OK, I will prepare a big map and strategy overview next turn. Why then? Next turn I find out if I have GLH or not and I'm not bothering to think about tech timings in detail before I know, because it will have a huge impact on them.
First, here's a full-res stitch of the whole visible map, from before I ended turn on t60. Marked-up / smaller versions will follow.
Map of territory:
The orange lines demarcate the box of land that's closer to me than anyone else. The four corners of the box are all points that are equidistant to four players and on the other side of the world from the fifth - I've labeled them according to this fifth player. The other four points are midpoints between my capital and one opponent's capital.
I've noted my current cities in black, with founding order indicated. Possible future sites are denoted by the red circles.
Let me talk about naval control for a moment, because I believe it is very influential on this map. There are 3 seas per player. The one to each players WNW and ESE is more easily controllable from its NW coast because there are aggressive hills you can plant on (see scooter's city which is culturally controlling the island between us). But taking it for lost would give up too much, so I believe this sea will be contested.
The sea to each player's north (and, to a lesser extent, to each player's east) should IMO be a slam dunk for the player to the south of it. I may not even have to guard my 3 island cities there with more than token garrisons. I do have one city on my coast of dazed's sea, but it has no need to work water tiles and I just plan to put a strong garrison in it. In general, due to how easy it is for a single player to control it, I believe the coastal tiles by this sea belong to the sea owner by default.
The sea to each player's NE / SW is trickiest - you can't build boats on it. For the player to the sea's SW, they can make a canal to "their" big sea. The other player can, with more effort, make a canal to "their" contested sea. Therefore I believe control of this sea will favor the player to the sea's SW (i.e. I am the owner of the sea to my NE), but only by a bit. I also believe this sea will sea less and later boat action due to the higher barrier to entry.
When placing coastal cities, I am trying to settle on hills wherever possible, because the only way to defend amphibiously is with defenders. I'm also trying to easily enable the necessary canals to exert influence into all the seas I border.
Side note: the last city I settled was the one in the south. Why that one? Well, I want to extend myself a bit farther south before Pindicator claims our whole border, and it's a stepping stone. And also, I really want to get a settler to that island towards Dazed, so I have 4 island cities. This city does both those things.
Map of workers:
I figure this will provide a decent idea of current economic priorities. Improving resources is obviously most important, and other than that they are doing a healthy mix of roading, chopping (mostly for specific goals, but recently and soon also just because there are forests to chop), a bit of mining, and cottaging the capital. I am also about to start cottaging other cities.
I've circled some of the workers. First of all, the uncircled workers are obviously just improving new cities. In the center of the map, we have a few workers returning to the capital area to add more cottages, solidify the road network, and begin to improve the 2nd and 3rd city. In the northwest there are two workers on the island, currently both chopping. One of them is accelerating the island city's settler and granary. The other one is clearing the tile where that settler is going to settle (also on the island, of course). It's worth 10h plus it accelerates the city a turn, and it's a critical island city which will have immediate positive GNP impact from trade routes. To the east there are the three workers who just finished chopping out the great lighthouse. Three cheers for those guys! Next they will add a few cottages there, before moving back south.
Awesome update! I especially liked the demarcation map and the seas discussion-inetersting stuff.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
So scooter just finished the Colossus, which is pretty great for him. The remaining major wonder that people have the tech for already is The Hanging Gardens. If no one claims it by the time I have stone, I might try for it, but that seems unlikely. Here's my read of the global situation:
Scooter
FIN + Colossus will make for good teching. He is behind me though. I'm worried about bordering him on that one sea where he has an advantage, because a) he is Vikings, and b) he has access to triremes already, and c) he has extensive vision of the area while I have almost none. I hope to get an archer onto the island to at least help a little in that respect. But I don't know if it will be worth the hammers. One nice thing is he doesn't have any Trading Posts in his two cities on that sea yet, so I'm not worried about 3-move galleys. But since he just finished the Colossus in the more developed of the two, I assume that will change imminently.
Pindicator
He's got Pyramids + Stonehenge + Organized Judaism and he's pretty good. On the other hand he's AGG/SPI which do not help him in expansion at all, and with a specialist economy I think he'll have trouble expanding in the near term. I don't really have to deal with him as a neighbor until later.
Yuri
He oracled feudalism and has another great artist ready for something. So I'm worried about him in the way that you worry about an erratic neighbor who's jumped an era in military and is producing great artists for unknown reasons. (I've been assuming a golden age for this one, btw, maybe once CS is in range?) But economically, I don't see him as a threat right now. GNP is quite low.
Dazed
Also a very low GNP. He has ORG+FIN which I wanted, but maybe what I got was actually better: one economy trait + one expansion trait. I think he botched the opening, starting with picking an agriculture civ. Also he hasn't updated his thread in forever. So I'm not worried about him.
Other than Metal Casting, early religious stuff, and Monarchy/Feudalism, no one has any techs I lack. Which means no one has Aesthetics. I've been thinking to go up the Aesthetics line, for four reasons:
1) Shwedagon Paya
2) Great Library
3) Epics
4) Music
If I decide to do this, I will have to figure out where to build those wonders. I don't have any large concentrations of chops left. The advantage of this plan is that it plus civil service is all I need to kick off my golden age civic swap stuff.
