PBEM5I Rematch: scooter's thread

[scooter]

Well in this game I'm going to go a different route. You see, the key to Future age is researching Future Tech. Future Tech gives a health + happy boost, so you can grow cities larger. Therefore, I’ll cottage tons until I get Future Tech 15 or so and then I’ll go ahead and farm everything to work specialists so that.........

Alright, that's 50 words for the mouseover . Time to get down to business.


Dazed vs scooter Take 2:



Time to take him out to the woodshed again. This time..... in the Future. First turn coming up [strike]eventually[/strike] shortly.

[scooter]

This first turn will be a bit picture heavy as compared to normal, as I'll introduce things as I go. Few quirks that I notice immediately about Future Age:

1) Start with satellites so you get to see the whole map.
2) Cities start at size 5 with several extra buildings. Settlers are even more expensive.
3) All techs except 2 are researched. The options are Fusion (Great Engineer) and the one that gives Stealth Bombers. I will ignore both of them.

Now, let's see my start:



So, I start with:

3 settlers
3 workers
2 explorers
3 Mechs

Hopefully that's right . I start on a plains hill with several nice resources, so I settle in place. Thought about starting on a work boat, then I laughed at myself and picked Fast Worker. And while I'm at it, let's have some fun and get myself a fast worker in one turn to start the game off with a bang:



Originally it said 3T build, so my first two workers took care of the corn and then my other fast worker chopped the forest. Of course, this only works in Serfdom. Speaking of which, my civic choices:



Looks (almost) the exact same as last game. UniSuff for rush buys, Bureaucracy for duh, Serfdom for fast improvements, Merc for free specialists until I have some watermills/workshops, and Paganism because what's the point of paying upkeep on a religious civic when religions don't pop for like 5-6 turns?

So now I need to settle cities. It's much different this time because I get to see literally everything right now instead of poking into the fog. The lesson learned from last game is that you pick your best spots for your starting settlers, because those extra settlers are freakin expensive and won't be around anytime soon! Also, rivers are king, because levees are awesome. So first, let's look at the north. I've marked with a sign the spot(s) where I'm sending my initial two settlers:



(note the grassland wheat - that's fun)

Errr, guess that means I'm going south:



I felt that these were the best two river sites available. It'll make for some slightly awkward placements for cities around these spots, but like I said, that's irrelevant in my opinion - place the best spots available. The Pig/Fur/Cow/floodplains/incense/gems spot seemed like the no-brainer city2. The Rice spot was difficult, as I nearly picked the cow/gold river spot up in the north. In the end I chose this because of more green tiles (read: workshops), as well as it being more efficient with workers because it kept my land closer together. Also, I think the south is probably more important here again.

One drawback to my approach is that I'll have just one coastal city for awhile. This is not wonderful because as we learned last game, the water is key on this map. I'll have just one city capable of building ships for quite awhile. I guess the optimistic side is I'll have just one city that needs to be defended from transports for awhile . Either way, I think I'm picking the strongest two sites. I'm curious what others think on this decision later.

One thing I'm thinking Dazed will do is go for the choke. He normally does, but last game was an anomaly of sorts. He's just better at it sometimes, so I need to watch out for that. I'm going to be putting a sentry up here early on:



I'll probably send an explorer up there and keep the mechs in the south... And if he sends a Mech up north, I'll respond accordingly. I'll do a mech sentry net in the south near the middle probably and/or I'll choke him with my mechs. Here's an overhead shot of the whole south as some of it was cut off in the last picture:



Another thing worth nothing is that we are now on a Duel size rather than Tiny. The difference is very noticeable, so I expect this game to be much more heated. I expect this game to be over in far fewer turns. This is another reason why the 3 city placements had to be great river sites. Finally, I'm kicking his butt in the demos as usual:



Never mind the fact that I went first this time.

Questions? Comments? Smart remarks?

[zakalwe]

Maybe move the western city one tile south?

