SG4-Immortality Scares Me

[scooter]

How many turns am I supposed to be playing? I'll take a look at the save now.

[scooter]

Also, as for places to put the 3rd city.... There aren't many good ones at all. I'm honestly at a loss as to where to place one... Unless we want to slap down a fish city on that side east of out capital (kinda meh), otherwise we have tundra to our northwest and a barren desert to our southwest.

[luddite]

NW might be best, to hook up the silver. Or down south, for a fish city.

but yeah, despite our phenomenal start, this is definitely a tricky map. Hard to expand, and also isolated.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I haven't played much Immortal. Is two silver worth being tundra trapped for a third city?

I am thinking we might want to get some scouting boats up to see if we can settle some superior lands.

EDIT: We are now on 10 turns.

[scooter]

Okay I'm going to play the turn now. Since this is Big and Small, I really, really fear that we have landed an isolated start on the "small" islands... The Big one is one giant continent, and this is far too snaky to be it... So we're definitely probably isolated... So a bunch of immortal AIs cruising on a bunch of land tiles with us etching out a civ on some snaky islands is pretty bleak for us. Let's hope I'm wrong and the land to the south leads to something. I'm also surprised by the total lack of food (especially seafood) down in the south jungle.

[T-hawk]

So we're definitely probably isolated... So a bunch of immortal AIs cruising on a bunch of land tiles with us etching out a civ on some snaky islands is pretty bleak for us.

Sounds like a great setup for a culture victory ?

[Cyneheard]

Especially with the capital being a crazy Great Person farm.

[Thoth]

So we're definitely probably isolated... So a bunch of immortal AIs cruising on a bunch of land tiles with us etching out a civ on some snaky islands is pretty bleak for us.

You do have a few things working in your favour here:

1) multiple offshore islands for intercontinental trade routes
2) If the AIs are all in contact there should be plenty of opportunity for them to form multiple religious blocks and go to war with each other.
3) Isolation means you can skimp on military until the AIs are close to Astronomy.
4) lots of uncontested land (even if most of it does suck) to support lots of cities for drafting purposes. With 4 offshore cities + GLH + Currency all of your cities will have 4 trade routes worth at least 2c each. Combine with cheap libraries + a great GP farm and you'll have a solid conventional research plus fast GSs to bulb up towards Liberalism (Astronomy is looking like a good Lib target atm).

From there you can launch an invasion of the mainland and go for dom/conquest or simply secure enough land to go to space.

[luddite]

taking astronomy with a GS bulb or liberalism would seem to be solid play here.

[scooter]

T40: Took a look around. Now that we've hit T40, we need to be ready for barbs (even sooner than that honestly), so fogbusting is important. I moved our NW warrior up onto the forest hill to finish healing, because if a barb suddenly spawns up there and heads for our new city, then we're pretty toast. Also began chopping a forest for our new settler.

T41: Moved southern warriors, pressed enter

T42: Great wall was BIADL. Complete chop and whip of settler in capital to overflow into the Great Lighthouse.

T43: Masonry came in, swap to pottery. Settler complete from capital. Begin Great Lighthouse in capital - there was 48H of overflow into it. Begin chopping forest 1W of the capital.

Southern warrior attacked by barb warrior:



He wins. Promoted to woodsman 1, heal for 1 turns.

I've been keeping one of our warriors fogbusting in the south. Hopefully nothing spawns in those two tiles of fog, but this minimizes the chance of barb spawnings. Hopefully we can continue to do this to defend ourselves rather than have to build real defense in our cities:



Err... spoke too soon about those two tiles:



I took a risk and moved my warrior onto flat ground, hoping to keep the barb from headed straight to our empty cities:



Unfortunately we lost the warrior next turn . I took a risk there, so I'm sorry about that. The warrior didn't promote though, and didn't make a beeline for our capital either, so it seems to be working out okay.

T44: I whipped work boat in our 2nd city:



T45: I dumped WB overflow into a worker:



and I'll swap to a warrior next turn.

T46: I founded our new city and started on a work boat. I placed it here so it would 1) be able to share the wheat and 2) be able to have fish and silver to work. This city will mostly suck, but we'll have to make do.

T49: Pottery came in. Chose Animal Husbandry next.

Couple things to note at the end of the turn:
1. The capital has grown into unhappiness due to whip + being empty. SSall is building a warrior now. I adjusted the tiles to make it complete sooner.
2. The barb warrior showed up in our view on T49 (1.2/2 health, no promo), but then he disappeared and went south again.
3. I waited on quarrying the marble. Quarry actually reduces the hammers by 1 (increases commerce) so I figured I would leave it be until the Lighthouse is completed