Armchair Civ

11 turns (1240 AD - 1350 AD)

I ended up taking 11 turns because I got the save game back in 1240 AD and I wanted to even things back to counting by 50. Anyway, we're in pretty good shape right now. I was scared when you told me Ragnar declared war on us, but it was actually Hannibal. I think this is actually a good thing. Military wise, he's pretty weak, and he gives us a common foe that we can tag team with Genghis against (traded Paper to Genghis so he'd declare on Hannibal). Also made peace with Stalin at the start of my turns. He wasn't being unreasonable anymore, and we were able to establish peace without any concessions. Of course, being the ass that he is, he promptly declared war on Genghis after making peace with us. Sigh.

So the big news is we captured Thapsus from Hannibal. I'd like to scout his territory to the south and see how well defended Utica is. That would be a really nice city to have with all the flood plains and gold, but it could be difficult depending on how much he has left in the tank military wise. I'm hoping his military power is diluted because of Genghis. If he defenses aren't too unreasonable, I'd like to try to take over Utica mainly through war elephants, with some macemen and catapults sprinkled in. The only way this can work is if he doens't have too many pikemen hanging out there. Just make sure when you scout his territory, you guard the elephants with macemen, as our little tusked friends are extremely vulnerable to the pike. If Hannibal's military strength is too high, I'd recommend trying to make peace with him soon so we can concentrate on securing the borders with Ramses and Ragnar.

Speaking of those two...I'm pretty concerned with where their military is at. They just hit Guilds, so they now have access to knights. While our elephants should be a good defense against those, this won't be reflected in the power ratings, and Ramses and Ragnar may eventually develop delusions of grandeur. I think the current setup we have is fine, with all the elephants down near Hannibal, but if we're going to take another city from Hannibal, we have to strike fast. We may really need those elephants for defense eventually.

Tech wise, this was an exciting set of turns for us. We were the first to learn Liberalism, which allowed us to get Printing Press for free (very helpful with all the cottages we have everywhere). Also changed our civics to Free Speech and Free Religion, which we gained access to after acquiring Liberalism. For the future, our two priority techs are Democracy (Universal Suffrage and Emancipation are amazing with a cottage based economy) and Rifling. If possible, I would recommend against trading key techs like Education and Printing Press to the computer unless we really need to. We've built a nice little tech lead and if we can just survive until we get to Rifling, we'll be in really good shape. None of the techs we've skipped over are particularly important at this point in time.

We're in good economic shape, so I had our workers build a handful of farms in food starved cities. Also built some mines near Nottingham to ramp up production there, with the goal of making this another military center. We did get another Great General, though I've yet to use him. I'd recommend stationing him as another military instructor in either York or Nottingham.

There's a hell of a lot going on right now. I'd try to focus on moving the right kinds of units to the right kinds of areas and continuing to improve infrastructure. We currently have the slight problem of not having any iron, as Stalin's borders just expanded and stole our only source to the north. I'm hoping we can quickly recover that, as the recent civic change to Free Speech will give us an enormous culture boost everywhere and should allow us to push the border back. Hopefully we don't get entwined in yet another military conflict, as we're really teetering a fine edge between running away with this game and failing miserably.
- posted by Shane @ 2:59 PM
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10 turns (1050AD - 1150 AD)

Nice peaceful set of turns from this end. Stalin did try to send a couple of horse archers by way of boat, but our war elephants quickly gobbled them up. I'm not entirely sure what this guy is up to right now. He's still very strong on the power graph, but he keeps sending over these dinky attack teams.

I interrupted Education for a few turns to learn Machinery after trading for Metal Casting. Machinery was key for us so we could start building macemen. Yeah, they have the same power as our war elephants, but they help cover some of their weaknesses, namely pikemen. Unless Stalin starts throwing Knights at us (which he might, hard to say as I'm not sure if he has Guilds yet or not), I think we should concentrate on building mostly macemen at this point. I started throwing up a few barracks in a couple of our production rich cities. Barracks themselves give us a power boost, but more importantly, I think they're worth it if we plan on building lots of military units in those cities long term. As for the Great General, I ended up sending him as a military instructor in York. York will be pumping out very experienced units from here on out, which is a great advantage.

Switched our legal civic to Bureaucracy to give us a boost in production and commerce in London. Our economy is getting on track, but I did think it needed a little kick start to really get going, so I pumped out four or five workers during my turns. A few are over to the west to repair Stalin's pillaging. Most of the others are scattered about hooking up new resources or building cottages. A couple of places need some farms, specifically that city to the far southwest and that dud city with all the plains.

