Teach Dregor!

[dregor]

I've seen this done in the past, so I thought I'd try it out for myself. Going to post a savegame of the starting turn for the game I'm currently playing, and see how other people play it out. I'd like to see progress for 0 AD at least, since the early game is more what I'm trying to get better at, but anyone that wants to keep playing past that and post their results I'd be thrilled to see as well.

Game is:

Standard size/civs
Pangea
Temperate/low sea level
random shores
Brennus
Prince difficulty
Marathon speed

Play it however you want, builder/warmonger, whatever. I'll probably be trying to be more of a warmonger since I have a lot of trouble doing that early on and I'm trying to turn that around.

Hope somebody feels like doing this! Thanks.

edit. Sorry yea, forgot to post Marathon speed.

[Swiss Pauli]

Yuk. Marathon speed.

[dregor]

Ok, well I've played up until 1 AD, will try to refrain from playing on until (hopefully) someone else either looks at my progress, or posts their own.

I kept a log of what I did as I played, I can post a write-up if anyone is interested.

[UnOrthOdOx]

I'll try to take a look tonight/tomorrow morning.

[ben04]

I played until 530 bc. It's the turning point where the early expansion phase is over and it's time to build up defense and economy and settle the spots that are claimed but still empty.

I see a number of mistakes in your game.

• A commerce city must have an academy. In the early game most of your beakers come from there so it is obvious that +50% beakers will matter a lot.
• First found the juicy cities then fill out the spots. Your second city Viene isn't very good at anything as it has no food. It does have a few hammers but not that many either. You need to farm the land to make it worth anything. This is too expensive in the early game, your workers have better things to do, and in this case not even possible until CS.
• You are researching alphabet by 0AD. That is way too late for such a key technology. Get the basic worker techs you really need and perhaps BW then go for writing and then get the alphabet on the first turn you can trade writing around and on the second, if there are still techs left you don't have, you can trade alphabet around. As long as you don't alienate the other civs this is nearly a sure way to get a tech lead.
• You have build the pyramids. Not my favorite wonder but not a no no move either. However you have build that wonder to run monarchy! You might as well have researched it the normal way and used those hammers for something better.
  
  The pyramids (in peace time) should be used to run representation and to make representation useful it requires a lot of specialists. If you only have bad land then running priests and scientists is a good way to get you started. For example if you had started where you placed Viene.
  
  However here you have 3 golds and enough food to work those. Here a non specialist and thus non pyramids approach is far superior.
  
  Note that in my game I'm using the pyramids too but only because I conquered them.

Also note that the reason why I'm building the Oracle so late is because it's a win-win situation. Either I get it build and can pop CS and with it Burocraty or I get the money which I could also use as I'm pretty low on cash at the moment although it should constantly go up from now one.

[ben04]

The board preview feature doesn't seem to like attachments...

[rjmatsleepers]

I started to play, although I don't like marathon speed. Then I noticed that some XML changes that I had made had screwed up the leaders - all the AI civs had leaders from the wrong civ. I played on for a while, but lost interest when my 2nd city fell to a combined attack from a barb archer and axeman. I don't have the patience to start again with the correct XML. I'll look at your save though and post some comments if I have anything worth saying.

RJM

[UnOrthOdOx]

I'll preface this by saying I play normal exclusively. I did try to start the game up, but by the time I had to quit playing I had only made it barely past 3000 BC.

So, I gave up and looked at your save instead. I just don't have time to play at marathon. Some things:

You're running 80% science. Why? There's 300+ in the bank, USE IT. Run 100% till you get down and need to slow down.

As ben mentioned, you have the pyramids, run representation, and put 2 scientists in the capitol (at least, probably other cities too). Choose to take them from tiles producing little/no food so it keeps growing. Under Representation they each will give 6 beakers, that's the same as working a 6 commerce tile, if it helps you to look at it like that. What's more, soon you will get a great scientist. Have him make an academy in the capitol, now they're producing 9 beakers each after that bonus.

Speaking of the capitol. It's a commerce city, as you label it. There's no real need to be working low food high production tiles then. You have cottaged floodplains not being worked and forest plains being worked.

I'm going to disagree with ben. I don't believe there's cookie cutter "x should be researched by turn y" systems. You're researching Alphabet, I didn't see any AI's with it. The goal is to be first to a tech, not have it ASAP. But that's me.

City placement has already been mentioned. You're not using your food to the best of your abilities. Tons of hammer producing tiles doesn't help when you can't work them.

Lastly, I'm going to mention builds:

You want to work on warmongering early. Builds are where it's at.

You built the Pyramids. Yes, you have stone, but even with stone, were you to build units instead, you could have taken an AI city or two. Not saying Pyramids are a bad investment, just mentioning.

More distressing is you're building Duns everywhere. Why? Yes, again stone, they're cheap. They're also useless. If you're building them because they're the Unique building: Stop. Guerilla I is not worth it. If you're building them because you like walls: Stop. We want to be fighting on THEIR lands, not waiting for them to attack our walled cities.

