Civilization 4 succession game: WAR!

[happyturtle]

I've done a few of these succession games in the past, and though the world has moved on to Civ V, my computer, alas, really can't handle the requirements.

So who is up for a Civ 4 succession game? Each player runs a set number of turns before passing the save game off to the next person, and writing up a narration of events. Recruitment finished!

The theme is WAR and the human player must win by conquest. The AI can win by any method.

Possible variations:

1. Our people come from an area sheltered by the mountains with only a single mountain pass allowing access to the outside world. When we finally discover what lies outside, we have but one idea: This has GOT to go!

(One City Challenge, Always War, with a worldbuilder'd map to create the sheltered city with lots of resources. The AI will send stack after stack of units at the pass, creating massively promoted veterans. Eventually when we break out, every city we take is automatically razed since we can't keep it. If we win, we rule an entire world - that we've destroyed and depopulated. :smalleek:)

2. The Golden Horde sweeps over the known world with its armies of Keshik horse archers, conquering all in their path. Living for the saddle and the open sky, the reality of empire management is a necessary evil. War is a virtue in itself.

3. Early rush (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/earlyrush.php) with a Civilization with an early unique unit (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/uniqueunit.php): Native American Dog Soldiers, Incan Quechas, Persian Immortals, Zulu Impis, Roman Praetorians... the goal of this game is to be fast and get those units out to take nearest capitals while they're still lightly defended.

4. Any other war-based theme. Speak up with your ideas, whether you're a participant or spectator!

1

Anyone interested? You have to own a copy of Civ 4: Beyond the Sword, but all skill levels are welcome. In fact, succession games are a great way to hone your skills. :smallsmile: It's limited to 5 players, and each player will have 3 days to finish their turn. If RL gets in the way, you can request a pass or swap with another player.

Players:
1. Happyturtle
2. Murska
3. Terraoblivion
4. The Final Stand
5. Winthur

[Terraoblivion]

I'd be up for it and of these themes I'd say go for the Golden Horde, sweep the soft, settled people off the plains and let them tremble in fear of the khan!

[Murska]

I'll play. An interesting possibility for a theme would be the Great Powers - let us develop ourselves with a pre-arranged handicap of some sort (such as artificially keeping our Power too low) until either Riflemen or Infantry without being allowed to take any cities from enemy civilizations, then declare war on everyone at once and defeat them in a modern-era blitzkrieg. It might be either too easy or too difficult depending on our difficulty level though, as I wouldn't want us to be ahead in technology when the war begins (at least by much) but if we're too weak we won't even reach that era. Also it'd create a pretty long build-up phase without much interesting action.

I just like modern era warfare. :P

[The_Final_Stand]

I'm utterly terrible at war where I don't have overwhelming firepower and technological superiority, and am fairly terrible even when I do, particularly in Civ 4, so it goes without saying that I'd like to be signed up for this.

[Eldariel]

Huh. I wonder if Winthur would play. I might be interested too, but for now I'll just take the bench slot and only play if there are less than 5 applicants; last we did these I was dreadfully boring so I'd rather take lessons in storytelling :smallwink:

[Winthur]

Huh. I wonder if Winthur would play.

Yes, would he? :smallsmile:
(The answer is yes)

[happyturtle]

Cool! That's five players then.

Okay, one vote for Genghis Khan, and another for modern warfare. So let's get some input from the other players.

If we do late game, then we could consider civilizations with unique late game units: The US (Navy Seal/replaces Marines), England (Redcoat/replaces Riflemen), Russia (Cossak/replaces Cavalry) or Germany (Panzer/replaces tanks).

Let's talk difficulty levels. I play at Prince or Monarch, but can only win reliably when I'm going for culture. Murska is Monarch and good at war. How is everyone else.

[Terraoblivion]

Been a while since I played, but I tend to hover around Monarch and be a peaceful type. I find that I play better when being part of a succession game than when on my own. The need for discussion, judging what others have done and knowing that my decisions are being judged as well helps me think deeper than I usually do.

[Murska]

Any of the four civilizations mentioned could be interesting from a roleplay point of view. From an UU point of view, I do love my Navy SEALs as Marines are the key unit for my modern-era naval battles, so I will definitely not vote for them. Redcoats are fancy, especially if we are to leave the enemy equiv-tech, though then they'll have Grenadiers anyway. Panzers are not really much in my experience, as I haven't seen much armoured warfare that wouldn't be rather one-sided anyway. So my vote would go to Russia and their Cossacks if we use that scenario, because of a few reasons - one, I'm not too used to cavalry-based armies, two, our declaration of war upon everyone could be fluffed out as the Communist Revolution, three, funny accents.

[Terraoblivion]

Hmmm, funny accents and fighting the glorious revolution of the working class do sound appealing, tavarish.

[Murska]

Do remember that we will be doing our best for Mother Russia and the Glorious Tzar... at least until his rule proves untenable.

[happyturtle]

Leader preferences?

Catherine: Imperialistic (cheap Settlers, 100% great general emergence), Creative (2 culture per city - auto popping borders, cheap libraries, theatres, coliseums) This is definitely a REX combo here. Grab lots of land early.

Peter: Philosophical (100% bonus on great people, cheap universities), Expansive (cheap granaries, workers and harbours, bonus health). This combo is a little odd. Expansive is good for productivity in the late game when factories and forges make your cities sick. Philosophical doesn't really synergize with it, but is still a good trait.

Stalin: Industrious (Cheap forges, 50% bonus on Wonder production.) Aggressive: (cheap barracks and drydocks. Melee and Gunpowder units start with Combat 1) These two traits are both good ones, but don't particularly synergize. Also, Cossacks won't get the advantage of the free promotion since they're Mounted units.

I'm looking through CivFanatics to find a good map of Europe that is standard size, since anything larger tends to bog down less than stellar computers.

[Murska]

I wonder if we could somehow switch from Peter or Cathy to Stalin mid-way... :smalltongue:

[happyturtle]

We could change our name and start acting like Stalin. :smalltongue:

Do you know any pre-made Europe maps that aren't Huge, Murska?

[Winthur]

I'd say Catherine seems the best for the job. Catherine is overall pretty fun for warmonging, she's fast, she's fun, comes with cheap theatres for war weariness, doesn't need to build monuments and has more Great Generals. Stalin was only cool in his The Tick (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlfAdrCuG6M) incarnation. Also, my brother upon seeing his face in Civ4 had a giggling fit and just kept saying "Why is Mario in this game", and he's got a degree.

[Murska]

I don't know any maps like that, sorry. I usually play with random maps.

[Terraoblivion]

Catherine should be fun. And, yeah, speed and cheap theaters are both nice and she have them.

[happyturtle]

After digging around, I have discovered that it is FAR too much trouble than it's worth to get a map of Europe with civs in their historical starting positions.

So what sort of map do we want? Pangea? Continents? Old World / New World? Any other random map?

Do we want to select our opponents, or let them fall randomly?

What difficulty are we playing at? Shall we stick with monarch, or try and move up to the next level up? *gulp*

[Terraoblivion]

Random opponents, no real opinion on map type and if our more experienced players think we can do it together, I'm fine with moving a step up, if not I'm fine with Monarch too.

[Murska]

Archipelago would be interesting for a change, or Fractal. Random opponents, and do stay at Monarch, I'm quite rusty. :smalltongue:

[The_Final_Stand]

... let's stay as Monarch. I've never even played above Noble, and the times that I do play at Noble I am crushed.

[happyturtle]

I'd rather stay land based with Russia and Cossacks. We could do a sea power game another time. Staying at Monarch sounds good to me.

[Murska]

Perhaps a basic Continents then. :smalltongue:

[happyturtle]

Yes/No:


Barbarians
Raging Barbarians
Goody Huts
Aggressive AI
Random Events


Most of the other options are kind of meh. Also, I'm going to disable Domination victory, since it's hard to win Conquest without tripping the Domination victory along the way.

[Murska]

Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes

[Winthur]

Most of the other options are kind of meh. Also, I'm going to disable Domination victory, since it's hard to win Conquest without tripping the Domination victory along the way.

Yup, it's kind of a silly design because other than extreme early game (whoop whoop Quechua rush on tiny maps makes me a Deity player!) all it does is just forcing you to raze cities so that you don't reach the land area limit. Works for me.



Yes/No:


Barbarians
Raging Barbarians
Goody Huts
Aggressive AI
Random Events



We aren't playing anything competitive so I second Murska's post.

[Murska]

What voluntary handicaps should we have to avoid getting overly powerful before modern era?

[Winthur]

What voluntary handicaps should we have to avoid getting overly powerful before modern era?

No Slavery.

http://gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/982803_o.gif
(Which would be okay in Medieval and later starts because that's when Serfdom becomes OP, but shhhh.)
Any suggestions from non-masochists?

[happyturtle]

Rule out a few of the more powerful wonders, like Pyramids or Great Library?

Is it possible to play without slavery? :smalleek:

[Winthur]

Is it possible to play without slavery? :smalleek:
Lincoln tried it and he got killed. Dumbass.

Serious answer: Yeah but it makes the production early on clumsy and forces you to rely on hammers for production instead of the food which you should be focusing on early on anyway. It's like, food is super-good in early game for any purpose you might want while production can't get you commerce or higher population, so it's a handicap of sorts.

What this means is we probably just won't maximize our outputs early on. Once Caste System sets in, we can run specialist farms, and later on Caste System makes Workshops godlike.

Then again, playing the Russkies without Slavery is a little bit off.


Rule out a few of the more powerful wonders, like Pyramids or Great Library?

Unless we are playing peacenik early on, I don't think that's too much of a deal; with Cathy we are Imperialistic, and forest chops + Settlers = lots of potential for aggressive expansion. It might have made more sense if we had been Stalin but then why pick Industrious when you can't build wonders? :smalltongue:

[Terraoblivion]

I second the views on options. Barbarians, huts and events, but ordinary AI and the barbarians don't need to be all angry. Continents is also a perfectly fine map script.

As for rules to prevent too early dominance, why not just ban aggressive warfare before we can build Cossacks and demand that we strive for early peace settlements if attacked. That should do the trick, I think.

[Murska]

No aggressive wars, no taking cities in defensive wars. What about slowing our technology down a bit somehow? Or, alternatively, only 2 or 3 units per city allowed.

[Winthur]

No aggressive wars, no taking cities in defensive wars. What about slowing our technology down a bit somehow?

Espionage Economy?

[happyturtle]

No more than 2 units per city unless war is declared on us? Or no more than 2 units per city ever? Because if the former, we'll end up next door to Monty and it's game over. :smalltongue:

Heavy empire expansion should keep us from running away with research, and besides, I've never been able to get ahead on research on Monarch level. Not sure about the rest of you.

I think giving up slavery would be a difficulty level too far. Maybe save that one for a Lincoln game?

[Eldariel]

No aggressive wars, no taking cities in defensive wars. What about slowing our technology down a bit somehow? Or, alternatively, only 2 or 3 units per city allowed.

You could of course allow taking cities in defensive war but take peace ASAP and give the cities back once peace is established? 'cause making a peace without taking cities can often be hard against some bonehead AIs that think they're winning even after you've wiped 20 of their stacks without casualties.

[nihil8r]

why is slavery so good? i always beeline confuciusism and caste system for the specialists :smallconfused:

anyway, i am glad to see people still playing this great game, civ 5 was so bad.

[Winthur]

why is slavery so good? i always beeline confuciusism and caste system for the specialists :smallconfused:

anyway, i am glad to see people still playing this great game, civ 5 was so bad.

Hi, I agree with the last sentiment, and as for Slavery - it's by far the best civic for maximizing production in the early game. Early on, the best of the tile yields by far is food because it lets you work more tiles so you get even more food, production and commerce. With proper use of Slavery (whip a city once every unhappiness cycle, prioritizing Granaries), you get a lot of production for population that quickly grows back if you just settle near food spots (and starts are programmed to be generated with at least one food resource, plus food is everywhere on the map and harvestable with basic techs, unlike metals or certain luxury resources).

Think about it - if your city has enough food to grow every few turns or so, then the population you whip away is going to immediately be replaced by new men. In the early game you are population capped by happiness limit, Slavery allows you to keep milking the high-food tiles. Mid-game I usually still keep Slavery around to quickly whip buildings such as Universities to propel my Oxford University build, then it's usually straight to Emancipation.

Yes, you could settle production spots and derive production from there, but one population point from Slavery means 30 hammers. You will be really hard-pressed to find a city that can support mines to surpass that amount of effective production and still grow in the early game - and growth is power. And still, some city spots are full grassland Arcadias with a food resource but little to no production in sight. Slavery is the way to ensure that you won't be building a Granary there for the next 60 turns.

Also, Slavery gives you the power of opportunity. An annoying neighbor is close by? Whip Axemen and raid him. You need to beat an AI to a spot? Whip. You goofed and overpopulation in one city caused men to be unhappy? Whip them. City needs some last-minute defense? Whip. You have some underdeveloped city whose next population point would go into working an unupgraded Plains tile? Whip it, that pop point is worth more this way. (actually, my rule of thumb is to whip cities that would have been working unimproved tiles otherwise)

This means you can focus on populating your cities and working more tiles (for cottages, mines, resources, what-not) and get more revenue off the tiles you have.

