Armchair Civ

Uneventful set of turns here. Versailles was completed by someone else, so we lost all that time in Damascus. Not cool. I'm basically building culture buildings of all sorts in Damascus and Medina. I've been able to swing some trades with Hatty to get more health resources, so there's room for growth in Medina once again. I've got two workers building a lumbermill on the forested hill there. Make sure when Medina grows again that we're working that tile to get an extra 4 production. It'll really help us get the temples and monastaries going there. I've got a Christian missionary headed toward Mecca right now. I sent one earlier, but he failed to spread the religion due to the fact that there already four religions there. If this second missionary fails, try to build another one in Damascus. I took the chance and switched our religion to Confusianism and I think it paid off. Victoria is still cool with us and the rest of the people on our continent are back in the safe diplomacy zone. Buddhist Hatty isn't much of a warmonger and is ok with us as well. The other two Buddhists are pretty weak, and we should be able to fend off an attack from them with the help of our allies. I'd like to get Mao to open his borders to us again, which might take giving him a free technology.

We are almost at Rifling, which will seriously help our military. The next step from there is a straight shot to Democracy. Once we get that, we're going to have to discuss how we want to approach the rest of the game. We have the option of jacking up our culture slider and putting all of our ecomomy into creating culture. If we go that route, we will pretty much be stalled out on technology the rest of the game (no more new techs). Or we could continue to play a traditional game and focus on buildings to give us culture. This will be a key decision point, but we have a few turns before we have to make it.

But yeah, in the meantime, it's all about getting culture buildins, mostly temples and monastaries of all sorts built in Damascus and Medina.
- posted by Shane @ 6:40 PM
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10 turns (1370 AD - 1470 AD)

Start of my turn.

Narjan (before changes)



Things to note here. Because this is not one of our main culture centers, we don't really need a monastery here. Notice how our health is currently 13 out of 13. We should probably be bulding an aqueduct, or better yet, a harbor here to increase health. We also have access to universities now, which would be a better building than a monastery if you want to have a science focus. Because it's almost done, I think I'll finish it. Harbor is next up. Also, on the right, you can see we're working an engineer and a priest here. I think we'd rather be working the forested plains tile and the grassland with the cottage though. Why? Because all the priest and engineer are giving us are extra production. The engineer gives us +2 production, +3 GPP, and +2 culture. The priest gives us +1 production, +3 GPP, +1 gold, and +2 culture. Remember, we don't care about culture or GPP in this city. So all we're really getting from these guys is +2 production total. What's better about using the tiles instead? We get +1 food and +2 production from the forested plains. We get +2 food and +1 commerce from the grassland. That's +3 food, +2 production, and +1 commerce total, meaning, our city can actually continue to grow at a nice rate because of the food. Also, cottages don't actually improve into hamlets or whatever unless they're actually being used. When the cottages grow, they make us more money. Lastly, it would be useful to build a work boat for that fish in the corner. Our city won't actually be able to work it (notice how it's darkened out because it's outside this city's fat cross), but it will give us an extra fish resource that we might be able to trade to someone else. Also need to spread Christianity and Confucianism here.


Mecca (before changes)



We really have to watch this place. We just got a Great Scientist. We don't want these guys. We want Great Artists. The more random Great People generated by Mecca, the fewer Great Artists we'll get from Medina. That's why we want to minimize Great Person production here. Employing that engineer on the right is bad. He gives us +3 GPP, plus an additional +3 GPP due to our philosophical bonus. We don't ever want to work any specialists here and you have to watch that the computer doesn't auto assign them when the city grows. So I'm going to get rid of that engineer and work that grassland instead, although we should get a cottage built there to make it more lucrative. Another thing I'll try to do is get Christianity in Mecca. That way, we can build Christian temples and monasteries here. This is one of our culture cities, so we want as many culture buildings as possible. Also note how our unhealthiness of 17 has overtaken our health limit of 16. This will stifle growth until we can get some kind of new health building built or we can get another health resource.


Medina (before changes)



Things are going well here. Monastery here is fine. We like culture. Note that we're generating +60 GPP here per turn (we are employing six artist specialists of course). And they're all Great Artist points. That's big. I noticed that we've jointed two Great Artists here, as you can see at the bottom right. When we make Great Artists, we should be joining them to Damascus for now, as it is not generating as much culture as Mecca and Medina. Other things in the gameplan include getting Judaism, and Confucianism going in Medina. And also, note again that we've exceeded our health limit due to our high population. We lose food for that.


Damascus (before changes)



I think everything is nice and tidy here for now as well. Notice we're only generating 51 culture a turn here, compared to the much higher values for Mecca and Medina that you can see above. That's why we need to join the Great Artists here. Versailles is taking forever to build because we only have 13 production total here. That's fine of course, since Damascus is a commerce/culture center, but it makes it a pain in the ass to build expensive buildings. Hopefully we'll finish the wonder before the cpu does. Just need Judaism here.