So I think our future plans include pumping out more military units in high production cities and finally taking the tech lead. I believe we're actually pretty close to doing this. I like how you beelined to Education as this tech is very important. The current goal should be to get to Liberalism first so we can get Printing Press for free and watch the cash really start flowing in. Hopefully we can also get our power level up to a point where Stalin will accept a reasonable offer for peace. (York for a treaty? What an ass.)
- posted by Shane @ 4:17 PM
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10 turns (700AD - 900 AD)

Hectic set of turns. Of all the people to attack us, Stalin was one of the most unexpected. I thought I remembered being on ok terms with him, so he must have some aggressive AI tendencies. Anyway, there was a lot of blood spilled in the past few turns, some of it ours, some of it his. He faked me out big time at first and it almost cost us a city. I saw the injured chariot near London and thought that most of his attacks would originate from there by way of boat, but I was much surprised to find a bunch of axemen, chariots, and horse archers approach from the northwest. This was not a good situation, as we only had two axemen up there. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the strengths and weaknesses of individual units (if you want a rundown, just let me know), but our axemen are only even in strength to his axemen, somewhat weak to his horse archers, and incredibly weak against the war chariots. There was basically nothing I could do except play it as safe and watch as he pillaged everything around Newcastle while I kept the center tile fortified. First thing I did was slavery rush a spearman in Newcastle to try to fend off all the mounted units, which seem to be the main unit of his army. Also slavery rushed another spearman in a nearby city. I was eventually able to fortify in strategic areas (hills and forested hills), which he stupidly attacked into, and we were able to fend off the first wave. Everything seems to be stabilized now, but be careful, as I have no idea how big his next wave is. I'd try to keep most of the units floating around Newcastle and the capital. And make sure you guard the copper mine with your life, as this is our only metal source. Fortunately, I think we have him trumped unit wise now. We finished learning Construction, which gives us access to war elephants. While we werent able to get them in combat during his first strike, there are now plenty of reinforcements. I'd focus mainly on these now. War elephants completely annihilate horse based units and axemen, which seem to be the bulk of his army. They are weak against long weaponed units like spearmen, for which they're about a dead even match. Because Stalin is so far away from us and has to rely on mobile units to attack, he's basically screwed now. I'm not sure how advanced he is tech wise, but all we have to really worry about from him in the near future is pikemen (if he's learned Construction). So just to be safe, keep building the occasional axemen as well, since they eat up pikemen pretty good.

Other than the fighting, I'm still trying to work on tile improvements where it's safe. (Dude, no more cottages on plains (the flat brown tiles), it hurts me to the very core to see that.) Also, attempting to rebuild the tiles and roads around Newcastle after the onslaught. Tech wise, we are pretty far behind, but I think we're starting to catch up. I'd try not to trade Code Of Laws to anyone, as that keeps us a slight step ahead in teching up our military. Other than that, I'll leave the future game plan up to you. Just keep in mind Ramses is going nuts with the literary techs, so I'm not sure how feasible it is for us to land the Great Library at this point. Actually, because of our poor production due to the map layout, it might be hard to secure any great wonders for the forseeable future.
- posted by Shane @ 2:43 PM
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10 turns (0250 AD - 0500 AD)

Ok, as I said before, I started out my turns switching our government civic to Hereditary Rule, which fixed all of our angry citizen problems. I like how we had axemen going all over the place, as that now helps us with both our military strength and our happiness. Unfortunately, I had to curtail the axemen production after that last wave came in due to us finally learning Code Of Laws. Now, I basically have every city focused on building courthouses or granaries (to help fuel slavery to build courthouses). I still think it would be beneficial to get our power rating up, but we also have to make sure we fix our economy so we can stay up to date on tech. Not much use building tons of military units if they're all last gen. I think we can have most places start on building axemen again after the courthouses are done. Started researching Alphabet. You basically know you're behind on tech when the computer learns Alphabet before you do (which Ramses already has). We birthed a Great Prophet during my turns. I don't know if you want to attach him to a city to help with our gold problems, or you want to use him to learn a new tech. I'll let you decide, but if you use him for a tech, make sure you trade for Polytheism and Monotheism first so we can get a tech that's worth something. The only other thing of note is that I sent a new settler down to found that site I was talking about in the last blog post with the dye and ten riverside grasslands. He should arrive at the site next turn, so I guess we get to add another city to our collection. The only other city sites for the near future are that site by the fish in the northeast and somewhere near that cow to the southwest.