Slavery is a great warmonging civic (along with Nationhood, its mid-game brother) and forms a great synergy with the Globe Theatre - one high-food city can provide a ton of army if you whip and draft from it endlessly, and your people in that city will never grow unhappy.

Meanwhile Caste System is a great civic, but it has one problem - it's not Slavery. Otherwise, with its specialists (a great boon for Philosophical civs at the very least) and the improved Workshops (means a lot if you can run the State Property/Caste System combo) it's very viable, it just doesn't offer you nearly as much. It's, obviously, a staple of a specialist-based economy.

[The_Final_Stand]

So, we are discussing a victory by crushing our enemies... then make rules saying we cannot declare war or take cities in self defence? :smallconfused:

[Winthur]

So, we are discussing a victory by crushing our enemies... then make rules saying we cannot declare war or take cities in self defence? :smallconfused:

Apparently we want the game to drag on into Modern Warfare because Murska is a 12 year old Call of Duty player.

And I think we should be able to take cities in self defence, but not for land grab if this is the variant we are going for.

[happyturtle]

But tanks are fuuuuuuun!

Also, early rushes are almost unfair to the poor AI, who usually won't start warring until mid-game. Not that it stops me from doing early rushes, because swiping an AI capital when they haven't even settled their second city is also fun. :smallbiggrin:

Basically, we'll start warring when we reach the modern age or communism or Cossacks.

[Murska]

We research Communism quickly, then immediately once we have that we switch to State Property and declare war on everyone.

[Eldariel]

Slavery is a great warmonging civic (along with Nationhood, its mid-game brother) and forms a great synergy with the Globe Theatre - one high-food city can provide a ton of army if you whip and draft from it endlessly, and your people in that city will never grow unhappy.

One big thing about Slavery is also that later in the game it allows you to convert "stored-up hammers" (citizens) into units at an amazing pace. So when you need an army right now (for example, when you hit some tech threshold such as Rifling or Military Tradition ahead of curve; thus pretty much every Liberalism-game ever) you can basically generate 1 unit per 1.5 turns or so (with overflow) or even 1 unit per turn if you are really in a hurry and want to burn double the citizen.

This applies defensively too, of course; if you get surprised by a huge stack Slavery is just about the only way to generate a sufficient defense in timely manner.


Whenever I want to win a nuclear victory, I usually switch to Slavery (Emancipation unhappiness isn't a big deal if you plan on whipping your cities to size 1 anyways) unless we already have UN Civic Emancipation (in case of a military victory, I'd defy resolution if that was to happen; defy unhappiness isn't that big a deal if you whip everything either).

And if looking at how Stalin industrialized the USSR, I'd say Slavery is the most appropriate civic for the job :smalltongue:


*sneaks back to lurking*

[happyturtle]

I generated a game on these settings, with random climate and random sea level:
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0003-1.jpg


Here's our starting position:
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0002-1.jpg

We start with hunting and mining. I recommend settle in place (unless moving the scout reveals a better option) and building a worker first while researching agriculture. Thoughts?

[Terraoblivion]

Looks like a good spot, settling in place should be fine, I think.

[Winthur]

Looks like a good spot, settling in place should be fine, I think.

Kind of a low-food high-production capital which isn't my favourite start (I honestly prefer commerce capitals or at least 2 food resources that aren't Wheat or plains Cows) but it can do. I'd say move the Scout 1SE to make sure but if there's no super-bomb tiles around with a ton of food then settle Moscow in place.

[nihil8r]

thanks for the comments on slavery civic. i think that my playstyle (culture and defense) has just made slavery not that attractive in the past. also i hate to kill my own people! :smallbiggrin:

good luck on the succession game, everyone.

[Winthur]

thanks for the comments on slavery civic. i think that my playstyle (culture and defense) has just made slavery not that attractive in the past. also i hate to kill my own people! :smallbiggrin:

...Now I really wish that the Great General was actually a Great Commissar whose battle animation would involve shooting his own people in the back of the head.

I can totally see our glorious modern era warmachine armed with the glorious Leman Russkies.

(This is now a crossover Let's Play... And I know who is at fault...)
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSINDRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

[Squark]

Hm... I will be watching this with interest in the hopes of learning things about Civ IV.

[happyturtle]

My people! I, Cathy the Great, have led you to the Moskva River to settle and create a glorious empire!

4000 BC - Our glorious capital of Moscow is settled. Our scientists begin researching how to make food grow from the ground, but until then, we must send the children out to gather what grows wild. Our painter neglects to record the glorious event of the founding of our city, so we throw him in the river.

3975 BC - A local village foists their idiot off on us - a scout I have named Bear-Bait. BB immediately runs off and met the local Mongols.

http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0004-1.jpg

3950 BC - Oh look! The local Mongols are RIGHT NEXT DOOR! I'm sure we will be the best of friends! =D

http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0005-1.jpg

3900 BC - Our borders have expanded, incorporating another small village that rewarded us with gold. Or we stole it from them. Probably the latter. Our scout raided another one. We're rich!

Karakorum:
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0006-1.jpg

3800 BC - Our original scout was mauled by a panther, but survives. The coward ducks back inside our borders to heal faster. Once we have our continent explored, we shall certainly throw him in the river.

3675 BC - Our scientists discover Agriculture. If only we had someone who was strong enough to pull a plow! Alas, we must wait for such a one to be born. Any year now...

The continent we inhabit:
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0008-1.jpg
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0007-1.jpg

1

Wasn't sure what to research next, so I stopped here at turn 13 rather than play to 15 as is usual for the starting player. I'm tempted to go animal husbandry and try and snatch up all the horses before Genghis gets to them. Thoughts?

We haven't established a play order yet, so whoever posts "Got it!" first can play the next 10-15 turns.

Save file (http://www.sendspace.com/file/dhm2da)

[Squark]

Attempting to deny Genghiss the horses he needs for his horde sounds like an excellent strategy to me. Which might mean it's a horrible idea, mind you. I'm not good at this game.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Or go for bronze working and axe rush him for that irragated rice and corn. Although I would be tempted to raze his capital so you could rebuild and get the irrigated food AND the gold tile.

[Murska]

That would go against the whole 'no aggressive wars' idea, methinks.

Animal Husbandry to see them horses and meanwhile we might want to get at least one good buffer between our capital and his in case we'll have to fight a defensive battle later on sounds like an okay strategy on my part. Since we aren't rushing, we're in no great hurry to see the metals (Archery might be prudent, though) but of course bronze working gives us Slavery.

The Mongol capital seems to have quite a bit to eat. Food for thought, eh?

City at the gold/wine and city at the bananas/cows - which one to prioritize?

Also, we might want to get working those Marbles soon-ish and make sure we get Oracle. What to slingshot for?

EDIT: Also also, we might want to scout up north to see what's there around those floodplains - it might prove a good city site.

[The_Final_Stand]

My view on strategy is always going to be: "make the science numbers go up" so other than that, do whatever.

[Winthur]

My view on strategy is always going to be: "make the science numbers go up" so other than that, do whatever.

Unfortunately I'm afraid that to match up another Imperialistic civ's expansion we will probably have to go to the Dark Ages Of 0% Science For A While.

By which I mean, get techs for resources, Bronze Working, and chop down Settlers and Workers.

[Murska]

My vote would be to try and block off the Mongols from the southern direction, as I spy some tundra up north and so there would probably be less land that way, or at least less good land. So, that jungle-tile diagonally down from the bananas and the cows. Gets them diamonds as well and has coastal access, plus grassland river. A few mountainous dead tiles, but oh well.

Then start building a crescent of cities around them Mongols depending on where they push their first settler - if we can, aim for the wine and gold. This is of course contingent on what scouting reveals elsewhere.

[happyturtle]

*grumbles* damn jungle.

Somebody take the next turnset! :smalltongue:

[Winthur]

*grumbles* damn jungle.

Somebody take the next turnset! :smalltongue:

Maybe I should, because I'm going on a convention this weekend and that means I'm MIA for Friday-Saturday-Sunday so I can make this a quick turnset, do some dot-maps (and by that I mean force Eldariel to help me with them) and make some moves in this delicate situation

So treat this as a "got it" post unless somebody is already on the last turn and was about to post a report :smalltongue:

[Terraoblivion]

Sounds like now is the right time for you to do it, Winthur. I also support the plan of Animal Husbandry, resource techs and Bronze Working fast, then blocking the Mongols off to the south and as much to the north as possible.. Especially if we can stop them from getting horses.

[Winthur]

Well, it's 2:26 AM.
I'm extremely sorry to have to stall it, but I'm in the middle of a ridiculously tacked on French homework session that is making me extremely xenophobic. That, and I am not even sure how the BUG mod interacts with the save game. Yup, I can't get it to work and it manages to rustle my jimmies.

Sorry, but I'm afraid I will have to take this next turnset after the weekend unless I sit there until 4 AM. >_>

Sorry. :<

With that, I skip.

[happyturtle]

Dammit... I thought I had it set up so it would work for succession games. Sorry. :smallfrown:

Maybe I should replay the first turnset with BUG turned off.

[Murska]

No worries. The save works for me, and I don't currently have BUG installed.

If nobody else has taken it by the time I wake up, I'll play the set. Now I'm off to bed.

[Murska]

Cathy the Great - The Early Years

The year is 3650BC, or so my sages tell me. Apparently the number is years and 'BC' means 'Before Cathy', but I do not know what exactly Cathy is supposed to be doing in three and a half millenia. The sages don't, either, so I think it will prove an interesting debate in the years to come.

Myself, I don't really care - I won't be around then.

Currently, I've been elected to head the Council of Muscovy after the passing of Cathy herself. In fact, I was forced to take up the position as nobody else would - anyone doing a poor job would soon be familiarized forcefully with River Moskva and after the Great Founder doing a good job is really asking for a lot. Keeping this in mind, my plan is to spend the better part of my reign learning to swim with weights tied to my feet.


In the meantime, I receive the latest reports from our scouts afield. A few native villages have been discovered and promptly 'investigated' - there is no need to mark them on the maps, they aren't there anymore. From one village we found a map, but it was mainly of water so we burned the village. Another village gave us even more worthless stuff:


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0006-13.jpg
The primitives feeding lies to our scouts

It is quite clear that these fancy tales about superior weapons and tools made out of combining fire and magical stones called 'copper' (none of which have conveniently been found in the entire Known World so far) are just superstition. Otherwise these primitives could have stopped our scouts from burning their village, obviously.

Soon after, Bear Bait finds another group of foreigners, but apparently these are just barely developed enough not to warrant the title of 'primitives'. At least their ruler seems to know his place, humbling himself before our might. For this sole reason, I do not order our scouts to behead him and take his lands. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that these 'Skirmishers' we met have far superior weaponry to ours.


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0007-13.jpg
Our envoys meeting with the leader of this 'Mali'

Afterwards, we lose all contact with our scout. These Malinese might be more dangerous than we thought - best keep an eye out.


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0008-15.jpg
Bear Bait proudly facing his destiny...

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0009-11.jpg
Oh, the humanity!

We figure out how to build buildings. Our engineers tell us of the possibilities - massive stone monuments, high walls to stop any attackers and so forth. I tell them to figure out how to build a simple cottage before trying to get funding for something like that, which seems to shut them up. The sages head back to their tents mumbling something about someone marrying a cow, but I pay them no heed.

The rest of the years are spent in peace and quiet, new farms rising around Moscow to feed the growing populace whom we are trying to make unhappy enough to make them want to move out and settle elsewhere. Our remaining scouts bring in a few more maps of the surrounding area, and enclosed are the three most promising locations I've marked down for future settlements.


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0010-10.jpg
This site is close to Moscow and on the coast. It looks like a potentially very profitable area, what with the valuable gemstones, but it is too difficult to settle at this time - if only there was some way, some tool strong and sharp enough to cut away the jungle...

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0011-8.jpg
This ground near Jeweller's Peaks has varying, nutrition-rich food sources and, should it grow enough, could also access the gemstones on the other side of the mountain. It is also very close to the Mongols, who are sure to compete with us for the site. There's a river and fertile ground, but the area is quite filled with jungle, sadly...

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0012-5.jpg
Finally, the origins of the river leading down to the Mongol lands, originally considered due to the possibility of poisoning their water supplies (later found impractical due to the presence of an unconnected lake) offers several other benefits. It blocks Mongol expansion neatly, it has gold and grapes and there grow vast fields of funny-smelling plants to the north of the area that our sages predict hold vast potential.

There is also a map of what knowledge we gained of the area close to the Mali before our scouts disappeared.


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0013-5.jpg
It looks like there's a lot of space down there. I hope it's not all held by these Malinese, or they might grow to become a strong rival in the future.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've almost perfected my underwater swimming technique. I'll be heading out now.

Save is here. (http://www.sendspace.com/file/s55jek)

Comments:

No copper in sight anywhere nearby, sadly. But getting Bronze Working off a hut was massively lucky, in any case. I opted not to make the jump to Slavery just yet, considering we have no population to whip anyway.

After the worker was ready, I noticed that it takes 11 turns for Moscow to grow and 11 turns for a Warrior to be finished, so I decided to build one and then get a Settler to start competing with the Mongols once our city was size 2. Might backfire, might work out, I dunno.

