Dave Taste Tests Some Russian Wines

[oledavy]

Turn 8

This turn will be an exception to the 1 picture, few sentences rule I've been trying to follow. In short, some things have happened, and I now have a pretty good idea where I want to go with this game. Everything from here on out will be fulfilling some variation of this plan.

So, first off, my neighbor did not take the ruins south of Kuala Lumpur. I moved on, and found, a map!



Maps are always pretty eh, but this was more valuable than most.



There are a couple things to break down here.

My move revealed Pindicator's upgraded spearman. Seems Rome is my second immediate neighbor (and I doubt I have any more immediate neighbors). That's....not ideal. Pindicator seems to be playing this game a little unethusiastically, but Rome is tough. I also moved closer to them by settling where I did.

So, my neighbors both have early UUs and Civs that encourage empire-building warfare. Both are really likely to go liberty to maximize their UAs. So, I already was pretty set on going tradition, now I'm very set. Chumchu did a very good job balancing this map for tradition vs. liberty, I have to say. The capitals are pretty good for tradition, but so far my scouting has revealed a definite lack of really good other city sites and a lot of luxuries. I don't mean to say there are no good tradition expands, just no great ones.

But, since I am bordered by two militaristic civs that will certainly be going wide, I will go tall. I'd rather they fight each other than try to expand at my expense, although I expect I will be attacked by one of them eventually. I will not put myself in between them if I can help it. Besides, I still have an inkling that tradition will prove better for me just because of my capital city location. If I had gone coastal, I would be going liberty. However, Chardonnay will benefit a lot from tradition.

So, tradition it is! Sooner rather than later if I can get some culture ruins....

With that in mind, here are my planned settles so far:



2nd City to the northwest for furs, truffles, and horses seems like the best choice for a second expand so far. And it's coastal, which is essential for what I want to do later. I think I can buy a tile in the second ring next to the horses, and the city will prioritize the horses. Gotta make that UA work!

3rd city will be my border plant. It will go somewhere to the west/southwest and will be on a hill. It will pick up gold and more riverside. This will be the city where I hold off Pindicator and Ichabod. Exactly where will depend on what scouting reveals. I don't think I really want to settle further into the continent than that. There doesn't seem to be anything terribly awesome there, so far anyway. I may change my mind on this depending on what I find. Still, I would rather have 1 well-placed border city to defend. I just really don't want to give either of them easy access to Chardonnay, which is on flat land and next to a river which will make it hard to reinforce from the north.

4th city will go either to the northeast on the coast or east of Kuala Lumpur on the coast, whichever ends up being a better city location.

After this it will be time for National College

So yeah, those will be my four tradition cities, barring any incredible discoveries.

The map revealed 2 ruins and a barb camp, with the barb camp and ruins right next to each other to the east. The big question will be next turn, do I try to defog towards Pin's capital and try to nab ruins from there, or just head straight east and take the easy one. I'll make my decision based on what Pin's spearman does. No though, it seems dyes are his resource, as that dye on the coast is undoubtedly mirrored by my wines. I don't know if he settled on the coast or inland, but I think our capitals are about 12 tiles apart based on the location of Kuala Lumpur. Not crammed by any stretch, but close. About enough room for us to each settle a city towards each other.

All the more reason to have a defensible border.

The other thing revealed by the map was an offshore island with furs to the south of Pin. I have little doubt there are more like this around the continent(s?). Seems naval play will be a thing. A copy of a resource already existing on the mainland is not a great incentive, but I imagine Chumchu placed better stuff out there. We'll see, but I will definitely be cranking out a trireme or two to see what's near me.

So, this game, to win, I plan to rely on a huge research capital, and a self-founded religion. Wines and incense are among the better calendar resources because of Goddess of festivals, and I think the wines tentatively put me in the best place to get second religion, after Ethiopia (well, excluding Stonehenge builder). This is another moment where going second in the turn order may prove to be really awesome. But no, four wines plus my initial shrine, will give me +5 faith per turn, enough to get me to a religion in decent time (if I don't loose Goddess of Festivals to the incense holder [god forbid it's Nic]).