Baghdad (before changes)



Not too bad here. I'll get a worker to build a cottage on that grassland so we can make it useful to work. That way, we can start growing again (notice how we're stagnant, because we're consuming as much food as we make). Again, this is our military city. We have a barracks built here, so I think we should just keep making macemen. Macemen are better units than longbowmen in the long run. This is not a culture city, but we should still get those three unrepresented religions going here. Why? So we can build the temples (requirements for those +50% culture buildings that I always talk about).


Mycenian (before changes)



This place is kind of armchair right now, but it's no fault of ours. We're 3 health in the hole here. Using the engineer here kind of hurts because he doesn't make food like a food tile would, but I think it's necessary in order to increase production. We only have 9 production here without the engineer (don't be fooled by the 58 hammers thing at the top, it's that high for one turn because the prodution of the previous building had hammers left over). I'll leave the tiles as they are, but again, health has become our main issue. I'm going to cancel the colisseum. All that building does is give us extra happiness. We are indeed at the happiness limit here, but we could always move a soldier here to deal with that (remember, Monarchy!). Better yet, we could build some religious temples (I'll be redundant and once again mention that we need temples everywhere to build those +50% culture buildings). OR BEST OF ALL, we can build a harbor here. That gives us extra health, plus extra cash from trade routes. Still need to spread Christianity and Hinduism here.

What happened on my turn... Lots of action. Did a ton of trading with the other side of the world to get up to Banking. Learned Liberalism and got Printing Press for free to fix our economy a little bit. Started researching Nationalism. The Hermitage national wonder is key for us and will probably be going in damascus eventually. I switched our civics around a little bit. I went to Mercantilism, which gives us a free specialist in every city. This means, that when you look at the cities, you'll see all of them have one specialist now, such as an engineer or artist. I know I said earlier that we don't want more specialists in Mecca because it will help create random Great People, but this is offset by getting another artist in Medina.

One thing's for certain, the world is becoming a dangerous place. I would love to swtich our national religion to Confucianism, since that's what Mao and Kublai Khan have adopted, but doing so would piss off Victoria. Since she's our neighbor and has the greatest threat potential to us, we don't want to do that. It may be worth out while to spread Confucianism like crazy to Victoria so she'll adopt it. That way, everyone on our continent can be Confuciasts and we can then focus almost solely on our navy for defense from the other continent. Mao is really pissed off at us right now. I don't think he's much of a war monger and I think he'd attack Victoria first, but we should watch out for him. And Isabella too, because she is out of her mind games. If you are not her religion, she usually hates you and can strike at any time. Beware. This might get real tough real soon. We may have to have Mecca start pumping out Macemen. And after Nationalism, we might have to focus on learning Rifling ASAP.

Oh yeah, we're up to >90 GPP per turn in Medina now. Big time.
- posted by Shane @ 5:59 PM
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10 turns (1170 AD - 1280 AD)

Ok, here are some things that I did to start. The computer is stupid and likes to work specialists in places where they shouldn't be worked, so I changed all the specialists in Narjan, Mycenian, and Mecca to work tiles instead. Remember, Mecca already is generating a lot of GPP (which we don't want). When it works more specialists, that's not good for us, as we get more random Great People that we don't necessarily want from there. A few other things. You started the Hindu Mandir, which is the +50% culture building in Mecca. I suppose this is fine. But just remember, if we remain at six cities for the rest of the game, we will only be able to build two Hindu Mandirs total. The same goes for the other +50% culture buildings of the other religions. Because we have three cities that need to get to 50000 culture, we have to make sure to stagger the building of these things so that they're evenly distributed amongst the three cities. We don't want to get into the situation where two of our ciites have lots of these +50% buildings, while one doesn't have any. Just be careful when you build these. I like the call on Versailles in Damascus. Could use more culture bonuses there and it isn't a danger to overtake Medina with GPP like Mecca is right now. The trade for sugar was also key, as we could really use health right now. I also traded our horses (useless to us) for Victoria's bananas. I made a few tech trades with the computer civs...I noticed that Victoria had macemen. It was of the utmost importance for us to trade for Machinery so we could start building macemen as well. Learning Philosophy right now is probably fine. It really doesn't do anything for us, since Taoism was already founded, but it is a requirement for Liberalism down the line, which I think is the tech we should aim for right now. As for what we're building right now, I switched around one thing. I started Baghdad on a temple instead of the monastery. Remember, temples in the random cities help us because they are requirements for the +50% buildings. Monasteries don't do a whole lot for us. If you built it because you wanted to build Islamic missionaries, just remember that we are using the Organized Religion civic and we can build missionaries without monasteries. Also thought it was weird that we have two farms near Mecca, but oh well, no biggie. (Were you thinking of chain linking farms to Baghdad? May not be a bad idea.) Oh, and here's another random note. I saw that we have lots of cottages on plains in Baghdad and some other places. Baghdad doesn't have a lot of food, and plains are a food deficient tile. We probably won't be able to work all those tiles due to food shortage, so the workers should be focusing on building cottages on grasslands and flood plains in food rich cities like Mecca and Damascus. Plains aren't very useful to us in most places. The only place they're going to be used right now is Mycenian because we have so much damn food there. Just remember, it takes two food to feed one tile. If a tile produces two food, it is food neutral. If it produces more than two food, it creates a food surplus which allows for growth. If it produces one or zero food, it takes away surplus food and hurts growth. That's why plains are generally bad for cottages unless you have lots and lots of food from other sources or it is late in the game and you have learned Biology. We also have some cottages on some tiles that aren't in range to be worked from anywhere. We can only work tiles within a city's fat cross (basically two squares away including diagonals).

