Egypt only 5 tiles away. What would you do here?

[batavier]

I've started a prince game on a normal size, normal speed pangaea map with alexander. I found my city on a peninsula, next to 3 clams and a rice. Looks great for a GP factory. I started out with a workboat.

The bad news is that Hatseputh is almost on top of me, only 5 tiles west and 3 south. If I don't wathch out, I'll be cut of well before we can have open borders. I suppose this calls for an axe/phalanx rush, but there's not too much chance that bronze or Iron will appear anywhere near.

maybe I should cancel the workboat, and get a worker, and then start mining and then chop a settler fast?

I still play vanilla civ4 BTW.

[snoopy369]

1. I'd restart
2. If you're not going to restart, archer rush her. She will have war chariots and be EVIL if she gets horses, so you need to get to her FIRST. If you can get a second city out quickly do it; otherwise get as many archers as you can and go for it. At least get a couple of archers on her territory early in order to deny her horses and force her workers to hide in the city.

[Solver]

I'd try to get a second city ASAP, maybe 1 tile above that Rice to try and limit Egyptian expansion while giving myself room. Then use Archers to contain the Egyptians by stationing them in their territory.

[wodan11]

A third option is to prioritize Sailing and colonize those islands floating out there. Pangaea often has one corner of the map with a bunch of little islands, and it looks to me as though you got shafted with that. There's nothing wrong with being buddy-buddy with Hatty and colonizing all those islands.

That said, if it was me, I'm with Snoopy and I'd load up on archers and rush her.

Basically, a lot depends on what the rest of the map looks like. But, you can't really go wrong with an early rush.

Wodan

[Snotty]

Rush her!! the prize of a ready made 2nd city with good land is too much to pass up.

what unit does the ai start with on prince?

[Fleme]

What a sad start position. Your BFC won't have horses in any case but by the looks of it I think you could get lucky with copper seeing how poor your location otherwise is. 3 Clams and 1 Rice without fresh water is poor in my opinion, at least. Also seeing that there's a jungle right there where your second city would ideally be I'd be very tempted to start over.

So, I would probably have regenerated the map after seeing that start location but if you're one of those guys who play all starts, I'd try and get a few units up and go straight for her capital. You probably won't be able to capture it with just a few archers but you can camp the hills/forests around it to choke her while you get a few more units (hopefully axemen after you find copper in your BFC, here's hoping).

AI on difficulties like prince will have a very hard time if you just declare war and go "siege" their city and pillage their improvements even if you won't be able to capture it.

[batavier]

The archerrush worked. Egypt was destroyed in 1400 BC. I didn't found a second city. There's no bronze anywhere near.

I built a workboat, then a worker, the worker chopped
a barracks, than 1 warrior for my capital and then only archers. The worker mined two grassland hills and then built a road.

research order was mining - bronze working - archery - agriculture - sailing - pottery - writing.

Egypt dit get a second city wich blocked off my peninsula, and sealed away my scout on a single tile The second city was only guarded by two warriors. I lost one archer and got 2 promotions. The city was autorazed.

There was a total of 4 archers in the capital. One of them left it to kill my scout, and another attacked my stack of 8 that was sitting in the open, and it lost, so I could attack 2 with a total of 10. I lost 6. Egypt was wiped out in 1400 BC

Egypt had no horses or bronze. Still a war chariot isn't much better on City defence than an archer I think, and I could move to both cities all the way through forests, and my own capital is very hard to attack.

I haven't researched animal husbandry myself, if Egypt had pastured some horses, could I see them?

[Solver]

Wow, looks like this will be a real challenge. You got a nice city (capitals always have a better starting spot) but the geography generally looks bad. There's this annoying Jungle and now you need to expand quick - 2 cities (only 1 productive so far) is a bit too little for 1400 BC. I'd build a Settler immediately.

[wodan11]

Gold + pigs = tasty. Make sure you work that gold.

All that jungle is annoying, but don't let it slow you down. Keep expanding, and look for other good city sites. Get sailing, as I suggested.

You're golden from this point, just don't get bogged down!

Wodan

[joncnunn]

Looking at the map, I think you should first build 2 workboats in your capital to work the 2 unworked clams and then build several settlers in a row there. With 3 clams & Rice that city can spit out lots of settlers!!!

I'd turn Thebes into your production center as soon as it stops revolting.

[jbp26]

i agree, your position isn't too bad now. chop, whip, do whatever you need to get those two work boats out, and make sure thebes is constnatly working the pigs and the gold. your capital should pump out settlers and workers, and thebes should build military. that spot with the ruins would be fine for your third city, and it looks like theres good land to the south, north, and west (next to thebes) that you can take befre you even worry about jungle.

[Lord Avalon]

Aren't the rice and bananas in jungle? Wouldn't it be better to wait to settle on the ruins?

[Theben]

I'd scout towards that river and see what it has. It'll probably be where you want to send your next settler(s).

[batavier]

Egypt did have horses with their second city. They had no time to hook them up however. I researched horsebackriding before ironworking to get some better troops. It turned out that Thebes also had Iron. The only source of copper in that I have seen is on an island.

I managed to place 5 cities on the mainland by 540 AD. Bismarck managed to block me off to the east. He is now spread out, his larger cities are way off to the southeast, and his new cities only have one archer and one spearman.

OTOH there's room for some more cities on islands to the east, and huyana capac has settled a larger island to the north, and is already annoyed with me. I could go for him and try to infect Bismarck with confucianism and go for the Inca's.

[joncnunn]

Originally posted by Lord Avalon
Aren't the rice and bananas in jungle? Wouldn't it be better to wait to settle on the ruins?

Personaly, that ruins site would be where I'd send my first settler to weather or not rice & bananas are in jungle, but I wouldn't wait for Iron Working but would settle them rapidably by replacing the unstarted granery with the 2 work boats (assuming none already built) to work the 2nd & 3rd clam and use if needed turn off growth to prevent exceesing the happy limit. After 3 settlers I'd then release growth and build the Granery and then another two settlers before the next improvement there, probably either a happy or health one.

Thebes gets assigned real production.

Now I would make Iron Working a high tech priority to start clearing all that jungle.