One thing I did notice during my turns was that everyone seems to hate Ramses. I think once we establish a position of power, it might be possible to use Ramses as the hate magnet and start thinking about going for a diplomatic victory. Mutual war, all on Ramses, might be the plan when we get to the medieval age. But first, we've got to catch up in tech, or we have no bargaining chips.
- posted by Shane @ 3:22 PM
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10 turns (0200 BC - 0050 AD)

This was an interesting set of turns. While we're still in the economic recovery phase, the computer's aggressive expansion forced me into expanding further before I really wanted to. Louis sent a couple warriors to hang out around the barb city, while Ramses actually had the gall to try to take it over with a single chariot. I wasn't about to allow anyone to grab a chunk of real estate right dead center in the middle of our civ, so I sent four axemen up there and took it over. I also had my eye on that coastline area to the east. I didn't want Ramses moving up there, so I settled a spot over there with the hopes of closing off the north. After that eastern coastline city's cultural border grows, if you see Ramses trying to send a settler up there, you should go to the diplomacy screen and close borders with him to block it off.

The ecomonic recover was going well, but as you can see, settling two additional cities has put us back in the hole again. During my set of turns, I mostly cranked out more workers (to accelerate our economic recovery) and more axemen (to get us at a respectable power level). I attacked that barb that was camping out that tribal village, and we were really fortunate with the result (free Monarchy tech). I didn't institute Hereditary Rule yet, but if you find any of our cities starting to become pissed off with that red anger mark, I'd recommend getting it online. Other than the free Monarchy, I finished off Masonry and got started on Code Of Laws. Once we learn that, we should probably rush build courthouses all over the place using slavery. I'm also a little concerned about our power level, as we have some fairly aggressive civs floating around near us. I'm trying to slowly march our axemen out to the peripheral cities to beef up the border and move the warriors to the internal and coastlline cities just to keep them happy, but numbers wise, we're maybe a little too far behind on the power graph, which can lead to random spontaneous attacks. York was our best production city, so I threw up a barracks there with the intent of making that our main military facility.

When I started my turns, I noticed you had a bunch of libraries cooking all over the place, which got me thinking about the best way to increase our science. While at first it doesn't make a lot of sense, I think the best way to fix our science rate is to build granaries instead of libraries. Kind of counter intuitive at first, but if you consider that the majority of our cities were only outputting around 1 beaker a turn and that libraries only give you a 25% increase in science, you're only getting an additional 0.25 beakers per turn with a library. If you build granaries first, you're increasing the population growth rate in the city, allowing it to work more tiles more quickly. When you consider the majority of those extra tiles will be cottages, you can see how that's a good way to ramp up our economy, with a lot of it getting siphoned off to science due to the slider. Granaries also give you added ability to crack the slavery whip and get key buildings (like courthouses in the future) built faster. I am a fan of the early library in Canterbury though, as that's a key border city that has to fight a culture battle with two different civs.

I'll also talk about cottages and terrain, with I guess the main point being that grasslands rule and plains generally suck. Also gives me an excuse to post some pictures.

So here's a picture of Hastings with just the center tile being worked:



Sorry if this is too basic, but I just wanted to make sure everything made sense. Note the top bar showing the food generated (2) and food used (4). Also note our population of 2. Whenever you first build a city, you automatically get a population of 1, meaning you get to work two tiles automatically, the center tile (which you always get for free with no food requirement) and an additional tile of your choice. As you can see in Hastings, we have a population of 2. Every 1 population in a city requires 2 food, explaining our total food requirement of 4 shown in the pic. Our food generated is 2, explained by the single center tile being worked. We're currently in a starvation condition, but the only reason that's the case is because I'm not working all the possible tiles soley for example's sake.

Hastings with two plains (brownish squares) being worked:



As I said before, for every 1 population, you get to work a tile in addition to the center one. So in this case, we get to work three tiles total. Here, I've chosen to work two additional plains. Note the growth bar. We have a requirement of 4 food due to having a population of 2, but we're only generating 4 food (2 from center tile and 1 each from the two plains). When your food generated does not exceed your food consumed, you're city can no longer grow and increase population. This is why plains are generally bad spots for cottage spamming. If you think about it, the only way your city can grow is if you're averaging about 2 food produced per tile worked. Cottaged plains only give you 1 food, meaning you have to have other tiles generating more than 2 food to compensate.

Hastings with two grasslands (green squares) being worked:



Here, you'll notice that every of the three tiles is generating 2 food, giving us 6 total food produced, exceeding the requirement of 4, and thus allowing for population growth. This is why when you're scoping out terrain, you want to be on the lookout for food rich resources and grasslands, because they have good growth potential. Areas with lots of plains and few food resources are going to have trouble maintaining growth. Fortunately, Hastings does have the one cow square generating 4 food that we can work, but this can only compensate for three food poor plains before the city stagnates. Eventually, if we want to continue growth, we're going to have to build some farms. While this helps, it isn't a great solution, because that will only get us to the point where the plains are breaking even at 2 food.