Here's what happened on my turns... Just focused on building mostly. Started making macemen in Baghdad. For now, Mecca is going to be focused on building missionarries so every city has all of our religions. This is so they can get started on temples. Great Artist was born in Medina (yay). Sent it to Damascus since it's still low on culture growth rate. Traded for Feudalism and Compass from Kublai Khan. Also got Optics and Construction (as a throw in) from Victoria. I've got our tech tree set to beeline to Liberalism, so we can get the free tech, most likely either Printing Press or Nationalism. I'm pretty sure we'll be the first one to get it. We're nearing the point where we have to decide whether to continue in a traditional game mode or to go into a "culture cocoon". I'll talk about this later.

These are some of the things I think we should focus on in the next few turns. Right now, Mecca is just about tapped out on culture buildings. It's built pretty much all it can. We don't want it building more wonders there because we don't want any more GPP there. So what we need to do is get Confusianism and Christianity in Mecca. Then, it can build a couple more temples and monasteries. When not building those, Mecca should be building just missionaries to spread our religions to all of our cities. We want all of our ciites to have all five religions that we know right now. Buddhism and Taoism were founded elsewhere, and since we don't have any religionless cities, the only way we can learn those is if the computer sends a missionary to us. Baghdad is of course our military city and it should be building just macemen right now, unless it takes a break to build temples. Our two seaside cities should be focusing on growth and commerce. I did have Mycenian start on a caravel so we can meet civs we haven't been in contact with yet. There is a Confucian missionary headed toward Mecca right now. If it fails to spread Confucianism there, Mycenian should build another Confucian missionary. Right now, it's all about spreading religion. When Medina finishes the Globe Theatre, it should start up on temples and monasteries. As for our workers, they should continue to build cottages on grasslands and flood plains. I also have one worker hooking up the gold resources that we stole from Victoria through border expansion. It looks like we might be getting to the point where some of Victoria's cities rebel and join our civ. Canterbury is the only one worth keeping because of the clam resource. The other two should just be destroyed, as they'd just be a drain on our economy with little to offer us in the way of useful resources.
- posted by Shane @ 10:56 PM
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10 turns (800 AD - 1000 AD)

So just a few notes on starting my turns... I cancelled the Globe Theatre in Damascus. We absolutely need to have this in Medina. We are already maximized our growth in Medina due to happiness constraints. This means that we're starting to get angry citizens who take up food but aren't productive at all. For the GP farm, we need to get BIG, meaning no unhappiness in Medina is a very good thing. Also, I cancelled the obelisk in Najran. Why? Obelisks are good early game because they are a cheap way to generate culture in order to get your borders to expand. Later in the game, they do close to nothing, as temples give 3x the culture and are pretty cheap as well. The only places we'd want to build obelisks now are our three main culture cities (since we need three cities with 50000 culture to get a cultural victory). Every other city we have can completely ignore culture. It does close to nothing for us in those cities. The only culture related building that we really need in the outside cities are temples, because you need three temples of one religion to build the heavy hitter religious building that gives +50% to culture in a city (they all have different names, you can look in the instructions to see what they're called). By similar reasoning, I cancelled the monastery in Mycenian. Though the +10% to science from the monastery is nice, I changed to a temple. You'll noticed that we have unhappiness there, and the temple gives us another happiness point.

Also, another note. Because all our cities can now use specialists, it's important to semi micromanage the cities now. This is due to the computer autoassigning worked tiles after growth. The computer will often work specialists in a city when you don't want them. For example, Mycenian was working two artists when I loaded up the game. This does not help us at all. Mycenian is not one of the cities we are trying to build culture in. Additionally, working artists there will not help us to generate Great People, since Medina and Mecca (unfortunately) are doing that. I'm not real enthused about the rate of GP generation in Mecca right now, as it's ahead of Medina right now in GP points. This means that our third GP in a row may not be an artist. That isn't optimal for us. I'm torn about possibly switching to caste system at this point. This would allow us to run more than two artists in Medina, but it would also mean the Globe Theatre gets built slower. Medina is a key city right now. It's a fine act between balancing Great Artist generation, gettin the Globe Theatre built for the future, and utilizing the gold tiles to really help our research rate. Focusing on any one of those choices compromises the other two.

