Armchair Civ
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Armchair Civ Chapter II
4000 BC - 2800 BC (30 turns)
Alright. It begins again. The goal is victory by either space race or diplomacy. The best way to achieve this is to focus on science and technology. Let's do so by utilizing arguably the best leader trait in the game.
We are Queen Victoria of the great English empire. Here is what we're good at:
Financial - +1 gold on plots that produce 2 or more gold.
Imperialistic - +100% Great General (Warlord) emergence. 50% faster production of settlers.
Financial is an amazing trait. It gives us free extra commerce on squares that would normally produce at least two. Essentially, this means that we will want to be working lots of coastal tiles and building lots of cottages. Imperialistic is a new trait which I haven't played with at all yet. I'm not sure how much the Warlord emergence is going to help us this game, but the 50% production bonus to settlers looked intriguing. One of the keys to maintaining a significant tech lead is having more land than everyone else. We will be focusing on expansion this game. (Compare with last game where we only had 6 cities and went with quality over quantity).
Not much happened during my turns. Just founded London, started working on some techs, and went exploring. London is in a really nice spot. It has four health resources within its usable borders. This means rapid growth and added flexibility with the other tiles. It also has a plains/hill which I built a mine on to ensure we have some decent production here. I built a worker first to improve a couple of our tiles. When the boat is finished, you should immediately start building a settler (and make sure the fish tile is being worked after the work boat sets up there). I had the worker start chopping a forest about a turn ago, meaning that he'll finish chopping as the settler is being built, speeding up production. We want to get a jump start on settling new cities. From there, we should probably pump out another warrior or two, and then go back to making another settler. It's important that we're efficient in these first few turns. When the first settler is done, I think that we should settle the blue dot first, as show here.
This gives us quick access to copper, allowing us to have better barb defense. For our third city, I think we're going to want to move south rather than settle the green dot up north. I just marked that as a place that we're going to want to stake claim to in the future, but right now, it doesn't offer us enough. Moving south allows us to define our borders early to other civs and it gives us access to really nice resources. Sugar and gems are definitely nice prizes. I haven't yet determined the best place to stick our third settler. We're going to have to do some more exploring down there. Additionally, we're going to need Iron Working before we can be productive down there due to all of the jungles. Of course, this is a little ways off though, so we should probably address what we want to research in the near future. When Animal Husbandry is done, we're most definitely going to want to learn Mysticism so we have access to monuments (called obelisks in the pre Warlord version of Civ). Remember, in the last game, we built these all over in the early game to gain culture in new cities so the borders would expand. After Mysticism, we have a few different directions we can take. We could work towards learning Priesthood so we can try to build The Oracle. What makes The Oracle so good? It gives you a free tech when it's built, allowing us to probably learn Code Of Laws for free, maintaining our theme of staying ahead in the tech game. If we're going to be a rapidly expanding civ, Code Of Laws is a must, as it allows for courthouses, which reduce city mainentence and allow for larger empires. Another route we could take would be to learn Masonry so we could try for either the Pyramids or The Great Wall. The Pyramids are amazing, as they allow you to start using the representation civic very early in the game (increasing happiness when it's at a premium) and they also give you Great Engineer points. In the early game, Great Engineers are by far the best type of great person. The only problem is, we're not an industrious civ, and we don't have stone, meaning the Pyramids would take a very, very long time to build. The Great Wall in of itself isn't that great, but it too gives you Great Engineer points, and it is much easier to build to boot. The third tech option is to just work the standard technology centric branch and move toward Writing and Alphabet right away, skipping over the early wonders. This is a perfectly valid option and would be the one of choice if you want to focus on growth over everything else. I'll leave it up to you what we'll do, but personally, I think trying for the Pyramids is the worst option.
As you'll notice, on the map above, I outlined the workable borders around cities built on the dots. I think there was some confusion last game as to what "workable borders" really were. Note, the red border around London. Right now, that red border corresponds to the real border of London. (If you play the game, you'll see that border shape on the main map screen.) Of course, as you know, borders can become bigger than that. The outer white border that surrounds our civ as a whole demonstrates the land that we own, but not all of those tiles are necessarily workable. Only the squares in the shape I drew above on the map can actually be used by a city. This is how you determine the best places to build cities. Notice, there are two fish tiles, as well as a pig and rice tile within the "workable borders" of London. As the borders of our civ grows, the maximum workable border for London will remain the same, right within that red cross. Notice that solo square right between the workable borders of London and the future second city, shown by blue lines. This is just outside the workable borders of each city, and thus cannot be worked. What does this tell us? Don't build anything on that square. Ok, I guess you can build a road to improve travel, but if you build a farm or a workshop or a cottage or something there, it will never be used, so don't even waste the time to put something there. Lastly, note why the blue dot is a good spot for a second city. Once the borders expand into the fat cross drawn in blue above (made possible by first building a monument there for +1 culture/turn), that city will be able to use copper, corn, ivory, and bananas with the proper tile improvements in place. One last thing about workable borders. Notice how the workable borders of London and the hypothetical future city on the green dot overlap. Only one city can work a tile at a time, so London will likely have access to that mine, while the hypothetical green city won't have access to it on the tile setup screen.
Alright, that's it for me. Goals in the near future include building more settlers and an adequate military to protect them, and exploring more of the darkened regions to the south. I was thinking the 30, 20, 10, 10, 10... pattern would work best to get through the early turns, so I guess you're up with 20 turns now.