The citysite down south proved less-important for blocking the Mongol expansion than assumed, as the mountain range there blocks that route pretty well anyway. However, it's still a good site especially what with the rice there - I wouldn't even have seen that rice but I got a map from a hut farther south that revealed that tile. It's up to the next player to decide whether to prioritize that area or the goldmine up north.

I played until turn 30, as nothing much happened aside meeting the Mali and getting Masonry and Bronze Working. Started on Animal Husbandry because of the discussion in the thread earlier, and finished the Worker and a Warrior (currently stationed in Moscow, ready to escort the Settler that's being built.)


EDIT: Oh, and a bonus screenshot that was lying around in my screenie folder, showcasing how a great-looking start can turn horrible after a little scouting. The best part was that this is in a multiplayer game:


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0001-18.jpg

Note the vast space I have to build my civilization peacefully in on this Large Pangaea map, my friendly neighbourhood Monty right on the other side of the mountain blocking me from the rest of the world and my friend asking me in finnish about whether I'm serious when I say I'm on a peninsula I can't get out of.

[The_Final_Stand]

So am I going to have to take the save to save this thread from a slow and painful death by forgetfulness?

In any case, I've tested, and the save works on my machine. If no one has any objections, we get to see how someone terrible plays.

[Murska]

Sounds good to me. I was worried about the lack of comments.

EDIT: If you worry about what to do, you can just play twelve turns - at that point the Settler should pop and Animal Husbandry should be finished, at which point we should discuss our options in the thread anyway.

[Terraoblivion]

The site is acting up again, Murska. Didn't show the post for me until The Final Stand replied, which was why I didn't comment. In general things look good and I'd say that getting both the gold site and the site that doesn't actually block the great khan that much would be nice. We might even manage it if he does something stupid.

Also, I realized something. Our capital is Moscow and we're right next to Genghis Khan. We'll have to kill him quickly, before he starts singing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzycFeqNxIA)!

[Murska]

We don't really have any way to destroy the Mongols according to our rules for a long time yet...

...but we can always block them to a corner so badly that they'll forever be left into a minor footnote in history. :smallsmile:

I'd like comments on where to locate a possible city near the Gold/Spices/Wine site.

[The_Final_Stand]

Gold Spice Wine being the north site? I guess I can see that makes sense, since Genghis would have to go through our territory to get anywhere. Assuming that the land cuts off and doesn't continue far beyond the east Fog of Unknown Lands.

On an unrelated note, I think we should not give Genghis Open Borders when the possibility arises, and build forces in case he attacks us. Which he will.

And the city would go... I don't know, directly west of the wine? 1 culture expansion gets us the gold and some spice, the next gets us the rest of the spice?

...right? I have got a handle on the situation, right?

For the record, this is a tremendous departure from my usual strategy of: Give Open Borders to everyone no matter how little I'd benefit and build a miniscule number of units per city.

[Terraoblivion]

1 left of the Wine sounds good. It will be a production city and it should have plenty of food to make use of those five hills to the south. None of the other options seem as effective, really.

[Murska]

The forested hill is one possibility, but that'd mean we can't work two of the Spices. It's also far enough away from the Gold that it's possible for the Mongols to plant a second city nearby and wrest it from us with Culture. However, considering we're Cathy, that shouldn't be much of a problem provided we take care.

We could possibly fit two cities - one between the gold and the wine, one near the wheat and the spices. This would really push it to the Mongols, however neither city would really be optimal in terms of awesomeness. It depends on what's in the darkness of the north, too.

That hill two tiles to the north of the wine, or the grasslands tile west of that, would get spices, deer and wine but leave the gold to the Khan.

My vote would tentatively go to building two cities, with the first one on the tile between the wine and the gold. Or actually, probably one tile west of that, since that's also on a hill and it shares less tiles with the Mongol capital. That pushes the Mongols more, and we're expansive anyway. In the event of the likely war, we should strive to occupy the forested hills between the gold and the rice before the enemy does, to create a pretty tough defensive line against anything but an overwhelmingly superior force.

But my vote would also go towards having our first city be the spot near Jeweller's Peaks, one tile NE of the marked mountain.

[Terraoblivion]

Hmmm, that does look like a fairly good spot for production if we take the one northwest of the gold. We should have a good shot at the wheat and spices too if we do. I do agree that northeast of Jeweller's Peak is the best starting spot, though.

[The_Final_Stand]

Alright, I'll drop the city by Jeweller Peaks, do some explory stuff, try not to screw up too bad...:smallredface:

[Murska]

Remember to place it so it's on the coast and borders both the cows and the bananas, one tile away from the rice and the gems.

[The_Final_Stand]

Alright, 15 turns, city next to Jeweller peaks, all done. Update forthcoming.

Cathy the Great: The still early, but not quite as early as the preceding years.

It is 3250BC. For nearly a thousand years, the Empress has sat immobile on the Marble Throne of Moscow. She is the Master of Russia by the will of her people, and the Master of a few square kilometers by the might of Her inexhaustible army. She is the Cossack Lord of the Empire, or she will be when we get there, for whom a hundred souls are sacrificed every 15 turns, so that she may never truly die.

Yet even in Her deathless state, the Empress continues her eternal vigilance. Mighty hand axe wielders cross the bear infested miasma of the jungle, the only route between distant coasts, their way lit by torches, crafted from charcoal and sticks. Vast clubs are wielded in Her name in uncounted provinces. Greatest amongst Her soldiers are the Warriors, the foot soldiers, barely trained men with sticks. Their comrades-in-arms are singular; the Scouts, wielder of aforementioned hand-axes. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever present threat from lions, bears, foreigners, and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold thousands. It is to live in what is generally a pretty alright regime, except for the sacrifices. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has not even been discovered yet. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there will only be war. There will be no peace among the clans, only the laughter of thirsting Players.

Now that the formalities are out of the way, lets get down to basics.

Nothing happened this year. Or next year. Or the year after that.

Actually nothing happened until the year 3200BC, when some people dressed heavily (read: more than our warriors) and armed with both strange long sticks with string and spiky sticks with feathers approached from the North, claiming to be Archers from the Kingdom of Arabia, providing the greetings of their leige, Saladin.
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/1544/civ4screenshot0000bm.jpg
I don't know what that hat is made of, but I know that I want it.



Shortly thereafter, (many years in the future) we lost contact with our scouts, who were, like their predecessors, devoured by bears.

In 3050BC, our workers finished setting aside large areas of land, claiming that much food could be planted there. As I do love a bit of food in the morning, I ordered that they move northwest and repeat the process. At the same time, I was informed that our borders had expanded, providing us with more land to exploit utilize for the glory of the Empire.
http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/6175/civ4screenshot0001z.jpgMore land, no useful resources made available.

In 3000BC, we recieved reports that Mansa Musa had begun to whip their people to increase productivity. I mean really. Sure, we know that whipping people makes them work harder. But we also know that whips are expensive, and that if we did whip our people, then pretty soon we'd have no people left!

2950BC: The thinky people have determined that if we put fences around our animals, then we won't have to worry about them wandering off! BRILLIANT! The discovery of this important fact has led us to reevaluate the use of some animals we have otherwise disregarded, such as those hoofbeasts, or "horses" as I believe the hip way to call them is.

The thinkers have been reassigned to consider a way to make transportation easier. These triangular transportation enhancers we have are very nice, but only slightly enhance the transportation.

In the same year, our first brave settlers left Moscow, with an entire squad of Warriors to back them up. In the meantime, Moscow itself will begin working on producing another scout.

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/9611/civ4screenshot0005b.jpgAn explanation of the new "fencing".

2875BC: The founding of our second great city. St. Petersburg! A city with an excellent coastal view, sat right next to a mountain, on the outskirts of a jungle. Sure to be a holiday hotspot!
http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/1425/civ4screenshot0003b.jpg
Near to the bananas, the cows, not too far from a grove in the jungle with some strange grains that could be useful...

And with that, I take my leave for now.

So, I've played the game for 15 turns, now I don't know where to upload the file for other people. Any suggestions?

http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/1532/civ4screenshot0006g.jpg
The map as of the end of my turn.

[Terraoblivion]

Hmmm, looks like we won't be able to prevent Genghis Khan from getting horses. I'm also rather worried about Saladin being up north, it looks like we might have two AIs to strangle with expansion or a nasty enemy who is blocked off enough to be angry, but not enough to be strongly hampered.

Also, for the save you can use mediafire.

[The_Final_Stand]

Alright. Download the save here (http://www.mediafire.com/?duvw42hp75s9l6f).

[Terraoblivion]

Gotcha. Unless Winthur really wants to take his turn now.

[RagingKrikkit]

Don't have this game, so I can't play with you, and I have no experience with it, so I can't give you tips. Nontheless, I will peek in here every now and then to hear tales of scouts being eaten by bears.

[happyturtle]

Gotcha. Unless Winthur really wants to take his turn now.

Go for it, Terra.

[Terraoblivion]

And finally the previous Cathy died in the year 2875, putting me on the throne to pretend to be the immortal ruler of the Russian people. I take up the task with a heavy heart, surveying our tiny lands, noting the work of my predecessor in founding our colony at St. Petersburg with satisfaction. I hope to continue his great work in expanding our great nation and contain that crazy horseloving bastard to the east. I don't trust him and I'm sure he'd like nothing more than to kill us all.

A few years into my reign, Moscow finished training a scout to help us learn the lay of the land. He's send into the northern wilds to try to learn where these Arabs came from before it is too late. Noticing that this leaves Moscow without any protection should the horseguy decide to attack, I quickly order a warrior to follow up. Near this time our workers also fell a forest to the north, tilling the lands underneath for the benefit of our glorious Russian people before going to try to work out how to exploit the white cliffs outside our capital. Maybe those can help us build walls or at least praise the glory of the Cathy dynasty.

At this time our scouts learn of the endless snow to the north. Who knows what foul beasts lurk up there? Could these Arabs be scouts for the demons?

And so I grow old and my reign will soon end. Little was achieved in my lifetime, it was a peaceful reign dedicated to consolidating our lands and preparing for our next, great expansion to the east. We must gain what we can to grow strong in the face of our enemies.

...

Switching to ooc mode, I'd like to apologize for my boring turnset, but nothing much happened. I mostly focused on building the minimal military needed to avoid unhappiness and then prepare to expand and that took up all my time. Scouting to the north also turned out pretty dull all told since it was mostly ice. We'll have to watch for the endless barbarian hordes coming out of that place later on, though.

I'll also apologize for the lack of pictures, but for some reason no screenshots were taken and I didn't realize until the turnset was over. I hope you can all live with that.

I'll leave a few words of advise for The Final Stand, though, since I think that some of his management might have been a bit weedy. For example, there wasn't really much need to chop down that forest, though I let it go through rather than try to undo what you did. We didn't have anything urgent to finish and there was open land to build farms on instead and two unimproved marble tiles. Similarly, I believe a scout was a lesser priority compared to given Moscow even the most rudimentary defense, expanding our workforce or preparing for our third city. Finally, St. Petersburg was set to a barracks which I switched out, the city is almost pure food and commerce and will never produce any significant amount of military units, making those hammers wasted. I set it to a warrior since anything was basically just a placeholder to let it grow and if we manage to finish a warrior before putting it on something that matters then it'll be as useful as a warrior out of Moscow.

Current production is a Settler in Moscow and a warrior in St. Petersburg. Research is Pottery to let us get those granaries up soon to allow for more effective whipping. The worker has been sent to improve the cows at St. Petersburg. Personally, I'd recommend building another worker or two next in Moscow since the spots most in danger of being lost have been taken and we'll have vast tracts of unimproved land to make useful. For research I believe that either archery, for proper defense against barbarians and the khan, or iron working to dig St. Petersburg out of the jungle would be the best way to go next.

Save is here (http://www.mediafire.com/?o9mlxcccuo6sl56).

[happyturtle]

That's you up then, Winthur.

And now we have a play order. Woo!

1. Happyturtle
2. Murska
3. The Final Stand
4. TerraOblivion
5. Winthur Due by 30 May

[Murska]

I'd take the risk and vote for Iron Working first, but dependant on how long it takes. I want to know if there's Iron nearby and where it is, so we can secure a deposit if possible and maybe even block the Mongols.

But yeah. We should usually have 1,5 workers per city so we're somewhat behind. :P

[The_Final_Stand]

I'll leave a few words of advise for The Final Stand, though, since I think that some of his management might have been a bit weedy. For example, there wasn't really much need to chop down that forest, though I let it go through rather than try to undo what you did. We didn't have anything urgent to finish and there was open land to build farms on instead and two unimproved marble tiles. Similarly, I believe a scout was a lesser priority compared to given Moscow even the most rudimentary defense, expanding our workforce or preparing for our third city. Finally, St. Petersburg was set to a barracks which I switched out, the city is almost pure food and commerce and will never produce any significant amount of military units, making those hammers wasted. I set it to a warrior since anything was basically just a placeholder to let it grow and if we manage to finish a warrior before putting it on something that matters then it'll be as useful as a warrior out of Moscow.



I did warn you I was going to be terrible at this. A significant amount of what I do is going and has always been guided by what the AI suggests.

I really need to work on thinking for myself.

Though that said, what's so wrong about cutting down a forest..? It adds productivity in Moscow, and I'm not patient enough to wait for lumber mills...