Things that happened during my turns. We learned Music, but we weren't first. That means we didnt' get the Great Artist. Not good news, but it isn't the end of the world. I started researching Divine Right. We can still get Islam, but it's important that we use our Great Prophet to speed up research. If you put the cursor over the research bar at the top of the screen, you can see how many beakers we need to learn that tech. For Divine Right we need about 1700 beakers. Our Great Prophet can be used to give us 1100 beakers towards it. That means, that when we have accumulated 600 beakers total for Divine Right, you should use the Great Prophet who is sitting in Mecca to gain the extra 1100 and learn it. This will be happening during your next set of turns. I did a little tech trading, but wasn't too trigger happy. I got Currency, because the extra trade routes can really help our economy. Noticed how I didn't trade for Construction, Calender, or Feudalism. We just don't need those right now. Construction let's us improve travel over rivers (not too pressing of an issue right now), build war elephants (offensive unit that doesn't fit our strategy and we can't even build anyway because of our lack of ivory), build catapults (offensive unit), or build colosseums (no culture bonus, we don't really care). Calender lets us build plantations, but we don't have any resources that require that. Feudalism is very expensive and only really allows us to build longbows. The plan for defensive units should be to build macemen once we learn Machinery and Civil Service.

Here's something good that happened during my turns. I decided to switch to Caste System in order to get Medina to generate the Great Artist before Mecca would generate us a random GP. Look here.



This shows how much our top three culture cities are generating a turn. Don't worry about the total cutlure for now, just note that we are very far away from winning with 50000 culture in each. Damascus is only generating 20 culture per turn, compared to 53 and 30 for Mecca and Medina. I'm going to choose to join our Great Artist with Damascus. What this does is give us 3 extra gold per turn there as well as +14 culture per turn. That's big. Later in the game, we will use the Great Artists to create a great work, but for now, early in the game, it is better for them to join the cities. Sorry if that doesn't make any sense right now, but it'll be clearer as we make more and more Great Artists.

Here are some things we should take care of within the next few turns. As stated above, use the Great Prophet to learn Divine Right when we get to 600 or so beakers. Damascus should be building nothing but culture buildings such as temples and monasteries right now. Hold off on the Hindu Mandir and any of the other +50% culture buildings for now. Those are expensive and require some planning since we can only build a limited number of those (due to the three temple requirement). Like you mentioned before, we should be building cottages on all grassland or flood plain tiles not in Medina. You should be getting a Great Person on your turn from Mecca. If it's a Great Prophet or Great Engineer, save it. If it's a Great Scientist, go ahead and build a science academy in Mecca (our best science city) with it. Perhaps we can miraculously get a Great Artist out of Medina before Mecca makes a GP. Speaking of Medina...



Here's the Great Person farm in action. Currently employing 5 artists, giving us a 15 Great Person points (GPP) per turn there. The National Epic itself gives us 1 GPP. That gives us a base rate of 16 GPP. But you'll note that the fact that we're philosophical gives us +100% birth rate and the National Epic gives us +100% birth rate for an additional +200% birth rate total. In the end, we're getting +48 GPP per turn in Medina. It will get even better if we can scrounge up some additional health (we are at the health limit of 15/15 right now) and use the pacifism civic (even more % bonus). Notice how in Medina I'm working all farm tiles and a single production tile. That one production tile is needed to help create the Globe Theatre. Be on the look out for opportunites to trade resources with Victoria for her health resources (banana, sugar). We may have to trade happiness resources to her, but this is ok for now. If you'll remember, we are using the hereditary rule civic. This allows us to increase happiness in cities by adding troops stationed there. If Medina or any other city ever gets unhappy (has the small red angry face next to it on the main screen), just build a military unit and move it there. Just make sure to manage Medina well so that it is always 1. Working only farms and that one production tile, and 2. working as many artist specialists up to the point where the city is still growing (not "stagnant").
- posted by Shane @ 7:23 PM
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10 turns (375 AD - 600 AD)