Alright. It begins again. The goal is victory by either space race or diplomacy. The best way to achieve this is to focus on science and technology. Let's do so by utilizing arguably the best leader trait in the game.
We are Queen Victoria of the great English empire. Here is what we're good at:
Financial - +1 gold on plots that produce 2 or more gold.
Imperialistic - +100% Great General (Warlord) emergence. 50% faster production of settlers.
Financial is an amazing trait. It gives us free extra commerce on squares that would normally produce at least two. Essentially, this means that we will want to be working lots of coastal tiles and building lots of cottages. Imperialistic is a new trait which I haven't played with at all yet. I'm not sure how much the Warlord emergence is going to help us this game, but the 50% production bonus to settlers looked intriguing. One of the keys to maintaining a significant tech lead is having more land than everyone else. We will be focusing on expansion this game. (Compare with last game where we only had 6 cities and went with quality over quantity).
Not much happened during my turns. Just founded London, started working on some techs, and went exploring. London is in a really nice spot. It has four health resources within its usable borders. This means rapid growth and added flexibility with the other tiles. It also has a plains/hill which I built a mine on to ensure we have some decent production here. I built a worker first to improve a couple of our tiles. When the boat is finished, you should immediately start building a settler (and make sure the fish tile is being worked after the work boat sets up there). I had the worker start chopping a forest about a turn ago, meaning that he'll finish chopping as the settler is being built, speeding up production. We want to get a jump start on settling new cities. From there, we should probably pump out another warrior or two, and then go back to making another settler. It's important that we're efficient in these first few turns. When the first settler is done, I think that we should settle the blue dot first, as show here.
This gives us quick access to copper, allowing us to have better barb defense. For our third city, I think we're going to want to move south rather than settle the green dot up north. I just marked that as a place that we're going to want to stake claim to in the future, but right now, it doesn't offer us enough. Moving south allows us to define our borders early to other civs and it gives us access to really nice resources. Sugar and gems are definitely nice prizes. I haven't yet determined the best place to stick our third settler. We're going to have to do some more exploring down there. Additionally, we're going to need Iron Working before we can be productive down there due to all of the jungles. Of course, this is a little ways off though, so we should probably address what we want to research in the near future. When Animal Husbandry is done, we're most definitely going to want to learn Mysticism so we have access to monuments (called obelisks in the pre Warlord version of Civ). Remember, in the last game, we built these all over in the early game to gain culture in new cities so the borders would expand. After Mysticism, we have a few different directions we can take. We could work towards learning Priesthood so we can try to build The Oracle. What makes The Oracle so good? It gives you a free tech when it's built, allowing us to probably learn Code Of Laws for free, maintaining our theme of staying ahead in the tech game. If we're going to be a rapidly expanding civ, Code Of Laws is a must, as it allows for courthouses, which reduce city mainentence and allow for larger empires. Another route we could take would be to learn Masonry so we could try for either the Pyramids or The Great Wall. The Pyramids are amazing, as they allow you to start using the representation civic very early in the game (increasing happiness when it's at a premium) and they also give you Great Engineer points. In the early game, Great Engineers are by far the best type of great person. The only problem is, we're not an industrious civ, and we don't have stone, meaning the Pyramids would take a very, very long time to build. The Great Wall in of itself isn't that great, but it too gives you Great Engineer points, and it is much easier to build to boot. The third tech option is to just work the standard technology centric branch and move toward Writing and Alphabet right away, skipping over the early wonders. This is a perfectly valid option and would be the one of choice if you want to focus on growth over everything else. I'll leave it up to you what we'll do, but personally, I think trying for the Pyramids is the worst option.
As you'll notice, on the map above, I outlined the workable borders around cities built on the dots. I think there was some confusion last game as to what "workable borders" really were. Note, the red border around London. Right now, that red border corresponds to the real border of London. (If you play the game, you'll see that border shape on the main map screen.) Of course, as you know, borders can become bigger than that. The outer white border that surrounds our civ as a whole demonstrates the land that we own, but not all of those tiles are necessarily workable. Only the squares in the shape I drew above on the map can actually be used by a city. This is how you determine the best places to build cities. Notice, there are two fish tiles, as well as a pig and rice tile within the "workable borders" of London. As the borders of our civ grows, the maximum workable border for London will remain the same, right within that red cross. Notice that solo square right between the workable borders of London and the future second city, shown by blue lines. This is just outside the workable borders of each city, and thus cannot be worked. What does this tell us? Don't build anything on that square. Ok, I guess you can build a road to improve travel, but if you build a farm or a workshop or a cottage or something there, it will never be used, so don't even waste the time to put something there. Lastly, note why the blue dot is a good spot for a second city. Once the borders expand into the fat cross drawn in blue above (made possible by first building a monument there for +1 culture/turn), that city will be able to use copper, corn, ivory, and bananas with the proper tile improvements in place. One last thing about workable borders. Notice how the workable borders of London and the hypothetical future city on the green dot overlap. Only one city can work a tile at a time, so London will likely have access to that mine, while the hypothetical green city won't have access to it on the tile setup screen.
Alright, that's it for me. Goals in the near future include building more settlers and an adequate military to protect them, and exploring more of the darkened regions to the south. I was thinking the 30, 20, 10, 10, 10... pattern would work best to get through the early turns, so I guess you're up with 20 turns now.