[Murska]

Cutting down a forest gives an one-time boost of hammers. Those hammers should be aimed at something important to finish quickly, such as a fast settler to block an enemy from grabbing a city site or finishing a Wonder.

[happyturtle]

I guess Winthur isn't around. I'll go ahead and take the next turnset.

>>> 1. Happyturtle Due by June 3
2. Murska
3. The Final Stand
4. TerraOblivion
5. Winthur

[happyturtle]

Okay, so I finally downloaded and opened the game to make a pre-play plan and...

Wow... this is some sucky food poor land. :smallyuk: Are we really really sure we don't want to rush Karakorum? It's the nicest spot on the map by far!

http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0009.jpg
Red dot or yellow dot? Red dot gets the gold. Yellow dot gets the deer. I think at this point, getting some of the few food resources on the map is a greater priority. :smallfrown:


South of the jungle belt is some less bad land. Nothing particularly great so far. We need to finish scouting it.

Well, there's nothing to it. We are Cathy, so we must Rex!

1

Priorities for this turn:

* Get our third city settled
* Make another worker... goal is 1.5 per city
* Get some warriors built and camped for spawn busting barbarians
* Keep scouting.

1

I'm not sure what we want to research after pottery, but probably Iron Working. We don't have any seafood yet for fishing, and we've got a lot of jungle to chop.

In theory, I should have posted this yesterday, given the group a day or two to talk it over, and then played the turnset, but since we've been a while without an update, I'll go ahead and play. Log and narration coming up later tonight / sometime tomorrow. :smallsmile:

[Terraoblivion]

I think that red dot is the better call. Health isn't likely to be a major concern for quite a while, but happiness will be pretty soonish. Also, we're very low on commerce and some gold can help us with that until we get some cities that can actually produce decent amounts of it up and running.

[happyturtle]

I ended up playing 20 turns because there were delays getting the third city settled. Narration coming tomorrow but spoiler alert:

Genghis beat us the red dot/yellow dot city area. :smallfrown:

[Terraoblivion]

Ouch, that's really harsh. Not just was it a nice spot, but it blocks us off from quite a bit of land to the east until we kill him which won't be for quite a while.

[happyturtle]

Eh, that part isn't so bad. There's no good land between Genghis and Saladin.

I'm still not sure where Mansa is. Murska, where did you meet him? North or south? He's either east of Saladin or in the south.

[Terraoblivion]

Mansa is somewhere to the south if I remember the screenshots correctly.

[Murska]

Mansa was far south. A skirmisher met my scout just before I got eaten by a bear.

[happyturtle]

Ah. Hopefully we can rex south fast enough to get whatever good land might be there under the black.

[Murska]

I think looking at the situation most of the good land is going to be there...

[happyturtle]

The History of Mother Russia
Chapter 5: Want some wine? Do you? TOO BAD!

Cathy looked over her glorious empire and pouted prettily. Only two cities? Unacceptable! "Boris, how long before the refugees are ready to be resettled to the North?"

"Four turns, Your Greatness."

"I don't suppose there's any way to speed that up?"

Boris coughs. "Er, no, none. None at all. Certainly nothing about slaughtering our own citizens in order to inspire them to work faster."

"Very well. At least we have many fine soldiers ready to escort them," she says, looking over their two divisions of warriors.

"Yes, about that, Your Greatness. Since the soldiers move slower than the refugees, we should send them on ahead."

Cathy fixes her eyes on Boris. "My crack team of expert club wielders is slower than a rag tag bunch of families with children?"

"It seems so, Your Greatness."

"But that's ridiculous! What is the reason for this?!"

"Er... their heavy clubs?"

"Oh. I guess it can't be helped then. We must have heavy clubs."

"Indeed."

T60: I had checked to see if the city could be whipped without realizing we weren't in slavery yet. Murska? Y U no revolt when BW was discovered? :smalltongue:

I sent the 2nd warrior in Moscow on ahead towards Yellow/Red Dot. I also changed the build in St Petersburg to a worker. With no improved tiles, it's growing too slowly, and we badly need workers for our Glorious Expansion.

Recap of potential city spots:
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0009.jpg


"Your Greatness?"

"Yes Boris?"

"Our refugees are ready to go, but we've run into some difficulties."

"Impossible! Send them out at once!"

"Your Greatness, it seems that the easterners have beaten us to the area we wished to settle. It would require war to dislodge them."

"Well? Have we not heavy clubs?"

"We do, Your Greatness, but they have many pointy sticks. Shall I re-route our refugees to this spot? We can have fine mutton and more grain."

Cathy looks at the map. "No. Settle on the hill. I want a glass of wine."

T64: Civ's blue circle recommends the hill site rather than the one I'd dot-mapped. This loses the lamb but gains the wine. But as food poor as this map is, maybe putting two food in one city is a bit greedy? I start my settler and my warrior in that direction while trying to decide.


Soon, Cathy called Boris back in. "I have been thinking about those little pointy sticks. I want some, but Mother Russia's must be more glorious. Ours shall be giant pointy sticks."

"It will take much longer to learn how to make giant pointy sticks than little ones, Your Greatness."

"Am I not your Empress? Make them go faster!"

"Er, I'll try."

"And I have had the most wonderful idea! As our people love me, I am sure they will be glad to work until they die to make more workers."

"You want us to completely restructure our entire society to one of forced labor?"

"Yes? Is that a problem?" :smallconfused:

"... No, Your Greatness."

T65: That barb warrior is still out there, hanging out on our wheat (screenshot). So I don't move the settler this turn. Also, pottery is in, and Iron Working is a painful 25 turns away. :smallyuk:

Moscow grows to size 4, and I start to think about whether to switch to a Worker for further whipping and realize...

Holy crap, we're not in Slavery?!?! :smalleek:

Let's fix that right now *clicks the revolution button*

http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0013-1.jpg
Grr... that's MY wheat, damn you!

"Your Greatness, our scout has sent reports from the East that he has discovered Saladin's land."

"Which one is he?"

"The one who has some sort of cult known as Hin Do."

"Bah. It's nothing but superstitions."

"Indeed, but it seems to make their people happier."

"My people are already happy enough. They have me." :smallcool:

"And... possibly makes them work harder? Perhaps if any of the Hin Do reaches our lands, we should let it spread."

"I will consider it. Is my wine ready yet?"

"Not quite. It seems there are barbarians blocking our way."

"Heavy. Clubs."

"Yes, yes. As soon as the heavy club bearers have wiped them out, we will send the refugees in. Otherwise, the refugees would all be slaughtered and we'd have to find more."

"How is the slavery coming along? Have the workers died for me yet?"

"Not yet but..."

"Boris!" :smallfurious:

"... It's just that a place to store food might be..."

"If you say another word, I shall drop you into the River Moskva!" :smallannoyed:

"..."


T67: 2pop whip in Moscow to get that worker up. Realize after clicking that button that I should have whipped a granary first. >.<

Find Saladin. Looks like he's blocking off Mansa on the other side, unless Mansa is to the south.

http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0014.jpg

T68: Pasture finishes in St Peters. I dither about whether to start the road between the cities for trade route commerce, or chopping the hill to get that worker out sooner. Decide on the hill.

I move the warrior onto the hill and... Barb archer. :smalleek: I can't move the settler and settle him in the same turn, to make it a hill city, which a barb archer could never take, so instead, I'll leave the settler where he is and wait for the archer to attack my warrior

*fingers crossed*
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0015-1.jpg


"Your Greatness? It seems our division of Heavy Club Bearers has perished. We cannot send the refugees any farther until the next division arrives."

"What killed them?"

"Little pointy sticks."

"Why don't we have little pointy sticks?!"

"Because you... *cough* because our educated class was foolish enough to think researching big pointy sticks was more important, even though we could have little pointy sticks in far less time."

"Fools! Tell them to change at once!"

"At once, Your Greatness."

T69: Warrior is killed. I'll have to move our settler back now. I decide to switch techs to archery. Warriors just aren't going to cut it with so much tundra for barbs to spawn in, especially when barb axes and chariots come calling.

Luckily another warrior finishes in Moscow this turn, so he goes out to protect the settler, and the settler pulls back to hang out with the warrior. Moscow goes to a granary. There are two workers online now, and each is chopping for their city.

T70: It's been ten tuns, but with the settler still unsettled, I decide to play five more turns (which I extended to ten).


"Boris? I have decided to have you executed."

"But.. Your Greatness! Have I not served you faithfully?!"

"You cannot even get a rag tag group of refugees resettled!"

"Er... congratulations, Your Greatness! Your third city of Novograd has come online?"

"Novograd? Foolish name. It will serve wine, yes? Call it The Pub."

"Yes, Your Greatness. Am I pardoned?"

"Don't be ridiculous. Please set about organizing your execution at once, and training your replacement."

T73: FINALLY manage to settle The Pub. That archer has healed up, and the bastard has combat 1, presumably from killing my sorry ass. Hopefully our city bonus and hill bonus will be enough. Pub starts on a granary

http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0016.jpg

T74: Archer flings himself against The Pub and dies. St Petersburg Worker finishes with the chop hammers, and the overflow finishes the warrior that was working there. I put him to mining the hill he chopped. Worker three starts the road to Moscow. Moscow's worker starts mining its own hill.

T75: I send the warrior north because that's where our worst barb trouble will be for now. St Petersburg is protected by mountains, Moscow by culture, and Genghis is protecting our eastern border.

I ended up playing till turn 80. Not sure why I didn't stop at 75. I guess I was caught up in 'one... more... turn...' :smalltongue:

Here are the ending screenshots:
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0017-1.jpg
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0018-1.jpg
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0019-1.jpg
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0020-2.jpg
http://i431.photobucket.com/albums/qq40/happyturtle-avs/werewolf/civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0021-1.jpg

Mistakes I made:
1. Not realizing we weren't in slavery and revolting to it immediately. Whipping that settler could have meant beating Genghis to that spot.
2. Iron Working before Archery? Not the greatest plan. At least the beakers won't go to waste.
3. Should have chopped out the worker in St Petersburg before pasturing the cows.
4. Sending the scout east instead of south. I knew we were never going to settle that land, but it's black spots were closer than the southern black spots.
5. Whipping the worker in Moscow before the granary.
6. Mining a hill in Moscow instead of quarrying the second marble.
7. Naming the northern area the Icy Wastes instead of Siberia. :smalltongue:

Recommendations:

1. We have a lot of trees in Moscow, and chopping hammers receive the bonus for Imperialistic settlers. Chop chop chop! Use Moscow for settlers and St Petersburg for archers. Only finish a forest chop when a settler is being worked.
2. Improve tiles in The Pub, quarry second marble, cottage flood plains. Don't improve more than 5 tiles in a city - we can't work them, and those worker turns are needed elsewhere.
3. Roads between all our cities.
4. Scout goes south. Duh. Probably won't live that long, so an archer should also be planned for southern scouting.

1. Happyturtle
>>> 2. Murska Due by June 6 <<<
3. The Final Stand
4. TerraOblivion
5. Winthur


Save game (http://www.sendspace.com/file/84fa60)

Note to self:
You know what someone really shouldn't do? Read history about Stalin before logging on to try to write a humorous narration as a Russian civ practicing slavery. Kind of makes it difficult to get in the mindset. =/

[Murska]

Save received, I'll play it tomorrow.

As for slavery, I did mention it in my write-up - we were in a position where we couldn't whip and anarchy would waste turns on a critical settler, so I figured my successor would change it afterwards. Apparently everyone forgot.

[happyturtle]

Winthur would have noticed immediately. http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/whipped.gif

[The_Final_Stand]

I just assumed that there was a reason we hadn't enacted slavery.

[happyturtle]

Bah! The time to revolt to slavery is always ASAP. The smaller an empire you have, the less you lose in anarchy!

Future revolutions have to be considered and timed and possibly have a golden age burnt on them, but the first one should always be ASAP.

/turtle opinion, not shared by Murska :smalltongue:

[Murska]

Well, the earlier it is the less you lose in absolute terms but also the more those lost production points and such are worth because everything that you ever build will come in later because of it. A small loss early on can be more crippling than a bigger mistake later.

But yeah, usually you should just revolt early because the benefits kick in earlier as well and you're revolting because the benefits outweigh the costs. In this particular case, we risked losing an important city site and quite possibly our chances to block the Mongols from getting settlers past us. Not a really big risk, but switching to slavery wouldn't have given us any benefits whatsoever at the time, so I figured I'd delay.

[Winthur]

Winthur would have noticed immediately. http://forums.civfanatics.com/images/smilies/whipped.gif

Winthur hasn't noticed that the thread was up because he missed the memo that he had his turnset a while ago. He's dumb as %@#}. X_x

Anyway, I'm happy about the progress. Nice settling. Revolting to Slavery after the Settler is en route is usually the correct timing anyway.

I gotta catch up on the save games and actually be up for my next turnset.

[Murska]

Chapter 6 - The Tools of War

Looking around our glorious Empire. It appears to me as though the Mongols are a bit stuck, which seems to me indicative of them aiming to conquer one of their neighbours soon, and we are the weakest nation in Power at the moment by far.

Saladin... my experience with the land gives me a hunch that he only has a peninsula with room for but a small Empire, but I cannot be sure as our scouts could not get past his borders.

And somewhere down south, the Mali, who would appear to have plenty of land. Unless we get to it first.