I want to try Piety this time, because I've never done it before, and it looks fun. Furthermore, in a game where people will be struggling with faith generation, I imagine it will be stronger than normal

So, strengths I intend to utilize to secure a win:

1. Early production advantage
2. Huge research capital
3. Self-founded religion
4. Cossacks

Hopefully the sum of the four of them will be enough to clinch a tech advantage and win as we move into the industrial age. Of course, this will all be moot if I get overrun by a neighbor, but I don't intend to let that happen. So, in sum, Dave's detailed plan:

1. Take Tradition
2. Take Goddess of Festivals
3. Found 4 Cities
4. Take Piety
5. Found Religion
6. Build Hanging Gardens (with forest chops!)
7. Explore islands
8. Build NC
9. Don't die to neighbor
10. Conquer Kuala Lumpur (Close by, hostile, and good land)
11. Expand to 6th/7th cities on islands if I find anything worthwhile
12. Build research advantage/save faith for GS's
13. Fight people with Cossacks?
14. ???
15. Win

So yeah, for the immediate future, I'm going to try and keep my head down less I piss off one of my neighbors.

So, with all that out of the way, let's finally talk about the other stuff from the turn.

Scout revealed no ruins to the northeast Heading south to find out what's east of Kuala Lumpur. I'm betting ocean, but also maybe a ruin or two.



To the east, Ichabod stole the march on a ruin near my capital. No way I can beat him to it That's irritating. However, with Pindicator's warrior to the south, I'm just going to cede the area immedietly to the southeast of my capital. I imagine there might be one more ruin in that fogged area, possibly by the barb camp. However, I can't beat Ichabod to it. Instead, I'm going to send my warrior southwest and explore the area between Pin and Ichabod, maybe explore Ichabod's capital, and try to meet anyone to their west before coming home.

I'm still not sure if this is a Pangaea or two continents at the moment, but I suspect the latter just because it is easier to balance (everyone has two neighbors and people on the edges like me don't have an advantage). We'll see though. If there is a city-state between Ichabod and Pin, that will confirm the theory in my mind. If there isn't, then the continent probably continues westward. I would find it hard to believe there is a player to my southeast, but I suppose that is also an (unlikely) possibility. Still loving the map Chumchu

Can anyone tell me why pottery has been discounted to 22 beakers for me? I thought it was only 1 beaker per other person who has researched it? I've only met the two of them, unless CS's count.

Demogs indicate Pindicator has 3 pop, and is working lots of dyes. I lead the world in production I love that I called the horse location, although it has led me into a curious cause and effect decision making process:

1. Russia is best
2. Okay, I want to place Russia next to horses, I think horses are on the river
3. Okay, I'm on the river and its a good site for a tradition capital, guess I better go tradition!

My civ choice made my settling choice made my SP choice.

Okay, last thing. Chardonnay grows next turn. This is the part where I remember that production focus is a thing (such a weird bug). This is awesome though, because I get extra hammers to work with where I was having to alternate tiles to produce a monument in 4 turns. I think I made a mistake though.

I worked: deer (2/1), horse (2/2) and set production focus which I hope will go on the wines (1/1/2), but might just go on a plains (1/1)

The net product (not including city center and palace and assuming wines) is 4/4/2

However, if I had worked the bananas (3/0), deer (2/1) and set production focus to pick up the horse (2/2) I would have gotten (5/3/0).

Okay, I didn't screw up! Production > food, well, to a point. Loving the extra hammers at this point from the horses - going to try to get bronze working soonish to capitalize on my advantage further.

Anyway, that's my plan boys and girls. Any questions, concerns?

Been writing this for an hour now....okay, time to wrap this up and edit.

End Turn.

[picklepikkl]

I know basically nothing about Civ 5*, but I'm incredibly charmed by your Photobucket username being numismatist. Do you have any particularly cool coins in your collection?

*Production > Food? What sort of crazy game is this?!?

[oledavy]

I know basically nothing about Civ 5*, but I'm incredibly charmed by your Photobucket username being numismatist. Do you have any particularly cool coins in your collection?

*Production > Food? What sort of crazy game is this?!?

Little more than a relic at this point, although I still use numismatist or a variation on it for a lot of my usernames.