Pretty uneventful set of turns on this end. Finished the Sistine Chapel in Damascus. National Epic is on its way to being finished in Medina. After that, we'll finish the Globe Theatre and the Great Person factory will be ready for action. Mecca has been cranking out culture buildings and we should probably start building random wonders there after this last temple is done. The Great Library might be a decent option here. Damascus is pretty much on the same plan I think. Just pump out the culture buildings. Baghdad has become the designated military city for now, as it's the best production city that isn't focused on culture. We should probably just build axemen here until we hit a health or happiness limit. The smaller cities should be focused on infrastructure and growth at this point. I think our workers would best be used in getting farms in every possible flood plains around Medina and getting cottages up on grasslands in other cities. Our research rate is really bad right now, so it'll be good to get our economy going. Notice how I started on a Courthouse in Mycenian. Lots of maintenance there. Our second Great Person was born, but unfortunately it was another prophet (wanted an engineer). I didn't use him for anything right now. I think he'd be most useful to give us a boost on reasearch for Divine Right later on, giving us Islam. When we finish Music, I'm not sure where we should go tech wise. Divine Right is an option, but we may need to start on Civil Service or Metal Casting next if the computer civs aren't willing to trade those to us. We don't want to get too behind on military related techs.
- posted by Shane @ 9:11 PM
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10 turns (75 BC - 175 AD)

I'll just start from the beginning with Great People. Sorry if any of it is too basic, but better too much explanation than too little. A Great Person is born in a city whenever the Great Person meter maxes out. So how can we do that? Three ways really. First, certain wonders give you a certain number of Great Person points per turn. Additionally, these points are always of a certain type. For example, The Hanging Gardens give you +2 Great Engineer points per turn, while The Collosus gives you +2 Great Merchant points per turn. Your first Great Person requires 100 total Great Person points in any one city. When you finally accumulate 100, a Great Person is born. The percent chance of creating a certain type of Great Person is dependent on the type of points (engineer, prophet, artist, scientist, merchant) generated. After the first Great Person is born, the requirement to make a new one is increased to 200 total points. And each time after that, the requirement goes even higher. Here's where our civ is right now.



We currently have 120 out of 200 Great Person points required to generate the next Great Person. The requirement is 200 because we already made a Great Prophet when the slider hit 100. We are generating 8 Great Person points per turn in Mecca. How? The Oracle, which we built in Mecca generates +2 prophet GP points. The Hanging Gardens generates +2 engineer GP points. Our base GP point generation per turn is +4, which doubles for us because we are using a philisophical civ. So why does it say that we have a 73% chance of making a Great Prophet and only a 26% chance of making a Great Engineer at this point? Because The Hanging Gardens were just built recently and The Oracle has been making us prophet GP points only for a little while.

Ok, here's the long term plan for the Great Person farm in Medina. Great Person farms are based on working specialists in a city. What are specialists? They're these guys.



Note that I'm not actually working any specialists here as all the icons on the right are blank. I just posted the picture to show what the specialist does. An artist specialist generates 1 beaker, 4 culture, and 3 Great Person points per turn. 3 Great Person points per turn are a lot. That's even more than a single wonder grants you. So the gist of the Great Person farm is to work as many of these specialists as humanly possible. The problem with specialists is that they use up food while not actually generating any. Whenever you employ, say, an artist specialist in a city, it's like working a foodless tile that says "+1 beaker, +4 culture, and +3 Great Person points". It's almost like a mine or a quarry for culture and Great Person points instead of hammers. Now as you've seen by now, you can't have a city full of just mines because you aren't working any food tiles to sustain your population. The same goes for specialists. To use a lot of specialists you have to have a lot of food. That's why we want to be building farms everywhere we can in Medina. But food isn't the only cap on population. If your city becomes too unhealthy or too unhappy, your people will sit on their asses instead of working a tile or working as a specialist. This is why we want to focus on health buildings (granaries, aquaducts, The Hanging Gardens) and connect health resources. So then, what are we going to do about happiness then? This.

The Globe Theatre
+6 culture, +1 artist GPP
No unhappiness in city, can turn 3 citizens into artist.
Requires: Drama, 6 theatres

Once this is built in Medina, we will never have to worry about our people getting unhappy there again. We'll just have lots of artist specialists and farms in order to feed them. Additionally, you should know that you can't just hire specialists wherever you want. You have to meet certain requirements. As you can see The Globe Theatre allows you to employ 3 artists. A building like a normal theatre lets you employ 2 more. So the types of buldings you have in your city are another cap on how many specialists you can run in a city (unless you use the caste system civic, which removes the cap on the number of artists, scientists, or merchants you employ). So just to sum up, if we want to make a Great Person farm, we want lots of food, health, happiness, and things that allow us to use more specialists. Oh, and more mltipliers (besides philosophical trait, which we already have).

National Epic
+4 culture, +1 artist GPP
+100% Great Person birth rate in city (adds on top of philosophical bonus)
Requires Literature, library in city

The Parthenon (already built elsewhere, oh well)
+10 culture, +2 artist GPP
+50% Great Person birth rate in all cities
Requires Polytheism

Pacifism civic
+100% Great Person birth rate in cities with state religion, +1 gold support cost per military unit
Requires Philosophy

We're going to want all of these eventually (except The Parthenon, which was already built of course).