I order mass whippings to speed up the construction of a Granary in St. Petersburg, and then begin training a Worker unit, which is somehow sped up greatly by another Worker chopping down a forest nearby.


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0000-20.jpg
People come to congratulate me of a great achievement. Wait... why has the Wheat not been roaded, again?

Much later, our scouts finally reach the southern area and report finding the borders of these Mali. And then they get killed immediately.


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0002-16.jpg
Pictured - Death

More importantly, several good things happen one after another - a period unlike any other in our history, a true Silver Age.


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0003-14.jpg
We finally reach Classical Era and Iron Working and can get to work on those jungles... but wait!

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0004-15.jpg
Mommy! Look what I found!


Our settlers finally reach their assigned location, to find out that a competing tribe of savages had moved in next door. (One turn before I was to settle...)

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0005-14.jpg
Curses!


And there ends my time as a ruler. Nothing much happened, but the Empire grew.


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0014-5.jpg
Some statistics. We're quite large compared to others, but we have too little Power.

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0015-4.jpg
The southern lands


Sorry for the poor writing, I just don't feel inspired at the moment and nothing much happened anyway.

Save is here. (http://www.sendspace.com/file/ehww0o)

[Terraoblivion]

Looks like we have roughly four goals at the moment. Getting an army up and running to deal with the barbarian hordes that will pour out of the north. Get enough troops to intimidate the khan into looking east instead of west. Grab as much of the south as we can. Dig our cities out of the jungle to make them productive.

That's a lot of stuff to do and it's further complicated by Sakae being down there until we can get some troops down and take it out. I'm really not sure what our current priorities are. Probably the military part, really, as it appears like we'll drown in barbarians and Mongols soon enough otherwise. The second priority should probably be getting as much of Mansa's land as possible.

[Murska]

Yeah, probably just use our new iron to build a bunch of troops...

Problem being that I fear Mansa will just grab all the good land down south before we get there, and that makes him quite a bit bigger than us. When you add his inherent tech advantage to that, it might prove a problem in the future.

[Terraoblivion]

Yeah, we need to balance military and expansion for now and put science and land improvement off. Hardly ideal, but better than losing all the land or getting slaughtered by barbarians.

[The_Final_Stand]

Right, so I believe that makes it my turn again?

And, if I'm reading the thread right, I need to build an army?

So, what shall I do? Get the Workers to build a mine on the iron, then start building Swordsmen or Axemen in Moscow? Turn down research to keep our gold balance even?

This just sounds absurdly delicate, and I have no idea what to do beyond that, so if someone could elaborate somewhat, please?

[Murska]

I think it's Terraoblivion's turn.

Which means your turn will be even more delicate, I'm pretty sure. :P

[happyturtle]

How about making a Pre-Play-Plan and posting it here? Then we can critique it for you and help you fine tune it. :smallsmile: Don't worry about making mistakes. Part of the point of a succession game is all of us learning from one another and getting better.

Mining the iron is a priority, whether we are going to war or not, so we can build spearman in order to defend against Genghis. We want one spearman in each city, except the new jungle one. If we have a barracks up anywhere, we want to build them in that city, but I don't think we do.

Have we given up the idea of running peaceful throughout the early game? I think taking out Genghis is a grand idea, but I'm not sure how difficult it is to defeat Keshiks before Engineering and Pikes.

1. Happyturtle
2. Murska
>>> 3. The Final Stand Due by June 8 <<<
4. TerraOblivion
5. Winthur

[Murska]

Keshiks can be taken out by a combination of spears and swords. Catapults are actually less important against GK, because he tends to not mass axes and archers but instead mass keshiks and have a bit less archers.

[The_Final_Stand]

As I said, my plan, if you can call it that, is "build mine, acquire bladed implements, deposit at least one unit in each city". I can't see much by way of "fine tuning" you can do with that.

[Murska]

I think I already have a worker on the Iron.

You'll also need to get a worker to the new city as soon as is feasible to begin chopping down those jungles to give it some food to grow, and to get rid of the unhealthiness. But keep an eye on that worker so that barbarians don't capture it. We'll need additional defense in that city as well, it only has a warrior and it's next to a barb city.

Keep research as high as possible at all times, of course. There's no better use for money at this time.

What should we research after Fishing? Oh, and once Fishing is done we should probably switch from Granary to Work Boat in the new city, as it isn't going to grow so we can whip it and the Granary will take ages.

I'd like opinions on whether to have Moscow work on one more Settler once it's done with the current build or to start pumping spears and swords out there. I think St. Petersburg and the Pub should each attempt to get a spearman out on their own, as well as stationing at least one archer in each. But Pub needs some tile improvements to be able to construct at any real speed, and St.P has the Gems in the Jungle that will take ages to dig out and would take important worker turns.

[happyturtle]

How tight is our economy? We might want to wait on that next settler until the gems come online, because of city maintenance. And Novgorod should soon take the banana from the barb city, but I don't know how much food that tile gives while it's still junglefied and before Calendar.

Then again, if we delay, Mansa is sure to take the best spots. Maybe it's best to just gear up for defence now and continue Rexing.

Oooh, idea... get alphabet (by trade - Mansa should research it soon) and then bribe Genghis against Saladin. That should keep him busy and draw off his troops, leaving his cities eminently takeable. In the meantime, if Genghis makes any demands of us, we should give in.

[Terraoblivion]

Wait, why are we discussing offense? I just wanted an army so we could defend ourselves. In any case, the basic outline of what to build that Murska gave sounds good. I don't think we ever really discussed letting go of our variant of not attacking until communism.

[Murska]

If we want to trade for Alphabet, we should attempt to get Writing after Fishing.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Has anyone WHEOOHRN yet?

[The_Final_Stand]

So, get defence for new city, get worker to new city to build farms, St Petersburg and Pub to build spearmen, add archers too, try not to fall apart.

Ok. Commencing play.

[The_Final_Stand]

It is still the 8th.

CHAPTER 7: THE DIM AGES

The Glorious Empire has grown much in recent years. Perhaps too much, for Cathy, Her Wise and Imperious Highness sees all this land, and thinks.

She thinks that it is a wonderous land, and She is priviliged to own it. But She also thinks it is not defended enough. With the upspring of a barbarian city just outside Her borders, she puts her mighty mind to the defence of the nation.

1625 B.C.

Disaster! The Royal budget is running low. Apparently, the Empire has grown large enough that money spent on maintenance is outweighing taxation! If we knew what taxes were. So Cathy, in her Infinite Wisdom, decides to take half of the science department's toys away and sell them off at auction.

1600 B.C.

Some brave Settlers leave the safety of Moscow. Their destination lies slightly to the south.

1575 B.C.
Word from the boffins: They have perfected the art of removing fish from water, and act they call "Fishing". Very useful, and all, but you know what would be even more useful? The ability to go out to sea to catch the things. They take to their new task with enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, we recieve word from afar that a great edifice known as "Stonehenge" has been constructed.

http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/411/civ4screenshot0000c.jpg

1550 B.C.
Some Barbarian Archers make an attempt on The Pub. Excellent though the drink is, they are exceptionally rowdy and are put down by the Archers stationed there, though not without casualties.

The Settlers reach their destination, and begin constructing the City of Rostov, which begins work on producing some Archers for protection.
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/7749/civ4screenshot0003.jpg

1475 B.C.
A man named Pliny is declared an Enemy of the Empire, after he denounces our Empire as the Weakest known, even including empires he should know nothing about, and claiming Cathy the Great should be known as Cathy the Hopeless.
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/5138/civ4screenshot0004h.jpg

1300 B.C.
Mansa Musa comes to our empire with honeyed words about the greatness of Opened Borders. He is declined, for there is no benefit for us, and our last Scouts to head down there were brutally murdered.
http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/2455/civ4screenshot0006n.jpg
By the_final_stand (http://profile.imageshack.us/user/the_final_stand) at 2012-06-08

1250 B.C.
I step down from my position of Duke of the Empire. Moscow and St Petersburg are slightly unhappy, but that's SEP now.
http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/3104/civ4screenshot0007v.jpg
The Empire as of now.

Things I did, but didn't mention.
Soldiers. There are now a bunch of fighting troops, all headed down to the south cities.
Ordered a road built between Rovgrod and Moscow, connecting the trade empire.
Started building a Mine on Jeweller Peaks.
Followed some of the requests for cottages.

Things I should have done:
Almost certainly have placed that new city somewhere else (The computer recommended it! It wouldn't lie to me... would it?:smalleek:).
Build farms, not mines, down in Novogrod.
Cut down Jungles, also in Novogrod.
Whipping. I have never actually used Slavery before.

So, how else did I screw up?

Save (http://www.mediafire.com/?hte4p01qtwcbcxe)

[Murska]

Yeah, Rostov should've probably been one tile to the south to avoid overlap.

Anyway, we should really begin beelining for the Oracle if we intend to get it. We do have the advantage of Marble, but still, we don't even have Mysticism yet.

[Terraoblivion]

Yeah, making use of our marble for the oracle certainly doesn't seem like a bad idea. Especially not with how much production we have Moscow.

Also, is there a particular reason you cover everything in farms, Final Stand?

[The_Final_Stand]

If you're referring to "Build farms, not mines, down in Novogrod.", then what I mean is that I think I should have got Novogrod growing faster rather than getting gold, since that was one of the objectives I set myself. I wasn't going to build the farms on the gems, give me some credit.:smalltongue:

If you're referring to something else, please elaborate?

Most of the spots which had "cottage" on have cottages either built or being built on them. The rest I didn't get round to.

As I said, an awful lot of what I do is dictated by those little blue circles the computer gives as recommendations.

[Terraoblivion]

I was thinking about how we're pretty lacking in commerce and Novgorod is pretty much a pure commerce city, so why make farms rather than cottages? We aren't in a position to run a specialist economy anytime soon and getting that commerce in seems like a more important task than getting a great person farm set up, especially given how we aren't really ready to make a good one yet.

In general farming up every city isn't a terribly good idea unless you're planning to either whip like crazy, want to run a ton of specialists there or need the food to support working a large number of hills. Novgorod should grow fast enough that we don't need farms for whipping, we can't run a ton of specialists yet and it doesn't have a large number of hills that needs food to support working. At this point it seems very much like a place that should get cottages, not farms. We might change it later if we want to get great people from it, but that's in the future when we have the buildings to run those specialists.

[The_Final_Stand]

Yeah, see "specialisation" is one of those things I didn't know about, either how to specialise or what to. When Murska said "begin chopping down those jungles to give it some food to grow", I assumed that meant "Replace the Jungles with Farms", rather than just "Chop down the jungles".

In any case, I didn't actually get round to designating farms, so nothing was lost.

[Murska]

Always when building something on a Jungle, chop it down first and start the building after that's done. It takes exactly as long, but the Jungle will be gone halfway.

[happyturtle]

Also, first build in a new city should almost always be granary. Exceptions are seafood cities which might get a lighthouse first or cities that need a border pop ASAP which might get a monument first (not applicable with Creative Cathy, whose borders pop automatically).

Don't worry... Civ 4 is one of those great games with amazing replayability where you'll always be learning. :smallsmile:

1. Happyturtle
2. Murska
3. The Final Stand
>>> 4. TerraOblivion Due by June 11<<<
5. Winthur

[Terraoblivion]

Actually, thinking about the discussion about how to get the Oracle. I wanted to check with everyone. While we have Marble and a good production city in our capital, it will set our research back some to go for it, especially since our commerce is hardly amazing. Not just that, building it will put both our construction of a defensive army and our expansion back some, so I'm not sure it's ultimately worth it in this situation and wanted to hear your thoughts on it.

[happyturtle]

I'm not opposed to skipping Oracle and focusing on Rexing. Failgold wouldn't suck if we missed Oracle, but if we wasted the beakers on poly and priesthood and then someone got Oracle before we even started it, that would suck.

We should probably try and work out what wonders we do want to go for, to have a strategy up front. Great Library?

[Terraoblivion]

Great Library is indeed a very useful one to go for, however, we'll need to see what our science looks like before committing to it. It is fairly deep down a side path we can put off for a while if we have more pressing concerns and we likely will if we do science slowly.

[Murska]

I like getting Oracle anyway mainly because if we do get it, we can sell Metal Casting to AIs for techs because they never research it.

[Terraoblivion]

Just skip me, the last few days have been busier than expected. Together with poor sleep and concentration I haven't really been able to focus on playing. Sorry for the delay everyone.

[happyturtle]

1. Happyturtle
2. Murska
3. The Final Stand
4. TerraOblivion
>>> 5. Winthur Due by June 15<<<

No problem, Terra. Winthur, you're up.

[Winthur]

I got the save, expect my turnset later today. So far we aren't looking so bad but I'm planning to get our economy on as tight of a rope as possible.

[Murska]

Hm. I was expecting, but I got disappoint.

[happyturtle]

I guess we need to skip Winthur. And I'm neck deep with RL stuff, so I'm going to pass too. Now if Murska and Stand pass too, we'll have managed to pass our entire playerbase. :smallbiggrin::smalltongue:

1. Happyturtle
>>> 2. Murska Due by June 21<<<
3. The Final Stand
4. TerraOblivion
5. Winthur

[Murska]

Woo! I'm actually not busy at all but I'll make the pass anyway!

If it comes another round, I'll grab it.