Other relevant techs are:
* Metal Casting, largely for defense against scooter.
* Civil Service, for the obvious reason plus a few food from irrigation spreads.
... and that's IT! With archers and praets available plus some already-built chariots, I feel like my army will be current for a while yet. (Btw I guess I should mention that after CoL, I researched Archery, Mysticism, Meditation, for archers and monasteries (and later, Paya), and have been saving gold for two turns now.)
So I will probably go up Aesthetics next. But I haven't done the calculations yet. It will be easier next turn when I can adjust my slider with GLH in.
I appear to be getting about 75b/t, and have another ~150b in stored gold. I believe this will be going up slightly, so I'll say 80/t with 2t saved, though this may be low (or high!). Tech costs (all in raw beakers, i.e. divided typically by 1.2, and all approximate):
Suppose I go for them in that order. Remembering to chop 2 turns off the front, that means I'll have my artist in 10t and CS 8t after that. So this would indicate starting a golden age 11-19 turns from now. I will want Shwedagon Paya by the time I reach CS, so let's say a soft deadline of 16 turns from now assuming no golden age production. I will have the gold resource hooked in 3t, so I will get Aesthetics the turn before and start Paya... where? I need 150 hammers in 13 turns or less...
My first thought is the capital, which currently gets 11h/t and has 2.8 forests to spare, but I quickly decided against it for one reason: it wants to be pumping out missionaries for the foreseeable future (it's building my first monastery right now, of course). Second thought is Trading Post (my second city, which built MoM). TP can easily get 15h/t, is in a safe inland location, is already working dutifully on a grab-bag great person courtesy of MoM's artist points, and doesn't have anything else it needs to do. Menagerie is my only other inland city and it's doing the whole military pump thing, so that wouldn't do. As much as culture on a border would be nice, I think it's crazy to build valuable wonders on the coast if you don't have to. So Paya in Trading Post it is.
Next order of business: Religion. How much spread am I going to accomplish within ~16 turns, and what benefit (other than happy) do I want out of it, anyway? There are basically two valid answers for this golden age: pacifism for crazy gpp, or organized religion for incredible infrastructure. I believe the latter is correct. I don't think my empire is ready to do the whole mass GP thing just yet. And I want forges everywhere. This, by the way, is a decent supporting argument to wait to trigger the golden age until CS is in - I'll also want Metal Casting ASAP after it starts.
Third thing: How about those Epics and the Great Library? I expect to get Literature in as soon as 4t, remember. Check out the map: I see Scrying Pool, to the west of my capital as my National Epic city, and Menagerie, to my capital's east, as my Heroic Epic city. Heroic Epic is obviously on hold until I have a qualifying unit, so I'll forget about that for now. Ideally I would like the Great Library in the same city as the NE.
Scrying Pool, while it COULD produce as much as 20h/t, currently has only one mine (the prebuilt 4h copper mine). And it only has 2 forests, plus one third ring forest (16h) it could steal from a future city if really necessary. It has 6 pop, is growing about 1 pop every turn, and plans to whip off 4 pop to produce the market + library. Supposing there's also 1t of delay in growing, that means that in 4t it will still be 5 pop but will then grow 1 size every turn potentially up to size 9. I need 117 hammers from the GL. Let's see, I'll whip off an extra pop into the library so we only need 100 more. 40 from forests leaves 60. 10h/t average should be doable, so I get GL 10t from now. National Epic after that at 84 base hammers will take maybe 6t more. To get this I need all three grass mines, plus the two forests chopped, which comes to 17 worker turns. This all has to be done within 10t so I need 2 workers, one starting immediately and another 3t later. I only have one available so I will need to get another one somehow. I think I need to whip yet another worker in Hunting Party as it's the only nearby size 2+ city I didn't just assign a big task list to, heh.
Fourth: settlers. I want to settle those two island cities ASAP, especially the one towards Dazed which may be contested. I was planning to get the settler for that from Trading Post, but now it's building Paya so it cant. Hm. I think I can afford to put Menagerie on hold with the military for a brief moment, as I'm pretty far ahead. That will arrive in time for the galley's departure. The other island settler can come from Treasure Map (GLH city).
Huh. What you just saw happen is me deciding to go for everything. Usually I have to cut something.
Plan is underway! I figured out the next few turns for Scrying Pool and it works out with 20h overflow into the Great Library. Tech rate is more like 80/t instead of the 75 I was guessing, so that's nice. And it's going to increase even more with my 3 additional island cities being settled soon.
One troublesome thing (see NW of previous pics) is the city that Scooter recently settled on "my" sea. As soon as I've gotten my 3rd settler onto the island, I'm sending my galley up north to get vision on the city tile and prevent any exploratory galley invasions. I hope he is far enough away from wanting to annoy me with triremes that I can get all the fluffy stuff before metal casting and still be ok.
![[Image: p39t60rawoverview.jpg]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1116194/pbem23pics/p39t60rawoverview.jpg)
![[Image: p39t60territory.jpg]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1116194/pbem23pics/p39t60territory.jpg)
![[Image: p39t60workers.jpg]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1116194/pbem23pics/p39t60workers.jpg)