Alright, with that out of the way here's what I did during my turn. Because Medina is going to be the Great Person farm, I started building an aqueduct there instead of the library. Also started on a work boat instead of a library in Mycenian. Right now, libraries don't do much in either of these cities. Libraries give you a +25% bonus to science in the city. Medina is currently making 3 beakers a turn and 25% of that is less than 1. Mycenian is at 1 beaker per turn so building a library there right now does nothing. Eventually libraries might be decent in these cities, especially Medina since it builds culture, but I think right now we should focus on growth. Also, I think we had our workers working in reverse. One was building a farm near Mecca, where I think we'd be better off building cottages. The other worker was building a cottage in Medina, where pretty much all we want are farms whereever they can be built. Great Person factories are all about food and health. I decided to send both workers south to Damascus in order to improve tiles and speed up production of the Sistine Chapel (+2 culture per specialist per turn! That's A LOT more culture in the Great Person farm).

So here's my take on where we're at after my turns... New settler is headed to that space to the west, one tile north of the cow, and one tile southwest of the deer. After the city is founded, we should start on a theatre there. Theatre's are better value than obelisks, as they're still pretty cheap to build and provide +3 culture rather than +1. We should also chop down that jungle in Damascus and build a mine on that hill. I'll leave the rest up to you. Things we could use right now are more military, more theatres (we need 6 total before we can build the Globe Theatre), and it would be nice to finish the Sistine Chapel just in case the computer gets the funny idea to finish it using a Great Engineer. Oh, and I just wanted to point this out.



I'm pretty sure both of the white cities shown will be ours sometime in the future. They will succumb to our cultural might, just you wait. (If these cities do happen to flip to us during one of your turns, destroy them, as they are in horrible places.)
- posted by Shane @ 7:40 PM
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10 turns (600 BC - 350 BC)

No pictures today. Here's what happened during my turns. I interrupted the Sistine Chapel in Damascus in order to improve our military by a few axemen. We don't want to neglect our army too much. The last thing we want to do is turn into a tasty little powerless morsel for the warmonger civs to go after. Started on the Hanging Gardens in Mecca. This is going to be the most important wonder for us to have. Because of our starting location, we are not going to have a lot of cities, so we need to maximize growth in the handful that we have as much as possible. I founded Mycenian by conquering the barb city to the east. Luckily, they had founded their city in just the right place to keep. The major move I made came on my last turn, just when Alphabet came online. The first thing I did was change our religion to "no religion" in order to improve relations with Mao and Kublai Khan. Computer players will sometimes give you better offers in trades when you have improved relations with them. I ended up trading Theology to Mao for a buttload of techs that we had been skipping over previously. Also used our Great Prophet to give us Code Of Laws. I could have used him to build a holy temple for one our religions, but I would rather not improve the Great Prophet birth rate in Mecca. I wanted to improve our chances of getting a Great Engineer there later on. I think we are now the world tech leader by a comfortable margin.

I think for the next few turns, we should focus on improving infrastructure and growth. Because of our recent expansion, you'll notice that we are now at 50% research. This is fine for now, but it's a sign that we should start working on our economy in a little bit. But currently, I really, really want to finish the two wonders we have being built right now. Once our cities are connected by roads, I think we should get two more mines going in Mecca to speed up production. It's also important to have a worker chop down that jungle covering the rice in Damascus and get a farm down there. That'll help improve growth there so we can work more mines and it will also give us a health bonus everywhere else. The Sistine Chapel takes a long time to build, so we should emphasize production and growth there over everything else. Mycenian needs a fishing boat after the obelisk is done. Baghdad is kind of our free city which can go in almost any direction once the granary is done. Medina should be working on health buildings almost exclusively now, as that will be our Great Person factory a little bit down the road. As we continue to learn the art techs, we'll want to get the National Epic and Globe Theater going in Medina. If you're not sure about the eventual Great Person factory plan there let me know and I can explain it in further detail.

Oh, and I almost forgot...we should switch our state religion back to Hinduism in a couple of turns. Whenever we switch, we have to wait 5 turns before we can change it again. Since we are using the Organized Religion civic, having a state religion that is in most our cities will drastically improve production. I only went to no religion briefly in order to get the best possible trade, as noted above.

**Whoops, I just noticed something that we should get corrected ASAP. There's a mine built on the stone near Medina. In order to use the stone we have to have a quarry built there. Stone will improve production of the Hanging Gardens by 50%. Ignore what I said above and make this the #1 priority. We should change the mine to a quarry and connect the stone to Medina by road.
- posted by Shane @ 6:52 PM
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10 more turns (1200 BC - 0875 BC)

Let's optimize...

Mecca before:


Mecca after:


Medina before:


Medina after:


Damascus before:


Damascus after:


And now we have enough gold surplus to move the slider up to 80% research.