So what was the point of all that? Whenever possible, we should be building cottages on grasslands instead of plains. Doing so allows us to work the cottaged tiles, while still maintaining growth. One other point to make which you might be aware of already, is to preferentially build cottages on tiles next to fresh water sources as opposed to landlocked tiles or sea bordering tiles. Tiles next to fresh water generate one free commerce, as you can see in the pics above. For a financial civ like ours, it's even a bigger deal. Financial trait generates an extra free commerce from tiles already generating two. So that means while financial, whenever you build a cottage on a tile next to a river, you are accelerating from 1 to 3 commerce immediately.

Alright, almost done. Here's what I have in mind for future settlements. Let me know if you have any other opinions or want to slow down land growth.



I was all prepared to settle the red spot where the warrior is standing during my turns, but the settler didn't get there in time. Settling this site right now is questionable. It's going to give us more economic burden, but it really is a nice spot, as it has six riverside grasslands available to it fully expanded. If we wait too long, that new Ragnar city to the west is going to grow and prevent us from settling there, causing us to adjust postion a little. I'll leave it up to you whether you want to settle the dot now, or if you want to wait a little a bit and just have the settler chill over there for a while.



I think I may have made a mistake sending the settler out over to the west in that first pic, because the spot marked here has Cash Money written all over it. A dye resource and ten riverside grasslands means Scrooge McDuck potential. Not totally perfect as it could really use a food resource, but I would hate to lose this site to the computer. So I guess another option you have is to move that settler down south and settle here instead, though we could risk delaying it and making a new settler.



This is just a site for the distant future that we want to protect from Ramses. Have fun.
- posted by Shane @ 3:54 PM
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10 turns (650 BC - 400 BC)

A few more uneventful turns on my end. I basically had to run 0% research for the entirety of my run. I think we probably should have chosen Code Of Laws with our free tech, so we could rush build courthouses by way of slavery and get our economy under better control. Upon starting my turns, I switched from learning Sailing to Pottery. We absolutely have to start building cottages to improve our research rate before we do anything else, but yeah, getting to Calender will definitely be our next order of priority. I interrupted the worker in Canterbury from doing whatever he was doing in order to start chopping the jungle on the gems. I was able to finally get one of the gem mines operational on my last turn, and it ended up making an enormous difference. Whereas we were on pace to learn Pottery in 63 turns at 0% research, by working one single mine, I was able to bump our research rate all the way up to 30%, putting us on track to learn it in 4 turns instead. Cutting off 59 turns of research is probably pretty good.

So I'd say in the next set of turns, the general plan should be to get the gem mines going in Coventry and to start spamming cottages on grasslands all over the place (start on ones next to rivers if possible). Sometime in the near future, though not necessarily in the next set of turns, I'd like to get cities placed by the rice/fish to the east and the cows to the west. I have a feeling those spaces are going to get filled in real soon.
- posted by Shane @ 3:31 PM
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10 turns (1200 BC - 875 BC)

Fairly uneventful set of turns, as we're still kinda of jockeying for map position right now. As far as things go now, we definitely have our work cut out for us. I still think the magenta dot would have been the best spot for our fourth city rather than where Hastings is now, mainly because of the gems that we would have had access to. Gems are really, really good for us right now, as they increase happiness (London is angry) and they generate enormous amounts of commerce, helping us fund our rapid expansion. Hastings is going to be a money sink for the forseeable future (stalling our growth) and it has poor long term commercial potential due to the derth of grasslands there. We did have a free roaming settler down south, but the magenta dot was too far out of the way, so I founded Canterbury instead. Though it only has one gem tile as opposed to the magenta dot, it has a really nice balance of commerce/production potential with lots of food/commerce resources, grasslands, and hills. Long term this might actually end up being our best city.

I know we talked about having you freewheel, but there is something we're going to need to take care of in a very specific, orderly way in the next few turns. The Oracle had one turn left to finish, but we weren't done with Writing yet, so I switched to building an axeman. If we would have finished it before learning writing, we would have ended up getting a cheap, crappy free tech. Also, I have a new settler camped out on the magenta dot by those gems to the east. I didn't want to found another city quite yet as it would have delayed us learning Writing, which in hand would have delayed us finishing The Oracle, opening up the door for one of the other civs to finish it before we do. So basically, once we hit Writing in two turns, we should get York working on The Oracle again and have the settler settle the spot where he's currently chillin' out. As far as everything else goes, have at it.

You'll notice that we have some new barb neighbors right in the middle of everything. I'm not too concerned about this. Our axemen should eat them alive within the next few turns. Oh, and if you get the opportunity, I'd really like to do some fog busting to the west to see what's over there.
- posted by Shane @ 10:44 AM
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