[happyturtle]

*stabs* Play the game, Dad. :smalltongue:

[The_Final_Stand]

Wait, what?:smallconfused:
Did... did everyone just pass..?

[Murska]

Now it's your turn to pass! :smallbiggrin:

Eh, but I was hoping someone with actual expertise would come take responsibility and build something up so I didn't have to bother actually thinking about what I'm doing...

[Winthur]

Now it's your turn to pass! :smallbiggrin:

Eh, but I was hoping someone with actual expertise would come take responsibility and build something up so I didn't have to bother actually thinking about what I'm doing...

I was busy doing my writeup just now. ._."

I know I'm more likely to be late than get laid, but...

[The_Final_Stand]

That is exactly what I was hoping would happen. Except to me.
I have nothing going on at the moment, but I played last time, and I have no idea what to do strategywise. Or tacticswise.

Can I pass as well then?

THREAD ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: Hot Potato.
Went an entire turn cycle with no one actually playing.

[happyturtle]

I was busy doing my writeup just now. ._."

I know I'm more likely to be late than get laid, but...

Yay! :smallsmile:

[Winthur]

Initial Overview:
-I wasn't too sure about Sailing. None of our neighbors are connected to us. Granted, the commerce boost was nice, but I don't think we're going for Great Lighthouse and whatever issues we had with lack of trade routes could have been alleviated with...
-...more Workers, we only have 4 for a 5-city empire.

If I were playing those last few saves, I would focus on getting out more Workers and Settlers. It doesn't matter if we were.

We do have a few Axemen, but without promotions they can't even take the barbarian cities without several estimated losses. That, and Arabian Salad is already walking through our lands with his Archers. Archers can't take cities at all, but let's say he does get the barb cities killed and we have a Polish Corridor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Corridor) situation. Until beyond the age of gunpowder.

I'm not sure if we really need Barracks at the moment if we could just get more Workers, Settlers and Pylons.

So the real question is!
http://i45.tinypic.com/rrjgi0.jpg

I'm gonna try get us back on expanding and backfilling the land down south. For what it's worth we should be able to settle it fast in the event our enemies should be so bold and so foolish to consider smuggling settlers past our Open Bordesrs agreement.

Codex Astartes calls this maneuver "Settler Spam". We will chop our trees, we will whip our people, we will live none alive! Meanwhile our diplomats will ensure the safety of our borders from our neighbors.

While singing "Katiusha".

Turn 1: I figure I can't really do anything except let the Barracks finish and the Sailing research. It actually bolsters our economy because we just didn't have roads because we had a worker shortage. Not sure if it was worth spending the research.

Turn 2: Oh, I just noticed Rostov is building an Archer instead of Granary. No no no.

I skip turns while having an epiphany that we are actually playing on Epic speed which means that no... cities... have... whip... unhappiness... :smallredface:

Turn 3: WHIP AND TEAR! WHIP AND TEAR YOUR POP! :smallfurious:
http://i49.tinypic.com/8ywej6.jpg
YOU ARE HUGE! THAT MEANS YOU HAVE HUGE POP!

Turn 4: WHIP AND TEAR!!!!!!!! Moscow and The Pub get whipped.

Turn 5: Workers! Any overflow goes into Settlers, but overall I make sure that the cities grow back. Moscow starts a Swordsman, because we will want to take down the barbarian city in the Southwest.

Turn 6: Production here, production there.

Turn 7: Workers finished naturally, Settlers queued up next in St Petersburg.

Turn 8: *twiddling thumbs*

Turn 9: I whip a Settler in St. Petersburg.

Turn 10: Writing finished, I queue up Libraries in cities that aren't busy on Workers, Granaries, or Settlers.

Turn 11: I hooked up Ivory with our brand new Workers.

For the rest of the turnset nothing really noteworthy happens. Pay attention to which cities are whipped and which are not. We need more scouts in the southern part of the land.

A Settler-Axeman party has been sent down to found the city of Borealum by the marker that I've put down on the map.

Played 15 turns overall. Save here. (http://speedy.sh/WHZum/Cathy-the-Great-BC-0875.CivBeyondSwordSave)

[Murska]

Well, if Winth posts his turn I suppose I can play the next one.

[happyturtle]

Oh, I just realized Winthur posted. :smallredface:

I'm still full of RL and passing. Your turn, Murska.

1. Happyturtle
>>> 2. Murska Due by June 23<<<
3. The Final Stand
4. TerraOblivion
5. Winthur

[Murska]

So, I played 20 turns mainly because I forgot to count and also because I wanted to make some progress in developing our lands.

First things first:


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0001-21.jpg
This city is new to me.

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0006-14.jpg
This, on the other hand, looks very promising.

I decided that it's time to start upgrading our Power so that the Mongols choose Saladin instead of us when they decide to go to war. Also because many of our cities have little to nothing else to do - they build workers or swordsmen because we don't have much gold and we've already settled much of what's worthwhile.


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0007-14.jpg
Our lone existing swordsman heads over and takes out this annoying city, earning a new nickname.

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0008-16.jpg
Meanwhile this situation keeps getting more promising.

I try and get a swordsman up to the northern barb city in time, but my timing is off as he reaches it when there's three archers in the city, and next turn there's none as the Mongol army runs it over.


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0010-11.jpg
Oh dear.

Sometime around here we finish Alphabet, figure out that nobody wants to trade us much of anything, sign Open Borders with everyone except the Mongols and start on Currency.

Then finally, on the last turn...


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0011-9.jpg
This happens.

Some statistics:


http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0012-6.jpg
This is what I did most of my turn.

http://i721.photobucket.com/albums/ww213/Bestrafer_fin/Civ4%20screenies/Civ4ScreenShot0013-6.jpg
And here's our situation right now. Not too bad.

Also, I forgot to screenshot a new city I built, which is a bit precariously extended into the Malinese Empire. I'm hoping that the settler on the way will backfill and connect Ulm to the rest of our land before the Mali get there.

Here's the save. (http://www.speedyshare.com/PABan/Cathy-the-Great-BC-0425.CivBeyondSwordSave)

[The_Final_Stand]

So, what are the objectives? We have plenty of cities, but our budget and science department look like they need work. When it becomes possible, I think I shall build Markets in the richer cities.

You said you wanted Ulm connected with a settler. Where do you want the next city to go?

And do we really need so many cities? Maintaining them is the biggest drain on our resources at the moment. Followed by Civics, but we can't do anything about that except change back from Slavery, which would get us 2 more gold per turn.

[Murska]

Having cities means having production, population, commerce and research. Those are pretty important in the long run.

[The_Final_Stand]

It also means we have neither commerce, nor research in the short run. I have no idea how you recover from that, since Research -> Buildings that make Money -> Money -> Research in my mind.:smallconfused:

In short, this is almost certainly me being terrible at Civ again.

[Murska]

Buildings very rarely make money. Mostly they give a percentage boost to your commerce income from the cities. If you have a lot of cities, you have a lot of commerce income and therefore your percentage-based boosts are going to be way more effective once you get there. Also, cities mean production, and production means armies which in most games (though not this one) means conquest.

In general, good city sites pay for themselves pretty quickly unless they're ridiculously far away from your empire, especially for expanionist civs like ourselves.

[tyckspoon]

It also means we have neither commerce, nor research in the short run. I have no idea how you recover from that, since Research -> Buildings that make Money -> Money -> Research in my mind.:smallconfused:

In short, this is almost certainly me being terrible at Civ again.

It mostly comes down to competing with the AIs; they don't give a frak about their income, they just keep spamming out cities. And this game is sharing a continent with at least 3 AI civs.. which means, at least in the early game, that you have to spam out cities too, because if you take it too slow than when you decide you *are* ready to expand you'll find 2 AI cities already crowding out the space you wanted to use. And then they decide your glorious 3 or 4 really well-placed, well developed cities with technology they don't have yet look *really yummy*, and they declare war on you. And then their 8 crummy cities that were just dropped wherever the minimum city spread distances would let them place them overwhelm you with their production capacity..

Slow expansion is a luxury for players who got to spawn onto a private island (or took over their neighbor/s on said island.)

[happyturtle]

As our cottages develop, our income from tiles will improve. As our cities get larger, the trade routes get more lucrative. Eventually we'll get courthouses built which will reduce maintenance costs.

The expansionist phase of an empire always leads to the research slider going down until the new cities start paying for themselves. If nobody has anything to trade us, then we're at the top of the tech food chain, so we can afford it.

Generally when I'm expanding, I will let the slider go as low as 20 or 30% before slowing down. If I'm micromanaging carefully, I'll even let it go lower.

[Eldariel]

It also means we have neither commerce, nor research in the short run. I have no idea how you recover from that, since Research -> Buildings that make Money -> Money -> Research in my mind.:smallconfused:

In short, this is almost certainly me being terrible at Civ again.

Generally you:
- Get cities.
- Build up cities.
- Get your first Great Scientist.
- Designate a Commerce city.
- Get Academy and stuff in a good Commerce city (preferably a future Bureaucracy capitol too).
- Beeline technologies and trade around.
- Mostly build research improvements, try to keep research gauge at 100% and trade techs for gold + build Wealth to keep up the research (this way you save the costs of all the money-providing improvements)
- Ignore techs you aren't gonna use (common candidates; Sailing-line, Archery, Horseback Riding, Divine Right) and go straight for the big ones you desire (particularly stuff that gives you free things, most notably Liberalism, and any wonders or such you're gonna go for).

In other words, you save in city improvements where you can, focus on commerce only on few cities well suited for it and get all the relevant improvements in those, focus all the "beakers" (that is, cities' commerce output that can go to money, research or culture) on research and use trades & selective tech beelining to only get what you need.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

When the economy goes to crap because of REX or war conquest, switch over to a specialist economy for a time till your population can support you. Libraries running scientists can help your research even when you are just breaking even at 0% research.

[Murska]

There's a bunch of techs people have that we don't have, mainly the Mysticism line and Horseback Riding for the Mongols (who no longer have horses :smallamused:), but we're generally disliked.

Also we don't have a religion yet even though some of them have spread to some of our cities. We should decide what to pick, depending on the politics and where the bonus is most needed.

[happyturtle]

What nickname did you give the Swordsman anyway? :smalltongue:

1. Happyturtle
2. Murska
>>> 3. The Final Stand Due by June 24<<<
4. TerraOblivion
5. Winthur

Wait, Mansa won't trade with us?

Mansa? The tech whore? :smalleek:

[Winthur]

It also means we have neither commerce, nor research in the short run. I have no idea how you recover from that, since Research -> Buildings that make Money -> Money -> Research in my mind.:smallconfused:

In short, this is almost certainly me being terrible at Civ again.

Fear not, it's just a common misconception that requires clearing up and has a lot to do with the commonly accepted "meta-game". Let me attempt to explain:

There are a few technologies in this game which serve as economical milestones for upstart empires. The most important one would be Pottery (cottages), followed by Writing (libraries, scientists, potential Academy), followed by Currency (+1 trade routes and the ability to build Wealth, and also Markets), with Code of Laws as the last piece (Courthouses, though they're expensive for non-Organized civilizations), usually in a build-up towards Civil Service (Bureaucracy). The next tier of science breakthroughs are Education and the race to Liberalism.

Now, when you make a new city, it doesn't pay for itself when it is Size 1 and doesn't have buildings and isn't working (improved) resources yet. You still have to pay maintenance for it though. This is where Workers come to play, building it up to size and making sure it works as much improved tiles as possible.

Now imagine we are actually not going to stop expanding. We are actually going to go 0% science. And that's perfectly fine. As long as our economy can be sustained by either of the techs I outlined above, we will be able to thrive. Even if our scientific progress is reduced to a crawl, our cities are growing, the cottages they're supporting are growing, they're building new infrastructure, they're bringing more commerce and production, they're running Scientists if necessary.

Note that we are playing on a difficulty above Noble. Which means that the AI has an advantage, therefore we aren't facing it equally. Now on Monarch it isn't that big of an advantage, but on Emperor your best strategy is pretty much playing "catch up". Sure, you can run a 6-city empire with 80% research and 100 commerce (which means 80 beakers per turn). You can also run a 12 city empire with 40% research and 200 commerce - which again means 80 beakers per turn, but each city has more food, more resources, more production, and allows you to make more plays - you can make more Great People, you can make a bigger army and acquire more cities, you can go for National Wonders more easily, you can fine-tune your empire (it's easier to find a "perfect"), you will likely have more resources, and you aren't stagnating -- after all, if your 6 city empire has 5 cottages per. Not to mention each of these cities is going to have a Library or University or Monastery or other science multiplier, which means your "weaker" economy is going to outstrip a "stable" one, so the difference in beakers is going to be bigger.

Also, note that any city in this game can be made productive. You can make a crappy backwater village in the South Pole just to supply your other cities with Silver or Fur (common resources in tundra/ice tiles). Your entire empire gets bonus happiness points which is huge. Your little backwater city won't produce much by itself, but it will be connected to the trade route with the rest of your empire and will at least, in time, grant enough commerce to at least pay for itself. Bonus points if said filler city has water tiles, which are some of the best tiles to make a crappy city productive (though they're not as attractive for cities with okay land tiles) if only because coastal cities tend to provide more lucrative trade routes.