So to summarize, by just switching which tiles were being worked, we have done the following:
Decreased build time of The Oracle by 3 turns
Increased build time of a settler by 1 turn
Decreased buld time of an obelisk by 3 turns
Decreased research time of Mathematics by 7 turns

It should be mentioned that we did decrease growth in both Mecca and Damascus by doing this. However, Mecca is already at a state of unhealthiness from population, so we really don't want additional growth there anyway. Damascus is going to take one additional turn to grow which is fine. I wanted to build a worker there after the obelisk is done, so we needed to wait two turns for the obelisk to finish anyway.

So these changes were the basis of my turns. A little later, I noted this:



We could speed up the settler production by three turns by cracking the slavery whip. By doing that, we decreased the population in Medina by one and also decreased happiness there by one for ten turns. Each of these are fine. We are at our growth limit here, so any additional growth would have been wasted. Now we can grow back up to our upper limit. The happiness penalty does not hurt us at all. Note that we have a buffer of four happiness before we reach the limit there. Cracking the whip was a no brainer. Just FYI, slavery as a civic is just amazing.

Other things happenings and points of note... I built a mine on the copper in Damascus after it expanded. The mine you built was on a random hill. The Oracle finished and I chose to take Theology for free, giving us a third religion in Christianity. It will be tough to be the first to Code Of Laws now, but if we start soon, we'll have a chance. After Mathematics, our main tech goals will be to learn Alphabet, the three art techs following it, and the remaining three religious techs. I'd like to get Drama ASAP. We are already a little behind in that regard. Our theaters should be up in our three main culture cities by 1000 AD. Everything else we should learn on an as needed basis to keep our growth and military at a reasonable rate. I pumped out a few more warriors to scout the area to the east. Looks like a barbarian town has been founded there, possibly interfering with our plans to settle the blue dot. I'm thinking we should probably just settle the green dot (remember, the new green dot, not the one I X'ed out) with the settler we already have. Then we can send a bunch of our axemen east to take out the barb town. If the barb town is founded on the blue dot, we can keep it, otherwise, we'll need to destroy it and make a new settler. Expansion wise, settling the blue dot is our number one priority as Medina really needs the extra health. As far as wonders go, our time is running out to build the Parthenon. Longer term, we could really use the Hanging Gardens. Remember, do not build any wonders in Medina, as it will mess up our great person birth plan. After Mathematics is done, we should immediately build an aqueduct in Medina, with a complete focus on production, no growth.

Also be sure to check out the game charts, specifically the power graph. We are getting to the point when random CPU opponents might attack us because we are so weak. I don't fully remember Victoria's personality profile, but some computers will go after you even if relations are good.
- posted by Shane @ 5:50 PM
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10 turns (2800 BC - 1640 BC)

So I think we're currently on the right track overall. Because we're slightly boxed in by Victoria, I agree that rapid expansion is a good idea. I did make a few changes to increase efficiency though, as at this stage of the game, speed is of the utmost importance.



This was the current state of Mecca when I received it. It looks like the worker has just recently finished the pasture on the cow resource, so we should take advantage of that square. Basically, I think it's well worth it to give up one commerce a turn for three extra production.



After the change, we've decreased settler build time by 4 turns, though we're also increased our research time by 1 turn. Again, I think this is a good deal, as we can settle the next city faster. Additionally, there is still room for growth in Mecca, and the sooner we finish that settler, the faster it can get growing again.

I also made a change in management of Medina. Here's how it came in.



The biggest reason we wanted an obelisk in that city was so we could expand it's borders. Border expansion for a city comes when it reaches 10 culture. In the picture, you'll notice that we're already at 9 culture, despite not having even finished the obelisk yet. How is this possible? It looks like Hinduism has spread to Medina by way of river, just as it had London. The religious presence here gives us a +1 per turn bonus to culture, meaning we could have skipped the obelisk altogether and still gotten our borders to expand. We probably should have started on a worker here about 9 turns ago, or at least when Medina reached population 2. Since the obelisk is about halfway finished and we will want one there eventually, I decided to just finish it. But 17 turns is an awful long time.



So now we've cut down construction time to 5 turns. Again, this cuts our commerce down, but you'll notice that this has no effect on our research time. Also important to note is the fact that Medina has already reached it's health limit (remember the 9 tiles of flood plains), so rapid growth in this city will be discouraged. We might as well get more production from this city instead of all that excess food by changing a worked tile from flood plains to the forested hill.

After changing around some of the tile management, I also switched our tech research to Bronze Working. The barbs are coming now, and if we don't upgrade our military before the barbs start using archers, we are dead. Finishing Bronze Working took nearly all of my turns. Luckily, we have a copper resource within the area of the white dot on the map plan. I started to send our newly born settler down to the white dot, along with a warrior. Getting this spot settled and expanded to include the copper resource should be priority #1 right now. Also during my turn, I had Medina pump out a couple of warriors to increase defense, and I started Mecca on The Oracle. Finishing this wonder will give us a giant leap in tech and should get us back to par for technology (we are below average due to our focus on culture and rapid expansion). I should also note that I switched our civics to Slavery and Organized Religion. Keep Slavery in mind if you ever need to make emergency units for defense. And Organized Religion for our civ might just be the best civic available to us all game. +25% to building construction everywhere as long as we keep spreading Hinduism to all our cities. That is big time.

