[Spoilers] AW with highly promoted LB!! (Liz of North America)

[Commodore]

I guess I can't attach files? Guess I have to open a dropbox account...

What effect does aggressive AI have? Does it make raging barbarians rage more? Or is it no effect without AI in the game?

Dropbox is easy, quick, and very user-friendly, well worth getting.

The aggressive AI thing is how I made it challenging when running a quick test game, no effect on the game with all-humans.

[AutomatedTeller]

I can't get that marble until either the 4th or 5th expansion, which means I can't get it.

I might put a temporary city there, to use the marble to get wonders - if I can be sure that the raging barbs will take it. I have to explore.

I'll keep the archers right nearby and use the warrior to explore - I'll make sure an archer is within 2 of the city, if not in it. I'll move each unit onto the handy, nearby hill

I think my tech path will be mining/BW. I think I'll let my city grow to size 2 after the WB, so I can slave the worker, too.

After that, mysticism. I think I'll be way ahead of everyone for stonehenge. They can't research with me anyway, and none of them start with fishing anyway.

after that - wheel/hunting/AH/pottery in some order. Dunno if I'll go writing or religion after that - i want at least one religion, for happy, and would like 2, so I can super-expand my borders. And there are, conveniently, 2 religions on the way to monarchy.

And yes, Commodore - dropbox was very easy Is that too wide? Do I need to crop my shots some?

[AutomatedTeller]

some more things:



Culture expands at 5, 50, 250 and 2500. I ran a WB test and it seems I get the marble at 250, which is good (and means if I build Stongehenge, I'll have marble for HE/NE withoiut a problem)

So yeah - that's a priority. Plus, i'll get a prophet early, which i can use for a shrine in whatever religion I found, which will give that city a bigger culture boost.

[AutomatedTeller]

So, a problem with the stonehenge plan:

Maya starts with mysticism and mining. Which means that they start with 2 of the techs needed to build stonehenge quickly (mysticism to build it, mining to build mines and get to BW for chops)

I start with 0 of the techs needed.

They can get it by turn 25 or so, even if they go fishing and build a worker along the way. My sims got it to me by turn 28 or so, though I had a warrior, dog and another worker. Of course, i wasn't really working to optimize the mayans build, so they can probably get it earlier - certainly you can if you sacrifice forests and growth for it. I was doing it with whip overflow (from a dog) and a forest chop.

[AutomatedTeller]

Question for my lack of lurkers:

If I get stonehenge (which isn't a sure thing, but the failgold will be ok), I'll end up with a great prophet.

As I will definitely need hereditary rule to bring my happy cap up to my opponents, I'll almost certainly end up with at least 1 religion, maybe 2 (kind of hoping for 2, one for each other city, which will explode my culture, at least until I pick one), I will have a choice of bulbing, settling and shrining.

The question is: can one of my religions spread to one of my opponents in an always war game? if not, then shrining is probably a bad idea and settling/bulbing is right.

[Commodore]

Question for my lack of lurkers:

If I get stonehenge (which isn't a sure thing, but the failgold will be ok), I'll end up with a great prophet.

As I will definitely need hereditary rule to bring my happy cap up to my opponents, I'll almost certainly end up with at least 1 religion, maybe 2 (kind of hoping for 2, one for each other city, which will explode my culture, at least until I pick one), I will have a choice of bulbing, settling and shrining.

The question is: can one of my religions spread to one of my opponents in an always war game? if not, then shrining is probably a bad idea and settling/bulbing is right.

The only way to spread religion to an opponent in AW is to let them capture a city with the religion in it...which is even harder in the 3CC setup. Prophet bulbing can be strong for early Theology and the GP is a very nice settled spec as well.

[AutomatedTeller]

I've been trying to think of a three theme and finally picked the Celtics Big Three of the 80's (for those who aren't basketball fans, don't remember the 80's or aren't in the US and don't care, the Boston Celtics were a great team, lead by Larry Bird, Robert Parrish and Kevin McHale, among others)



This is Bird's Nest.