We have horribly low troop numbers (this might be partly based off my impressions having not played marathon games). A couple swordsmen and a couple catapults. Not enough of either to do anything interesting. I can't recall what every city had, but I'm willing to bet you had a lot of not really urgent buildings in them when you could be making units. And Swordsmen....well, I don't like em. Yes it's your UU, but axes and spears get the job done just as well/better for less price. CATAPULTS should be your main weapon, other units are there for cleanup and defense. Swords dont work too well on defense due to axe proliferation.

Finally workers. You could use more. You could use yours more wisely. You have grasslands cottaged when floodplains are still without? You have hills mined in the commerce city when you should be working COMMERCE. I know I had other little minor things, but can't recall right now.

This is all pretty minor. The biggest thing holding you back from warring I can see is a lack of units, and too much focus on trying to get wonders and build all those lovely buildings. This is a fairly normal tendancy.

My suggestion. Start a new game. Pick 1 city site (not your capitol), PREFERABLY your second city, it should be able to grow to size 6-8, be happy, and have good hammers. In it, build a barracks, and units. Period, end of story. If you MUST a monument for border expansion, but only if it enables better tiles to work. No walls, no libraries, no wonders, a forge would be ok when you can. UNITS UNITS UNITS!!! When it hits size 6-8, poprush something (worker, forge, etc) to get it back down to 4-6 and build more units.

No, that's not the best ideal playing, but it'll get you a feel for going more warmonger. Dedicate that one city to go without those nice buildings and produce units. And you'll see just how much units can pay off.

[dregor]

Originally posted by ben04
I played until 530 bc. It's the turning point where the early expansion phase is over and it's time to build up defense and economy and settle the spots that are claimed but still empty.

Wow. In the time it's taken me to settle 3 cities, defend them, and start building a force to take out Korea you've taken out Korea and Egypt. I'm so missing something about warmongering!

I see a number of mistakes in your game.

• A commerce city must have an academy. In the early game most of your beakers come from there so it is obvious that +50% beakers will matter a lot.
• First found the juicy cities then fill out the spots. Your second city Viene isn't very good at anything as it has no food. It does have a few hammers but not that many either. You need to farm the land to make it worth anything. This is too expensive in the early game, your workers have better things to do, and in this case not even possible until CS.
• You are researching alphabet by 0AD. That is way too late for such a key technology. Get the basic worker techs you really need and perhaps BW then go for writing and then get the alphabet on the first turn you can trade writing around and on the second, if there are still techs left you don't have, you can trade alphabet around. As long as you don't alienate the other civs this is nearly a sure way to get a tech lead.
• You have build the pyramids. Not my favorite wonder but not a no no move either. However you have build that wonder to run monarchy! You might as well have researched it the normal way and used those hammers for something better.
  
  The pyramids (in peace time) should be used to run representation and to make representation useful it requires a lot of specialists. If you only have bad land then running priests and scientists is a good way to get you started. For example if you had started where you placed Viene.
  
  However here you have 3 golds and enough food to work those. Here a non specialist and thus non pyramids approach is far superior.
  
  Note that in my game I'm using the pyramids too but only because I conquered them.

Bibracte would definitely get an academy as soon as a GS popped up. I guess what you're saying is I should be specializing more to make sure the GS pops first?

I put Vienne there to grab both the stone and the copper. I noticed on your game you moved Bibracte 1 NW and founded it there. Was that just to get the wheat? I was surprised to see you'd moved it off the hills/plains and lost the extra hammers. Of course, the fact copper then popped inside its fat X sure made it a great move.

Yes, I don't really have any excuse for Alphabet at 0 AD other than I went for Construction earlier than normal so I could get my catapults producing. I usually have an abysmal time in the early warfare when trying to take a city without cats. You don't seem to have that problem tho!

Pyramids was a kneejerk reaction to getting beaten to the Great Wall. Was almost done the Wall when someone else made it, so I switched to the Pyramids out of frustration. Was more of an anger move if you will I realize Hereditary Rule seems silly, but I wasn't running any specialists really so I went with the low upkeep civic for now. Also, was looking forward to a GE popping up and getting the Great Library rushed.

Also note that the reason why I'm building the Oracle so late is because it's a win-win situation. Either I get it build and can pop CS and with it Burocraty or I get the money which I could also use as I'm pretty low on cash at the moment although it should constantly go up from now one.

Well, I obviously have a lot to learn, most importantly about early warmongering. I just can't seem to pump out troops fast enough for it!

Thanks for taking the time to go through it, very enlightening

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by dregor

I noticed on your game you moved Bibracte 1 NW and founded it there. Was that just to get the wheat? I was surprised to see you'd moved it off the hills/plains and lost the extra hammers. Of course, the fact copper then popped inside its fat X sure made it a great move.
enlightening

In my game, I made a move NW as well.

You get the wheat, and leave some floodplain in the SE for a sure fire good 2nd city location.