I think the most important things to do within the next few turns involve our one worker. Again, we need to get our third city expanded out to include copper in it's borders ASAP. As soon as the third city is settled, we should be building an obelisk there and have our worker chopping a forest near there to finish that thing immediately. Then, as we are waiting for the culture to hit 10 there, we should get our worker back up to Mecca so he can build a mine on one of those hills. That will drastically decrease the build time for The Oracle. Right now, we don't really have to worry too much about getting things hooked up. The cows were the most important resource and that's already done. Roads between our cities are unnecessary right now, as the river connects them to our trade network for free.

Oh, and one last thing...I changed my mind about our city plan. Green dot would be much better served two spots northwest. It gives us access to silver and more grasslands.



Good luck.
- posted by Shane @ 9:38 PM
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The great city of Mecca was founded by the Arabians in 4000 BC. We are devout, religious folk and over the next few centuries have founded both Hinduism and Judaism, both within the confines of our own holy city. Our people are strong willed and their influence has spread rapidly to the English to the south. Their leader, Queen Victoria has wisely decreed that Hinduism is the true path to enlightenment.

So I ended up taking 30 turns instead of 20. All I was really doing was moving guys around to explore, so it actually may make your turns more eventful. I usually build a worker before a settler, but our religious focus kept us from getting the early worker techs, so instead of making one and just have him twiddle his thumbs, I started on the settler first. He's almost done, and I think the best place for our next city is the red dot on the map.



Why there? Since we're going to try to win through culture, we're going to want to pump out lots and lots of great artists. Food factories are the best places for this. The fact that we're philosophical makes this even stronger. The red dot location on the map is interesting for a few reasons.



When our city expands, there will be NINE flood plains within our fat cross. That means a hell of a lot of food. Unfortunately, flood plains are also a place of disease, and every 2.5 flood plains = -1 health. This means that our city there will already begin 3 health in the hole and will probably be at the health limit immediately. So while this could potentially be a huge food depository with artist specialists around every corner, it's going to be a nuisance to try to keep our health levels up there. Another big bonus to this spot is the fact that there are two gold spaces. Money resources early game are very strong, and these will feed our research for a long time. So despite the risks, I think we should go for it, just to see how obscene this place will become late game.

I think our third city should be at either the white dot or the blue dot. The white dot would be good because it would keep Victoria from expanding toward us and boxing us in. There are also lots of grasslands, making this potentially a good commerce center. Because it looks like we're in a desert region, a nice grassland area would give us some versitility. Unfortunately, I have a feeling this place will be settled by the time we get our second settler out. The blue dot would also be a really nice place to setlle, just because there are three health resources there, allowing us to grow a lot better in that flood plains area.

So from where we are now, I think the best plan would be to start on a worker immediately after the settler is done. By the time he pops out, we should be done researching Animal Husbandry and he'll be able to hook up the cows to give us a much needed health bonus. We should probably start another warrior in Mecca for protection, though there's already one hanging around to the north that you can move down if the barbs start coming or the people start getting pissed. In the flood plains city, we need to get an obelisk up there ASAP, or else our borders won't expand. I'd probably start with that city working the forested hill for 3 hammers/turn to get that thing cranked out. As far as the plan after Animal Husbandry, I'm not really sure. I'd like to get started on the Oracle wonder ASAP so we can get either Code Of Laws or Theology for free, giving us another religion. We still need Priesthood to do that. It's also really important for us to learn Mining so we can take advantage of the gold in our second city. Bronze Working would also be really good soon, so we can be better prepared for when the barbs start coming. We need to know if we have copper around anywhere soon so we know if we'll need to fall back to making archers for defense. I'll leave it up to you as to what we get started on.

Longer term, I think the only world wonders we need to focus on are the Oracle, the Hanging Gardens (more health), the Sistine Chapel (more culture bonuses from specialists), and the Parthenon (increased great person birth rate), in that order. We should try to build these things in cities other than the flood plains city in order to keep the culture bonuses spread out. Eventually, we will build the Globe Theatre and National Epic in the flood plains city to increase it's efficiency as a great person farm. Tech wise, after taking care of the early basic stuff, we'll want to hone in on Mathematics and the three art techs at the top of the tech tree screen. Also either Code Of Laws or Theology a little later, which one depending on the one we don't get free from the Oracle. Overall, the other techs are more important.

I'm a little concerned about our location and how Victoria has us backed up. Ideally, it would be good for us to have at least nine cities. We may have to go to war with her eventually.
- posted by Shane @ 6:05 PM
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