3 production improvements for craftsmanship and clear forest:
Turn: 031
Start Early Empire:
Finish Craftsmanship:
Hold Civics Still Generating Pantheon:
Turn: 032
Egypt Lands Pantheon:
Turn: 033
Find Goody Hut Late:
Chop Monument:
Start Campus:
Writing In:
Realize Placement Wrong, swap holy site and campus (campus doesn't care about forests):
Turns 046 - 062
In this turn set I get out my first 2 expansions, both towards the Egyptians as it seems like I have a lot of territory in the backline, so If I can secure land up front past the landbridge to the rest of the continent I should be in pretty good shape. Taiyuan's location has got two nice 3-mountain adjacent spots for both a campus and a holy site, which I figured would be helpful. I also configured my civics for expansion (+30% builders, +50% settlers) and reached political philosophy and took the "economic" government to support that. Later research also lets me slot in the great-prophet point policy since the barbs are mostly suppressed at this point.
Turns 063 - 074
These turns see currency research complete for commercial districts, and me setting my tech towards apprenticeship for industrial districts. I'm leaving quite a few techs on the side as I push towards apprenticeship, but I've got the boost and I figure the earlier I get IND districts down, the sooner they'll pay for themselves. I also send some builder labor north to Guanzhou so that I can stand up my districts faster with chopping. It's a marginal location, but it captures 2 happy resources (Ivory, Marble) looks like its coastal, and secures the area against Egyptian settlement. I also finally get my first trader up, which I use to start the road construction to Guangzhou as the route is all rough terrain and needs a road badly. I also plan to settle a jungle city to the south, it won't be worth much until I get the aqueduct up, but I should be able to chop up a bunch of pop & production here with the Chinese-boosted builders.
I win a great-prophet and use it to found Confucianism with Zen Meditation (+1 amenity in cities with at least 2 specialty districts) and Meeting Houses (+3 Faith, +2 Prod building), which also brings theology in immediately.
At this point I've already mentally committed myself to space-race and so I start putting envoys into Seoul to boost research.
Turns 075 - 099
Not a lot happens on this turnset. Apprenticeship comes in and I set up my civics for full economics now that I've got the prophet. I build districts, I scout and find the rest of the players, I do some tentative dotmapping even though I still don't know what makes a decent city site yet. I also begin to discover with my scouts that Japan may have access to the lands I thought I've blocked Egypt from, I remember thinking that I needed to expand faster, but I still can't tear myself away from infrastructure builds to actually do it!
I also set the tech path towards universities, for more science. I send some envoys to Hong Kong, as they're the only production city state I've met and the extra boost to building would be nicer than any of the other city states right now.
Turns 100 - 124
Much like the 075 - 099 turnset these turns are pure tech + build. I don't really expand, though I do add Longxi to the east of my capital. I'm beginning to think here that for the space race the bottleneck might be on having suitable locations to build all 3 mars colony components in parallel, so the thought is to have the 3 core cities - Xi'an, Taiyuan, and Longxi build spaceports, with Xi'an also being responsible for the satellite and moon landing since I'll put Ruhr there, and then surround those cities with fillers that only have IND and COM districts for factory/power-plant bonuses and trade-routes, with the 3rd district, if they get that big, being entertainment to keep those 3 core cities at +10% from amenities as well.
Turns 125 - 149
Wonders start falling to AI players, though I'm able to land the Hanging Gardens and start the forbidden palace. Right now for wonders I basically value Ruhr for production, and then the policy card slot wonders, as those give a lot more flexibility and the cards are good enough that having extras means saying "Why not both" instead of "either or". I do make the transition to Merchant Republic and my civics are setup to maximize gold and production. Also this is the point where I really begin to see the Great Merchant, Great Scientist, and Great Engineers begin to come in, and I would continue to see new GP in each of those categories every 5 - 10 turns for the rest of the game. Some of them are really good, others are kind of lackluster and you take them to clear the way for the next great person of their type.
It is at this point also that I begin to nice that the AI settles in some rather odd spots, geo-politically speaking.