Tl;dr: We are basically making a big investment. Right now the tech situation looks bad, but as long as we are capable of crawling towards what is necessary for us (we only need a few choice techs in the tech tree, and the rest can be backfilled later or bought from neighbors) we are in a good spot, and it's going to pay off later when we have a bigger, stronger empire.

That is to say, there are a plethora of strategies where small empires can be just as strong as big ones (such as the World Wonder Economy), but generally, land and population are the most powerful things, and it's not uncommon for an empire that was struggling with its upkeep costs in 1 AD to suddenly become a powerhouse on all fronts by 1300 AD.

The only real slip-up that could happen to us if we handle the situation poorly and miss the Liberalism race, but that shouldn't happen since we're not even in a "terrible" economical situation. We can handle this.

Also, on an off-note, are we going for Great Library? We could trade Alphabet for Aesthetics. We have Marble. Thoughts?

EDIT: ROTFL, in the time it took me to write this everyone provided a shorter and more clear explanation. >_>

EDIT 2: We miiiiight want to adopt Hinduism pretty soon because we are, after all, neighboring with the bloodthirsty Mongols.

EDIT 3: Also, we don't need more Swordsmen or any other battle units at all, they're costing us upkeep. If we get DoW'd on then we are going to just whip out a lot of defense. Focus on the infrastructure and growing. Also, I got a tip from Eldariel: we might want to gift excess resources to neighbors for bonus diplomacy points. (Health resources take priority over happiness or strategic ones, of course)

[Murska]

The thing is, the Mongols are see-sawing between aiming to DoW on us or aiming to DoW on Saladin. If we maintain Power above Saladin, they're more likely to head that way, which will save us the costs of all that whipping. Plus, we can't work Wealth yet since Currency isn't in, so cities can pretty much build walls, workers or military units - obviously Workers are great, but variety is good. :smalltongue:

Mansa probably would trade to us but the only thing he has that we don't is Mysticism and we, on the other hand, don't have anything he doesn't.

[tyckspoon]

Since Turfan flipped Genghis currently has no access to any strategic materials (iron/copper/horses), correct? .. shame we've decided to play defensively for so long, that makes for an excellent opportunity to go ahead and take him (or at least his capital) out. Oh well.. as long as that still holds, I don't think he's much of a threat; as long as there are enough units to absorb any Keshiks he already has built the Iron-based units we have should easily fend off the early junk he'll be forced to use.

(If he does declare on us, is it permissible for us to send a raiding stack into his land to pillage his improvements and camp on his corn/rice/cow tiles? Also, probably the best result is if he declares on Saladin, then Saladin asks us to 'help', at which point we agree for the relationship bonus and then carry on with life as normal while Genghis wastes all his effort trying to beat up Saladin.)

[Murska]

He's got Iron. If you check the screenshot where the conquers that Barb city, he had something like six Swordsmen walking up there. Also, his Power is the largest in the game at the moment.

[The_Final_Stand]

Ok, ok, its short term loss, long term game, gotcha. Though that doesn't actually answer the question of "What are the objectives?".

Trust me, if I don't have objectives, then what happens will primarily be dictated by what the computer recommends. And as we have just established, this is not always optimal.

So, what do I do?

[tyckspoon]

Oh, derp. So he does. I don't suppose we know where his mine(s) are in case we need to knock them out/want to start sending spies up there to keep it suppressed?

[Murska]

The iron mine I think is right on his border with Saladin, as far away from us as is possible.

Someone decide the exact location of our next city. As for objectives, I don't really know much beyond continuing to cut down jungle and develop our land, connect our new cities to our road network, build some more workers, perhaps start on Markets in the best cities once Currency rolls in.

We should decide if we're going for any Wonders and if so, which.

[Eldariel]

The thing is, the Mongols are see-sawing between aiming to DoW on us or aiming to DoW on Saladin. If we maintain Power above Saladin, they're more likely to head that way, which will save us the costs of all that whipping. Plus, we can't work Wealth yet since Currency isn't in, so cities can pretty much build walls, workers or military units - obviously Workers are great, but variety is good. :smalltongue:

Mansa probably would trade to us but the only thing he has that we don't is Mysticism and we, on the other hand, don't have anything he doesn't.

You can build Research though, which will do lacking Wealth. :smalltongue: Also, you could build Mids (or wonders in general) for Fail Gold.

[Murska]

Guess so. I've conditioned myself over the years to not start building a Wonder that takes like 60 turns because it's not going to help. :smalltongue:

[Eldariel]

Guess so. I've conditioned myself over the years to not start building a Wonder that takes like 60 turns because it's not going to help. :smalltongue:

Failgold always helps. It's like Wealth Lite :smallcool:

[The_Final_Stand]

So, not many objectives. Connect furthest city to trade network, build markets and workers and improvements, and generally don't screw up.

Ok.

[The_Final_Stand]

Turn 10; The Time Of Emptyness

When Cathy wisely hired me as her consultant, things were grim in the Empire. We were running a deficit, even with all the money diverted from the scientists. We are surrounded by the Khan, who looks to expand his empire, by Saladin, who despises all who are not himself, and by Mansa Musa, who is also there.

All is not lost, however. The scientists approach a breakthrough on something called "Currency", which they assure me will solve all our economy problems. I am sceptical.

425 B.C.
I Ascend to the vaunted position of the Right Hand of Cathy. Who or what she has in her Left Hand, only she knows.

365 B.C.
Some mumbo jumbo called "Confucianism" spreads in our recent aquisition from the Khan.

350 B.C.
The City of Tunguska is founded between Ulm and Borealum.
http://img341.imageshack.us/img341/6175/civ4screenshot0001z.jpg

335 B.C.
Lots of stuff happens. The Sage Herodotus finishes his Great Work, a list of the Most Cultured Civilisations. The Empire is second only to Saladin in this respect, though Cathy has graciously neglected to order him decapitated as thanks for naming her "Cathy the Great the Great".
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/3171/civ4screenshot0002m.jpg

The Khan arrives on the doorstep of the Palace angrily demanding that Cathy cease all current deals with Mansa Musa. Cathy politely considers his request then politely orders him to get out.
http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/1340/civ4screenshot0003i.jpg

The scientists finally complete their work on "Currency". The new shiny pieces are distributed to all the cities, and the richer cities begin work on markets.
http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/4725/civ4screenshot0004ih.jpg

320 B.C.
The census has determined that the Empire now stands 1 million souls strong.

At the same time, the same Confucianism stuff spreads in Tunguska.

290 B.C.
A barbarian galley is sighted off the coast of Ulm.

275 B.C.
Mansa Musa, upset that we researched something before him, comes begging for the Tech of Currency. Cathy, noting that we have few enough friends, grants his request so as to forge a stronger bond. Mansa leaves delighted, only to be punched in the face by Saladin, who storms in and immediately demands we cease trading with Mansa.

Guess how that went.
http://img815.imageshack.us/img815/7715/civ4screenshot0009.jpg

http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/2738/civ4screenshot0010i.jpg
(Hint, I denied his request)

245 B.C.
A different type of what my advisors call "religion", known by the name of "Hinduism" spreads in St Petersburg. Meanwhile, that barbarian Galley finally does something and destroys the clam farm off the shore of Ulm.

230 B.C.
My spies report that a Great Spy has been born in a far off land. I'm not convinced of his brilliance, given that we know about him now.

215 B.C.
Hinduism spreads in Muscovy. Mansa Musa decides to Organise his Religious needs.

200 B.C.
I retire today. It has been a long 225 years, serving the Empress, but entirely worth it. Clearly, my rule was so great and just, that Muscovy celebrates "We Love The Despot" day to remember my passing.

http://img210.imageshack.us/img210/1875/civ4screenshot0016h.jpgThe Map as of the end of my turn.

Save. (http://www.mediafire.com/?ain4cph31d7bbcj)

So, things I did but should have done differently:
City placement, probably.
Giving Currency to Mansa. We have no friends, and I'd much rather that Mansa be on our side than we have no-one on our side. Trying to avoid any possibly scenario that we could be declared on from two fronts.
Putting cities on Wealth and Research when no "useful" buildings could be built.
Didn't defend that Work Boat, or order a replacement.
No whipping.

[Terraoblivion]

Looking over things I'm trying to work out where to go from here. We definitely need to get that whipping going, we need markets pretty quickly to dig our economy out of this hole. However, I kinda think getting more workers out is the bigger concern at this moment. Except for resources, our lands are barely improved and that's hardly ideal. Especially given how quickly a lot of our cities grow.

Speaking of that, I think we can squeeze another one in between the line at the bottom and the line just south of Moscow, but I'll be damned if I know where would be the best place. Somewhere around the rice, but not sure beyond that.

Also, you're right, handing off a current tech, and one as good as Currency at that, to Mansa Musa of all people wasn't a good idea. It's a really small relations boost, but it gives him a massive boost and he already seems to be running away with science at a crazy rate, given that he has Philosophy already. At the very least he has the following techs over us: Mysticism, Meditation or Polytheism, Priesthood, Code of Laws, Philosophy and Construction. He might well have more. He really doesn't need help with tech right now.

[Eldariel]

Just something to think about, you have enough commerce-friendly land and natural commerce that you could skip Markets if you feel so inclined, and go straight for research. A bit down the line it seems unlikely you'll want to run slider very low anyways so gold improvements give lower gains than research improvements (the deficit can then be offset via. Wealth, trades & some percentages lower research rating). And yeah, land is definitely the most important thing.

EDIT: Just to expand upon this, this is actually a rather common move simply because Markets cost a lot of hammers so for them to provide more gold than you'd get by just building Wealth instead, you'd have to run them long and in high efficiency; and generally you'll have plenty of gold lategame anyways while it's in short supply now so the immediate wealth is often more valuable than the longterm wealth from Markets. If the happiness comes into play of course, it can change the equation from situation to situation.

[Winthur]

I'd actually be inclined to heed Genghis Khan's demand for ending the deals with Mansa because this way we avoid annoying our neighbors (and we want to kiss up to them) and we also avoid Mansa even coming forward to us with the plea to grab Currency from us. True, we shut down the trade route with the biggest techie in the game, but maybe it wasn't made clear enough that we are trying to ally with Hindus right now and ravage their lands later.

[Terraoblivion]

Oh, and another reason. Mansa Musa will give us way less trouble if he's angry than Genghis will, he's not really an aggressive AI.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

Should have traded currency with him as soon as you had it. Coulda picked up a ton of great techs with it. Also cutting trade relations via demand would mean you can't talk to him for a very long time. I rarely ever do it unless I'm planning on going to war against the person anyway.

[happyturtle]

1. Happyturtle
2. Murska
3. The Final Stand
>>> 4. TerraOblivion Due by June 30<<<
5. Winthur

Don't worry about it, Stand. It was a mistake, but mistakes happen. One thing we can (and probably should) do is to go Hindu and bribe Genghis to war on Mansa (possibly with Currency to prevent Mansa getting to sell it for something, if he hasn't already) to slow down Mansa's teching. Of course Genghis will drag in Saladin, and they'll both try to drag us in too, but we can say no to that.

Genghis will DOW on us if we don't divert him soon. We're getting negatives from flipping his tiles and we can't share his favourite civic (Police State). Plus he'll want to take his horse city back. If we can get him warring for us though, he could be quite useful. The nice thing is that if Genghis takes any of Mansa's cities, we might culture flip them without having to do anything, since he'll just build units in them - plus they'll be killing him in distance maintenance. We're unlikely to culture flip them as long as Mansa owns them.

Terra, are you able to take your turn?

[Terraoblivion]

Yeah, I'll take it tomorrow.

[Terraoblivion]

Coming into power in the year 200 Before Cathy, I survey our lands and see the many great improvements of my predecessors. The impenetrable jungles of the south have been settled and begun being put to use. However, not all is well. The slaves are slacking and are growing fat from their peaceful life and much of the land lacks even the most basic improvement to become productive. This sorry state of affair is a great affront to the glory of mighty Cathy and a weakness eating at the great Russian people. I also looked at our relations with our neighbors, seeing a grim picture of a smug, rich man to the south refusing to share his wealth and violent barbarians who hate us to the north and east. Thinking over what might get the two problems to solve each other, I finally conclude that there is nothing to be done other than pray they see wisdom. If those prayers happen to be Hindu ones, all the better.

Turn 0: Whip Moscow, queuing a worker up next. Whip New Garage and queue a market up. Whip Ulm and queue a galley to protect future workboats. Messing around with diplomacy there doesn't appear to be anything that can easily appease either Saladin or the Khan, nor anyway to make Mansa Musa cheaply part with his techs. Only thing I think we can do diplomatically at the moment is convert to Hinduism and hope it staves off their wrath long enough that a solution can be found, so I took the chance and did that. I did notice something interesting, however, apparently some Mongol city called Old Sarai has so much Russian culture that it shows up as something we can liberate. I can't find it anywhere on the map, though.

Turn 3: Calendar comes in and going for the discussed plan of getting the Great Library, I set course for literature. The path does go through Mysticism and Polytheism, slowing us down by a few turns, however. Still, it's not too bad. No trades with either Mansa or Saladin present themselves, though. Just how bad the worker crunch is becomes apparent, however. Especially since most of the works were in the south building extra improvements for fledgling cities, rather than keeping up with the growth of the mature ones in the north.

http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk233/terraoblivion/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0086-1.jpg

Turn 4: Mansa Musa keeps running away with the tech race, researching Theology to go along with Philosophy. In BC years. Mysticism coming in reveals that unsurprisingly he has both Meditation and Polytheism. We will need to find a way to get another AI to cripple this guy fast or we'll be crushed by his superior tech.