I collected coins from ages 10-18. When I was younger I used to go to a farmer's market and sell hand-cranked ice cream. The profits, I would spend every year at the local coin show. My favorite pieces I ever had were an 1875 VG 20-Cent Piece, my collection of Standing Liberty Quarters, and my books of Morgan Dollars (cliche for an American coin collector, I know). I also always really liked grabbing unique pieces with a bit of history to them (1909 V.D.B. Lincoln Cent, The 1917 bare-chested Standing Liberty Quarter, 1856 Eagle Cent, etc). I always wanted to get a hobo nickel but could never find one I liked and could afford.

That was a trip down memory lane. Anyway, when I went to college, I sold my coin collection to help pay for tuition. I actually wound up making some really good inadvertent investment purchases over the years, as I had bought all my silver coins when the market for silver was low. I at one point bought a 1 oz gold bullion coin when gold was $500 an oz. and sold it 3 years later when gold had ballooned to $1,300 (How I afforded a laptop for college right there).

Anyway, was a fun hobby, I needed the money when I got out of it, but I have definitely considered getting back into it since, and might still yet

Story of my life aside, yes, I don't know what the exact conversion is, but my sense of Civ5 is without the whip and with reduced hammers all over the map (plus lots of ways to get food into a city [CS's, trade routes, etc]), production tiles are better to work than food (as long as you're not completely shutting off growth. T-Hawk is a better person to talk about this than I however.

[T-hawk]

Production vs food isn't a hard and fast rule, it can go either way for diferent cities at different times. There's actually more to think about there than in Civ 4 where max food is pretty much always correct except at the happy limit or gamey situations around granaries or whips. (Civ 4's tradeoff is really production vs commerce, which doesn't happen at all in Civ 5.)

The production focus growing onto a hammer tile isn't a bug. Civ 3 and SMAC at least worked that way too. It's a natural consequence of processing food then hammers. Civ 4 actually took deliberate effort to have that not happen. Civ 5's production focus is smart enough to pick a 1-1-2 over a 1-1-0.

[chumchu]

Tech discount = 1 / (1+(0.3*number of known players that have discovered the tech/number of players alive))

[oledavy]

Civ 5's production focus is smart enough to pick a 1-1-2 over a 1-1-0.

Would not have guessed that it was intentional, thanks for the explanation T-Hawk!

And yes, so it was Yay for two more gold.

Tech discount = 1 / (1+(0.3*number of known players that have discovered the tech/number of players alive))

Likewise, thanks!

Turn 9

Have to say, the area to the southwest between all three of us is looking pretty decent. Not overpoweringly so, but nice. Again, great map design from everything I've seen so far Chumchu.



I don't think I will make a plant in the center of the map, too risky. But 1 SW of the southwest wines looks like a great city location (2 gold, wines, bananas, riverside), and even without knowing the rest of the tiles, probably the best second city site available, especially for a tradition empire. Although the northwest one has horses....so idk. There could still be awesome stuff in the fog down there too, but I'm just operating now on what I see and the knowledge that some of those tiles will be riverside. The other dilemma with settling there would be that I don't think there's a hill on the river, so it wouldn't be as defensible as a front city should be. I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised whenever I defog it and find a riverside hill. If I don't...well, then we'll have the debate of better riverside city vs. defensive but shittier hill plant.



Ichabod is already two policies deep into liberty. Doing quick back of the envelope math, I don't think he could manage that without two culture ruins (unless he built a monument first, perhaps) Here I am just hoping for just one by comparison. This means he's probably really close to getting a settler out. It's annoying he got so lucky and is going to have a hell of a start because of it, but not much I can really do but keep on keeping on.

I'm going to ask everyone in the organizing thread in a little bit, but since everyone has a generally mirrored start from what I can see, I would love it if everyone could document some aspects of their opening in one post for comparison after the game.

- Where they settled
- First 3-5 builds
- Opening Social Policy Tree
- How many ruins they popped/what the results were

This will need to wait until everyone is done popping ruins, of course.

At the moment I've popped three and got a pop (on t2, yay), 60 gold (allowed me to buy tiles and snowball my start) and a decentish map. The first two were well-timed, but on the whole, really average hut results. I haven't gotten a barb camp locations one yet on the plus side, but what I really want is faith/culture/technology, in approximately that order. Here's hoping hut #4 has one of those.

