SG4-Immortality Scares Me

[Gold Ergo Sum]

What I thought was interesting was that all 3 starts were clams + corn + river + lots of forests. Kinda bizarre and absurdly lucky.

I didn't even think about the rivers or forests.

If that Hatty start was Mansa for the financial coasts, I think we would have this thing in the bag already.

[luddite]

You know, we could potentially split the 1NE clam into another (very close) city... Because fish + wet corn + 1 clams is plenty enough for the capital. If that's do-able, then we could just roll with the 5 food, because yes, we may need all the help we can get. If we end up powering to a win, then we could play another SG with slightly more challenging circumstances.

My preferred strategy for dealing with mega-seafood capitals, after the initial land grab is over, move the palace to another city and use it as a gpp farm. For a gpp farm city, you can never have too much food. But you're right, we might want to also share the NE clam with another city for a while.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

This is that plains/tundra tile magnified.

[Nakor]

Can't a guy get some sleep in here? Just away for a few hours and the posts explode....

Nice maps again, GES!
I agree on Hatty.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

We will start with a two hammer plant it looks like.

OK, so if we are going with Hatty of India, the starting techs are Mysticism and Mining. I see four potential options for starting research:

1) Agriculture--Wet corn. If we go this route, we definitely start worker.

2) Fishing--Four seafood. If we go this route, do we start warrior, grow, and switch to WB?

3) BW--We start with mining, will have tons of food for whipping, tons of forests for chopping, and spiritual for a free revolt into slavery. Definitely start worker with this path. Also, FWs are very good at chopping since they don't lose a turn moving into a forest.

4) Meditation/Poly--We could try to snag an early religion. If so, would we work a coastal tile to try to speed it up by a turn?

Since we are India, the fast workers make any of the tech paths that involve a worker start more appealing.


Also, how do we want to do turns:

1) 20/15/15/10 . . .

2) 15/15/10 . . .

If we end up at war and the turns are taking forever to report on, we can also switch to 5 turn trade-offs temporarily.

Anybody particularly interested in starting us off? Otherwise, I guess I will do it.


Luddite briefly told me he thinks we are best off expanding to six good cities, rushing to draft an army, and then going to war. Care to elaborate on long term strategies for winning this thing?

[luddite]

We will start with a two hammer plant it looks like.

OK, so if we are going with Hatty of India, the starting techs are Mysticism and Mining. I see four potential options for starting research:

1) Agriculture--Wet corn. If we go this route, we definitely start worker.

2) Fishing--Four seafood. If we go this route, do we start warrior, grow, and switch to WB?

3) BW--We start with mining, will have tons of food for whipping, tons of forests for chopping, and spiritual for a free revolt into slavery. Definitely start worker with this path. Also, FWs are very good at chopping since they don't lose a turn moving into a forest.

4) Meditation/Poly--We could try to snag an early religion. If so, would we work a coastal tile to try to speed it up by a turn?

Since we are India, the fast workers make any of the tech paths that involve a worker start more appealing.


Also, how do we want to do turns:

1) 20/15/15/10 . . .

2) 15/15/10 . . .

If we end up at war and the turns are taking forever to report on, we can also switch to 5 turn trade-offs temporarily.

Anybody particularly interested in starting us off? Otherwise, I guess I will do it.


Luddite briefly told me he thinks we are best off expanding to six good cities, rushing to draft an army, and then going to war. Care to elaborate on long term strategies for winning this thing?

I would suggest the first tech option- agriculture first. Wet corn is just so tempting. Also we'd lose time since we don't start with fishing, and there's no coastal fish. Then we could transition into bronze working, and then fishing. For build order, perhaps worker/worker/work boat.

For turns, 20/15/15/10 sounds good. And 10 turns for all the rest, unless we're at war or someone just doesn't want to finish.

by the way- this is standard size right? On standard size, 6 cities is the minimum that you need to unlock national epics, especially the allmighty oxford university. I like getting about 6-8 cities, and then teching very quickly towards renaissance military techs. Drafting rifles/muskets is one option, but cannons, or cuirassier/cavalry also work well. If you get any of those while the AI is stuck in the medieval period, you can steamroll them. But we'll just have to play it by ear.

[Ichabod]

Are you sure the corn is wet on the Hatty start? It seems to me that you have coast on the SW tile...

[Square Leg]

Are you sure the corn is wet on the Hatty start? It seems to me that you have coast on the SW tile...

Yeah - I agree - the river certainly doesn't make it wet since there isn't any commerce available from the tile yield.

[T-hawk]

Ichabod and SL are correct, that corn is not irrigated from the river. The tile does not show river commerce. In game you can prove it just by mousing over to see that it doesn't say Fresh Water (if it does, then there must be a lake or oasis in the fog.)

[Thoth]

We will start with a two hammer plant it looks like.

OK, so if we are going with Hatty of India, the starting techs are Mysticism and Mining. I see four potential options for starting research:

1) Agriculture--Wet corn. If we go this route, we definitely start worker.

2) Fishing--Four seafood. If we go this route, do we start warrior, grow, and switch to WB?

3) BW--We start with mining, will have tons of food for whipping, tons of forests for chopping, and spiritual for a free revolt into slavery. Definitely start worker with this path. Also, FWs are very good at chopping since they don't lose a turn moving into a forest.

4) Meditation/Poly--We could try to snag an early religion. If so, would we work a coastal tile to try to speed it up by a turn?

Since we are India, the fast workers make any of the tech paths that involve a worker start more appealing.



Luddite briefly told me he thinks we are best off expanding to six good cities, rushing to draft an army, and then going to war. Care to elaborate on long term strategies for winning this thing?

Don't try and found an early religion on Immortal. Let the AI found the religions and spend the hammers to convert you. You can conquer the holy city later.

I'd suggest worker first, warrior until Fishing, WB (x1), 3-4 warriors then Settler before a second WB.
Teching Ag/Fishing/bronze/wheel and then either pottery or AH depending on resources. As a Creative leader you'll want Writing early, possibly before pottery.
Once the corn is farmed, the worker can mine the marble for a 5h tile. You'll probably have a few idle worker turns after that but that's not the end of the world.

If you have a close neighbour you may want to consider an axapult war early, otherwise bulbing towards Chemistry with the aim of getting Steel from Lib for a musket/cannon beatdown works quite well and is do-able circa 11-1200 ad. Cuirs/Cavalry also work but Cavalry require a lot more beakers than a simple musket/cannon slugfest.

From there you should have enough land to win via Space or you can simply continue beating on the AI for a domination/conquest win.

Are you sure the corn is wet on the Hatty start? It seems to me that you have coast on the SW tile...

Looks to me like there is a lot of coast and not much land. With the number of forests in the capital, a run at the GLH should be doable. Techpath: Ag/Fishing/bronze/sailing/masonry

Marble in the capital is awesome. 1/2 price on the GL (in the capital), Parthenon (somewhere other than the capital), both Epics and MoM.

With the lack of rivers cottages are junk compared to mass scientist specialists and bulbing (Philosophy, Education, PP, Chemistry, SciMeth--->early Biology).

This cap will be an awesome GP farm (9 specialists at size 14). If you keep the 3 plains forests this will be a good spot for a NE/NP city. I would be inclined to try and keep the forest tile 1S of the capital and leave the 3 grassland tiles unimproved until Biology. You'll have pretty good odds of getting at least one forest regrowth before then (especially once the remaining forests get preserves on them). 4 bonus specialists in your GP farm makes for a very nice mid/late game Great Merchant/Great Spy farm.