Not surprisingly, there is a lot of resources and it's one of each ivory, sheep, corn, gold, marble, in addtion to the wheat, cow, fur and crab in the cap.

Right now, it looks like the sheep and the corn are the two other spots - hard to lose the gold, but then, i don't really know what the land looks like all that well.

One thing I have to be careful of is not letting one of my archers get eaten by a bear, so I'll keep them to forest and hill tops and not far out of the city. And one will stay near.

I got stonehenge down to turn 24 or so in my sims by going all in on it and not picking up a worker, dog or switching to slavery, which should be ok. I don't expect to get choked or rushed anyway and the barbs won't be a problem for a little while. After that, of course, I'll hit the whip and overflow into settlers.

2 whipping dogs is tricky - a whip is 20 and a dog is 3, so I can't work ANYTHING with a hammer for the first turn or have any overflow. Will 2 whip a worker and let it overflow into a settler, then 2 whip the dog and let it overflow into a settler, then slow build a warrior and chop into a settler. I think.


And Serdoa STILL hasn't settled. Maybe he moved away and moved back?

[AutomatedTeller]

So, some thoughts on the map:

I am guessing it's either a ring or a flat, toroidal map. That's a pure guess - it could also be a flat map.

My guess is that I will find opponents to my NW, NE and SE and SW is just a mass of mountains - that's either the center on a ring map or a toroidal one (well, kind of a center) or it's a corner on a flat map.

I'll send the warrior NE along the hills. The NE archer will go along the hills to the corn, up the hill by the river and back home. The SE archer will follow the forests to the river, then up the hill next to the gold and then we'll see. Maybe bring him back, maybe more exploring

[AutomatedTeller]

more exploration. There's pig and silver south, as well as gold. Silver west. Nothing more found so far East.

Serdoa settled - he seems to be working the fur - someone seems to be, at least - someone has 1 more commerce, 1 more hammer and 1 fewer food than the others, at least. As no one is creative, they couldn't have popped borders already.



This is kind of an evil map - it looks like there are good spots NW, NE and S or SE... but we can only place 2 more cities!!

*sigh*

I have been thinking - I may not particularly need to go HR after all.

Maces cost 46 on quick. That's a size 9 or 10 city for 1 turn maces with HE, which should achievable with a few happy resources + a religion. So far, we have ivory, fur, gold and silver in easy reach, which should (I think) get us to size 9 (4 + 4 + religion) Wine gives us another (though we have to research monarchy to get that)

That presumes that maces will be good enough for conquering 3 opponents on quick. It's not clear to me that it is, of course.

[AutomatedTeller]

thanks to whoever changed my title

2nd turn today. It's a crappy day here in the Boston area (well, it's actually not bad for march, it's just that last week was nicer than most summer days here, so it seems terrible), so who knows? maybe we'll play several.

An eventful turn! Kind of. Mainly exploring. Got a borders expand, so now I'm working the fur, too.

Two things: Exploring archer south (renamed Ostrich1) found something interesting



Hard to see, but that's a border which I'm pretty sure is maya.

Add in this shot:



Note the wheat in that shot.

Makes me think that maya is to my SW (and maybe NE), Mongolia is to my W (maybe E, too) and china to my south. I say mongolia to my W, because they have apparently moved away from the wheat. The sheep was meant to be something to battle over, as is the pig to the south of me.

Or maybe not, i dunno.

I don't know that I want to move my archer further. They are a little closer than I expected, which means I could, potentially, get rushed, so I need to be able to pull back an archer. I'm safe now - if a warrior shows up, I can get an archer back faster than he can get to me. But if I move one closer, I could get beat back.

Have to be careful about that. Archer exploration is good - losing on turn 5 to a warrior when you have 2 CG3 archers is enough to get an award named after you.