I'm expecting to land a total of 2-3 more huts before the exploration phase is over, here's hoping I get some awesome results.

[chumchu]

The praise and the global lurker knowledge is really nice.

[oledavy]

Turn 10



More scouting to the west. I would like to go south, but the swamps are blocking that. I am also fielding the competing need to bring my warrior back to guard my worker. I would also kinda like to bully Kuala Lumpur at some point...but am almost positive 1 warrior is not enough to do that.

On that note, can anyone point me to a really good breakdown of how demanding tribute works? My cursory research has not given me any really good explanation of it.

What's of note here is that river and the lake. It looks mirrored. I think the rivers for Ichabod, Pindicator and I all originate in the center (the mountain). With that in mind, I'm going to follow the river up to Ichabod's capital, then head back to Chardonnay. Seeing his scout so the south makes it unlikely I will get any ruins by going down there, so I might as well find his capital. At the moment, I'm guessing two three-man continents, but it could be two interlocking 3 player sets. I just find the former more likely because of the issue of balancing the number of neighbors.

My southern scout will find Pindicator's capital and the presumed city-state between Pindicator and Ichabod.

Speaking of:



The ruins has a population. Not great, but solid, and it helps me in my objective to getting Chardonnay to size 8 as soon as possible, but culture/faith/technology would have been nicer.

Monument completes this turn, so I'll take the tradition opener in 3 and the 2nd policy 4 turns after that.

Build path: Shrine -> Worker -> Settler. Shrine will complete EOT 13. I imagine I'll get the 2nd-4th pantheon, so Goddess of Festivals will come in between turns 18-24.

I grow to Size 5 in 9 turns, which is just enough time to build a shrine and worker, then stagnate to build a settler. I may buy some extra hills into the city to more efficiently build the settler, but we'll see what tile acquisition prefers. At EOT this turn I finally got my first naturally acquired tile (the stone).

Started researching mining. I need calendar next for the worker to improve the wines, but I have four turns to spare, just enough to finish mining in the meantime. I'm thinking my opponent's will prioritize calendar since it seems that at least Pindicator (and I assume all) started with a calendar resource (dyes). Hopefully this means with my delay I can draft off them.

Finally, Nic (I presume) founded his pantheon. The only other way I can think of for HAK or Yuris to have gotten a religion before him is a combination of religious city state + pop pottery + first build shrine, which seems unlikely. Actually, I'm betting Chumchu didn't put any religious CS's near our starts, as that would be really unbalancing. He took the +1 culture from pastures, so I guess Nic didn't have incense

Dodged a bullet there. I'm not really sure about that pantheon choice. I think I would have just picked God-King, given that there's not a ton of pasture resources around and it takes so long to get going. But eh, different strokes and all that.

[oledavy]

Turn 11

Found cotton to the west, we're near Ichabod's capital, but still no ancient ruins to the southeast

Then there was this:



Basically the most inconvenient place to spawn.

On the plus side, I forgot production applies before culture, so I will get the tradition opener next turn instead of two turns from now

I checked the two city states to see what tribute options look like, and I am tantalizingly close to being able to bully gold out of them. I think two more units around each city would do it. On a related note Ichabod (unless Pindicator's scout has wandered really far) has pledged to protect Wellington. Next turn, my negative influence wears off Kuala Lumpur. I'm debating pledging to protect it. Since there is a barb camp so close it will almost undoubtedly put a quest on it at some point, and I can clear it at any point by buying the tile.

T-Hawk, what's the first turn faith ruins are available on quick speed? Is it t20 or t13?

[T-hawk]

On that note, can anyone point me to a really good breakdown of how demanding tribute works? My cursory research has not given me any really good explanation of it.

I was looking for the same thing and haven't found it. The "overall military strength" is your relative ranking by the demographics, +75 means you're first. "Military near city-state" is supposed to count units within 8 tiles, but there's a lot of weirdness here, where depending on the CS's strength only some units count (warriors and archers often won't), and it often appears that farther units can still count and closer units may not.

T-Hawk, what's the first turn faith ruins are available on quick speed? Is it t20 or t13?

I don't know if that adjusts for game speed. I've only played on normal where it's t20. I do know that the quantity of gold from ruins does not modify for game speed.