Turn 5: In the interest of appeasing Genghis and getting some spare change, I sell him Mysticism for 60 gold. Quite a good deal for that outdated a tech anyway. We also get a quest to build seven stables before the renaissance.

Turn 7: Polytheism comes in as well, as does a surprisingly good trade with Mansa Musa. In exchange for the one tech we had over him, Calendar, we cleared up the old religious techs as well as getting some more spare change that went straight into deficit research. I forgot to take a screenshot, however.

Turn 8: Crack the whip like crazy. The markets in The Pub and St. Patricksburg are whipped, as is the lighthouse in Turfan.

Turn 9: All the whipped buildings come in, being replaced with a worker in The Pub, a Temple in that ridiculously fast growing city of St. Patricksburg and a Library in Turfan. I also trade Calendar for Monarchy with Saladin. I don't switch yet, since I want us to get as far ahead as possible towards Literature.

http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk233/terraoblivion/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0087-1.jpg

Turn 11: A settler to fill out that last little hole to the south is queued up in Moscow. Still not entirely sure where is the best place to put him, though.

The rest of my turnset is filled with peaceful land development and Aesthetics coming in. Turns out that Mansa Musa beat us to that one too. Still, we've been catching up some to him and greatly widening the tech gap between us on one hand and the rest of the Hindus on the other.

http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk233/terraoblivion/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0089-1.jpg

Diplomatically things have cooled quite a bit with the Malinese thanks to diverging religions, but on the other hand they're less dire with the Mongols and the Arabians. Especially the latter has experienced quite a big change, enough so that we might be able to bribe him into attacking Mansa Musa if we have something good enough to offer. Also important to notice is the fact that Genghis Khan refuses to go to war with Mansa Musa not because he's got too much on his hands, but simply because he doesn't like us enough. Seems like we have a bit more time to win him over before he attacks.

http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk233/terraoblivion/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0090.jpg
http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk233/terraoblivion/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0091-1.jpg
http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk233/terraoblivion/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0092.jpg

Which is good since we've dropped to fourth in soldiers and our economy is surprisingly weak for the time being, though once our cities have regrown from my aggressive whipping that should fix itself.

http://i281.photobucket.com/albums/kk233/terraoblivion/Civ4/Civ4ScreenShot0088-1.jpg

As a final thought, I think we ought to open borders with Genghis soon and start exploring to the east and finding his and Saladin's cities. It should help our trade and it'll be useful knowing down the line.

And here's the save. (http://www.mediafire.com/?lcc94am3e3bvzvy)

[Winthur]

Thoughts on gifting Genghis some techs (Alphabet, for instance) and seeing if it tips him over into DOWing on Mali?

[Terraoblivion]

Worth the risk, I'd say. He's hopelessly behind on tech anyway, so if we want to ever use him as an attack dog helping him catch up will benefit us in addition to the diplomatic gains.

[happyturtle]

1. Happyturtle
2. Murska
3. The Final Stand
4. TerraOblivion
>>> 5. Winthur Due by July 2<<<

I was going to suggest tech gifting.

[Terraoblivion]

Oh, hey, Winthur. You there?

[Murska]

Hmm... Probably just forgot.

[Winthur]

Sclerosis. :smallsigh: For some crazy reason I thought it was still Terra's turn; only today I realized I'm a dumbo. I'm gonna try ginkgo biloba first, and the save game in a moment.

To clarify, I basically checked the save then next day I thought I'm still waiting on someone else's turnset. _-_

[Winthur]

Okay, I took a look around everywhere. Cities seem to be managed much better now that we actually have workers. We have expanded well. I'm gunning for one more filler city that would claim another fish and copper tile in the south-east, but I am not sure if I can get there before the Malinese culture. It's mostly to deny them that piece of coast, though.

Moscow also has a ton of happy people that should be getting born, so after Settlers it's infrastructure time.

Or so I would have planned, except on turn 2 this happens:
http://i45.tinypic.com/atjrr.jpg
Nota bene I didn't gift Genghis anything because I realized it would only tip him over to Cautious at most and he still declares war at Cautious.

So, it is on.

I whip Walls on the next turn when we got declared on. We lost a Galley to the Barbarians, on a side note. Turfan, the front line city, has Walls and a bunch of mixed defenders with Combat I. More reinforcements are swarming.

Literature is finished. Mansa doesn't have it. He does have Drama though, so he can go for Music. I go for Music anyway though. It's worth a shot, though we should be thinking of Civil Service. Ah well, I decide to be risky.

With Literature, Great Library will take a few turns in Moscow. As I keep reinforcing Turfan, the Mongolian forces back away from it. Which probably means that as long as we can keep focus on one part of our empire, we can defend until we can sue for peace.

I managed to found another backwater city in the south-east to grab more land and resources, like I said.

Genghis suicided some of his forces at Turfan, we lose nothing.

In a few more turns, he signs a peace treaty with us and we even get 90 gold out of the deal, making the entire thing...

ENTIRELY POINTLESS

To be fair, it did kinda slow our development but on the plus side we shouldn't feel threatened anymore and we can just go on and snowball from our position.

You know you are bad at warmonging when a civilization completes The Great Library in the middle of your conflict like it's nothing. BTW, that civilization happens to be Russia.

Also, the city of MASSOLIT in the south east has no defender at the moment, but that's a calculated risk, I just couldn't afford a proper defender at the time, thinking the poor sob had an actual SoD at his disposal. But now, there's an Axeman going that way.

We can backfill our empire with one more city to claim the rice and some grassland tiles. We probably should, too.

Save (http://speedy.sh/XBzRs/Cathy-the-Great-AD-0250.CivBeyondSwordSave)

[happyturtle]

Lawl! Way to suck, Genghis.

>>>1. Happyturtle Due by July 8<<<
2. Murska
3. The Final Stand
4. TerraOblivion
5. Winthur

I'll look at the save tomorrow and try to get a PPP up.

[Terraoblivion]

Hmmm, why not found the southeast city one tile southeast to pick up the rice and give it a food resource?

[Winthur]

Hmmm, why not found the southeast city one tile southeast to pick up the rice and give it a food resource?

There's a former barb territory in there that got conquered by the Malinese, so that's why. And it has a food resource - fish.

[Terraoblivion]

Oh, and checking. Turns out that Genghis is ridiculously eager to accept bribes to go to war. Just a thought.

Edit: I missed the fish and I had actually totally missed that Mali had conquered the city rather than razing it. So the reason why the borders had retracted was that it was still in post-conquest anarchy.

[Murska]

I think that looking at GK's weakness and the scores we can pretty much say that Saladin and GK are both inhabiting the space reserved for one nation.

[Murska]

Happy asked me to take her turnset, so I'll do that... but probably not today (there's an hour left of today here). In a bit though.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

If Khan is wheoohrn, then I say get ready for the war and then beat him back and take that nice gold site and his capitol. If you can get feudalism soon, you can get him to capitulate and then liberate the cities.

[Terraoblivion]

He isn't wheoorn, so that's not really relevant.

[The_Final_Stand]

"wheoorn"? What on earth does that mean? Is it a reference to a strategy of some kind? :smallconfused:

[Divayth Fyr]

"wheoorn"? What on earth does that mean? Is it a reference to a strategy of some kind? :smallconfused:
From one of the strategy guides:
When an AI leader is preparing for war, the text “We have enough on our hands right now”(WHEOORN) appears when you mouse over any of the leader names listed under “Declare war on” inthe diplomacy screen.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

He isn't wheoorn, so that's not really relevant.

Sorry. Winthur posted a pick that had him wheoorn.

[Murska]

That was before we kicked his ass in a war.

[Murska]

Oh man, I tried to play the turnset but couldn't get into it - could someone go over the save and look at a few things for me:

We're about to finish Parthenon - what's our best GPF and should I build National Epic there?

What do we do with all those axemen and stuff we're building? I think we should spread Hinduism in our lands a bit more since we've chosen it as our religion.

Workers are going to run out of critical tasks soon.

I should start heading for Liberalism if we're to get there before Mansa.

Most importantly, what do we do with our upcoming Great Artist and whoever our second soon-to-arrive GP is.

[Terraoblivion]

I don't know how to judge city potential well enough to determine what the best GPF is. However, for all those units we're building, as long as we're not using them we should stick them in cities to provide happiness once we revolt to Hereditary Rule, which we should probably do soon. In fact, I think we should use the Great Artist to call Golden Age once we get close to an important bottleneck tech like Code of Laws and revolt right at the beginning of that. Seems more useful than lightbulbing a cheapish tech on a side path or culture bombing somewhere.

[Eldariel]

I don't know how to judge city potential well enough to determine what the best GPF is. However, for all those units we're building, as long as we're not using them we should stick them in cities to provide happiness once we revolt to Hereditary Rule, which we should probably do soon. In fact, I think we should use the Great Artist to call Golden Age once we get close to an important bottleneck tech like Code of Laws and revolt right at the beginning of that. Seems more useful than lightbulbing a cheapish tech on a side path or culture bombing somewhere.

Just count the food resources; the city with the highest food production with the least citizen invested generally works the best as a GP farm (though when you actually want to speed-produce one and take Pacifism-turns and starve the city, overall food becomes more important for rebounding of course). So basically any cities with a 6 food title and a 5 food title are quite perfect.

[Terraoblivion]

I guess. It's still not something I'm really that good at, I just tend to zone out about things like that.

Also, looking at our tech path to Liberalism, it's going to be tricky. It'll take at least six techs to reach it for us, while Mansa is down to only needing three. Not just that, most of the prerequisite techs are kinda meh and won't benefit us much in the short term. We can drastically improve their utility by getting Paper through CoL and Civil Service, but that adds 15 turns to the projected speed compared to going through Theology. We can't get anything to help us from any of the techs around us. We have nothing to offer Mansa for his techs and Saladin and Genghis have nothing useful. I'm also pretty sure we're behind Mali in terms of tech rate.

However, we can slow them down by bribing Genghis with a tech to like us more and then pay him to invade Mali. We'd need to sign open borders with him as well, though. He's willing to do that if we bribe him with a decent tech, so it's definitely a possible plan.

[Winthur]

Oh man, I tried to play the turnset but couldn't get into it - could someone go over the save and look at a few things for me:

We're about to finish Parthenon - what's our best GPF and should I build National Epic there?

Figure we need a Great Scientist. We might need to lightbulb Education. As for National Epic I'm not sure myself yet.



What do we do with all those axemen and stuff we're building? I think we should spread Hinduism in our lands a bit more since we've chosen it as our religion.

Presently - nothing. I just put them on for the sake of makeshift defense against the Mongol horde.



Workers are going to run out of critical tasks soon.
Improve all the terrain and afterwards just make more roads for easier maneuverability.


I should start heading for Liberalism if we're to get there before Mansa.

True.


Most importantly, what do we do with our upcoming Great Artist and whoever our second soon-to-arrive GP is

Either culture bomb either of the borders or just settle him in a culturally pressured city.

[Murska]

I don't think that we have any cities in danger of being culture-flipped any time soon, and once we begin conquering those cities will be in the middle of our empire anyway.

[ObadiahtheSlim]

If you don't need the culture bomb or aren't going for a culture win, just burn him for a GA.

[Terraoblivion]

Lightbulbing a useful tech would probably be more effective than settling him, I'd say. Drama is up next on the list of GA techs, but not sure what comes after that.

[happyturtle]

Golden Age, swap to Caste, run max scientists in the best Great Person city/ies, swap back to Slavery at the end of the GA. Works best if done after Parthenon, and even better if we have Philo for running Pacifism at the same time (make sure GP farm has religion).

Also plan well how to use the extra production and money in the not GP cities.

[Murska]

Okay I should probably accept the fact that I am unable to find the time to play this save for now. Damn life.

[happyturtle]

Let's face it: This game is getting boring. Time to abandon ship? Maybe start again with a different premise after I get my laptop repaired in a couple of weeks?

[Terraoblivion]

Doesn't sound like a bad idea. Really, variants that require waiting for a long time is probably a bad idea. They'll eventually have a lot of time sitting around doing nothing much. Unless the difficulty is really high nothing will really be much of a challenge and we'll be in the perfect spot to do whatever when the variant calls for it us to do something because we can mess with the AI and outbuild it well.

[Winthur]

Doesn't sound like a bad idea. Really, variants that require waiting for a long time is probably a bad idea. They'll eventually have a lot of time sitting around doing nothing much. Unless the difficulty is really high nothing will really be much of a challenge and we'll be in the perfect spot to do whatever when the variant calls for it us to do something because we can mess with the AI and outbuild it well.

I think it was Murska who wanted a modern warfare game. Just make a game with an Industrial/Modern/Future start (interesting because nobody really plays those because it's not pure or something like that; also from MP I happen to know Serfdom is an OP civic on there) and then put da modes in Always War so you totes can faceroll with tanks l0l0l0l h4h4h4 kitty <3

[happyturtle]

Sure, we can do that. I've done a couple of later start games, but never as far ahead as Industrial or Modern.