[scooter]

Capital seems to be able to do worker/turn or something, although it's probably tilted by chop overflow:



You can see all the buildings that we get here. Nice to get a factory by default especially. Note that this was before worker turns... I had 2 workers mine the grass hill and swapped to working that, and the other two worked on watermilling the grass forest, which will finish next turn (and the chop hammers will of course make sure I get another 1T worker. Then I'll send some workers down to jump-start my other cities. Also, I'd like to address Zakalwe's comment:

Maybe move the western city one tile south?

I was really thinking about this last night, and I figured I'd sleep on it. I think I placed it on the plains spot because my default civ thinking is "try to avoid wasting a grassland and found on plains instead" but that's not really valid here. That makes for a less awkward dotmap... Though the much bigger issue is placement of a city north of this spot. Here's what I mean:



Plan b allows me to place a city on the plains port. This is advantageous for two reasons:

A) More land tiles. Water tiles are junk tiles
B) Only one water tile that can boat this city, so it can be defended by plopping ships on that "harbor"

Both of them are a big deal - B especially so.... So I'm pretty strongly leaning towards founding 1S. Next turn just came in so I'll decide in a few minutes I guess.

[scooter]

Next turn in. Settled a city:



Check out that amazing Aqueduct there! Good stuff. Inside:



1) Unhealth already. Annoying. Once I improve the pigs that'll change.
2) I'll buy the worker next turn even though it was available already. You get the 0-hammer penalty for rush-buying just like whipping right?

The goal there will be handle the pigs, watermill the floodplains, and workshop everything else. Except the gems, I'll mine those I guess. Tempting to workshop them too though and just get happy from culture slider.

My capital is generating a lot of hammers already to say the least:



111 hammers. Keep in mind that a worker is only like 36 hammers. I actually think this was a waste now that I think about it, because I can only overflow 36 total right? Eh, such is life I guess - I still need a worker. For perspective though, I could've built a 1T tank on T1 of the game! If I had oil hooked that is. Oil is going to be difficult - I'm going to need to pop the capitals borders out to a third ring really quickly to get my oil since I"m not settling for it. It's a risk but it should hopefully pay off.

[scooter]

Founded another city:



Rush bought a worker in city2 and will do the same here next turn. Realizing that tile improvements are pretty useless in the capital right now while I'm churning workers... Because I'm getting more hammers than I can handle every turn (overflow is actually capped at 1/2 the unit, so I'm wasting plenty of hammers every turn). Annoying.

[scooter]

Played the next turn. I rush bought a worker from city#2 at the 0-hammer penalty because it was down to a 2T worker anyways, so I might as well speed it up by one turn. This means that at EoT404, I have 11 workers:



So... After 5 turns (including the first turn) I produced 8 workers. I could've done 9 if I was just willing to bite the bullet for a 0-hammer buy before this turn. Fun stuff . Need to swap to some infrastructure and let myself grow. Also will use some culture slider soon to get borders popped - specifically need my capital's borders to get to ring3 ASAP. Demos look wonderful:



Slightly deceiving since I'm a half turn ahead of him, but it didn't make TOO big a difference - I was still ahead. I wonder how he's managing his workers.

[scooter]

T405 - overview of my land:



The southern military situation:



Sentry explorer is up north and no military have shown up in the north. I wonder if he held them back for military police?

[scooter]

406 in, and decided to build a Levee in my second city. Double chops allowed me to finish it in one turn which was very fun:



Also completed a workshop, so the city is off to a booming start:



I'm feeling that chops are more powerful in Future start than Modern because you start with Factories. That's my sense anyways. Decided to chop out the levee in the capital too:



That'll make a big impact. Also, my third cities is now capable of 1T workers as well (this will probably be my last worker for now), as tile improvements are catching up quite nicely over there too:



Still some catching up to do, but could be worse. I hit enter, and checked the demos for an example of how wonderful levees are:



Happy with that. His soldier count is better than mine, which is curious. Guess he built military? What military unit is worth only 1k soldier points though? Need to look this up.

[Cyneheard]

How to interpret the demographics information is here:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy...aphics.php