Alone with Space, No Luxuries

[Blaupanzer]

In SP, I am alone on a small continent with plenty of two- or three-resource city sites but no luxuries with Kublai Khan. Have all strategic resouces through iron near the capitol and at least one other instance of each of them elsewhere. This island has a lot of desert, but only one city site's worth of desert river. Most city sites have some extra grassland, and a lot can be ports.

What would you do, besides start over? I generated a couple of galleys but no other landmass is to be seen except a couple of islands with nothing beyond them. I founded a city site on the farthest out island in the hopes that the Creative-inspired borders might reach out and touch someone. I am bee-lining Machinery to get Optics, but fear I will be hopelessly behind when I do make contact, and my UU will be obsolete. I have no tech brokering on, and that may make a couple of my techs rare if not unique.

Suggestions? Other than start over, please?

[slnz]

Don't beeline Optics, it's almost as fast to beeline Currency (through Math, NOT Alpha) -> Monarchy (must have with no luxuries) -> CS -> Optics and your economy will be 100x better. Getting 2-3 GS bulbs for Philo and Edu should guarantee trading power after contact even without tech brokering.

Another way is to NOT tech CS (since it opens Paper and screwes your GS bulb priorities) and go for a fast Astro with 2 GS bulbs - you can get Astro at ~500AD like this. International&intercontinental trade routes pick up the tech pace nicely.

Don't REX at the start, expand at a nice slow pace to keep the tech rate decent.

Don't tech Hunting (unless you have Deers), you will want to be able to build Warriors for HR happiness even after hooking up a metal.

[wodan11]

SE (run scientists), pyramids if you can still get it, otherwise beeline Representation, make theatres and colosseums, crank the culture slider as needed

[rah]

Do all coastal cities and use the GL/COL combo.

[Ming]

While pyramids is always a good solution, if you don't have a lot of extra food, it will have only limited value... but still worth building if you have the city to spare.

A sea based economy would be the real way to go. Build a bunch of costal cities, great light house, collosus, and contrary to an earlier comment, beeline optics. Be the first to contact other civs. look for empty islands, establish long trade routes, even spread your religion to a civ that might have been unlucky and doesn't have one yet.

[wodan11]

While pyramids is always a good solution, if you don't have a lot of extra food, it will have only limited value... but still worth building if you have the city to spare.

A sea based economy would be the real way to go. Build a bunch of costal cities, great light house, collosus, and contrary to an earlier comment, beeline optics. Be the first to contact other civs. look for empty islands, establish long trade routes, even spread your religion to a civ that might have been unlucky and doesn't have one yet.

Agree. But depends on how much food there is, which wasn't really said yet. If there's solid food for most cities, then SE will be superior. However, ameliorated by possible fact that cottage spam might have been begun by the time scouting has occurred.

[rah]

Correcting from cottages to farms is a lot faster than the opposite.

[wodan11]

Correcting from cottages to farms is a lot faster than the opposite.

Surely. It always feels like you've wasted your time though. But, you do what you have to, in a non-standard game start.

[Blaupanzer]

Lots of food specials. Not much water overall and desert strips prevent spreading irrigation to other green squares. Otherwise, grassland is generally adequate. Hills are mostly desert with some plains. Will windmill the plains hills when I get Machinery. Also building on some of thise. Except that this is a continent overall it looks like Cuba would if set in the high north with lots of desert, I'm thinking like Ming here. A sea based SE economy with some cottages and a lot of worked sea squares. Missed the Great Lighthouse, but got Colossus.Two or more of each fish-type overall and most cities have two foods plus in BFC. Or will have when I build them. Wasn't originally alone, but barbs killed other civ, leaving no traces but a "ruins" site that was rather well developed. Going sea-based at an even pace with lots of cottages and workshops to supplement. Also Courthouses and Forbidden Palace to cut expenses.


Too late not to have hunting; Mongolia starts with it. However, what would be the advantage again?

One big fear in this scenario is that the others will find me, will have ships and will be super-advanced. Doing what I can; we'll see.

[wodan11]

Farms being required is a myth about SE. Food in specials is much more important.

Ming's suggestion about doing a semi-trade economy was a good one, but it doesn't really work until you get Astronomy (which obsoletes Colossus, so it's a mixed bag).

Still, when you do get it, being friendly with everybody is a good idea because you'll get really tasty trade routes. Even giving them techs. You'll probably be behind in tech at first, so not much harm done, especially with brokering off.

[Blaupanzer]

Takes longer to build a farm than a cottage. So seems to me going from farms to cottages is easier than the opposite.

As I expand the workers swarm each new site to hook up and work resources and swarm on. I favor SE regularly when I play. No trade of techs at all for me while the rest of the world can trade the ones they discover themselves does cause wories. I am now teching Optics to explore at last, not found yet. This is on Monarch, Fractal, standard size, me and 7 others originally (now only 5 others, so the AIs or barbs got another besides the one we settled.

[wodan11]

The main problem that I saw was your happiness issues. A slider/SE does that handily. Plus, when you get Astonomy, you'll get the trade routes anyway.

[slnz]

Too late not to have hunting; Mongolia starts with it. However, what would be the advantage again?

If you don't tech Hunting, you can still build Warriors after hooking up Copper/Iron. Otherwise the Warrior build slot is replaced by Scout. This is important if relying heavily on HR happiness since building Warriors is a lot faster than building Spear/Axe.

IMO Pyramids is always a bad idea without Stone/IND. You don't need it for a successful early-mid game SE. In fact relying on it too much can become a crutch that's hard to discard.

Again, can't decide specialists/cottages/GLH without seeing the map. Forcing a SE with less than stellar food resources and lots of river grass can be disastrous, or vastly inferior at the very least. Bulbing in isolation is a mixed bag since it's usually most useful for trading, however it allows beelining Astro or the godly trading chips Philo (sucks that you have to research the isolation-useless Alpha for it though) and Edu. Note that if you manage to get Taoism the AIs will stay away from Philo longer since they don't prioritize it after the religion is gone.

Key in isolation is to find others before they find you. Chances are there are other isolated Civ groups, being the first to know everyone is a huge boon. You can get the juiciest trades, while not racking up your WFYABTA (WFYABTA is only counted for Civs that know your trading partner). WFYABTA can be a serious ***** for isolated games as you usually need massive backfill after Optics.

[Ming]

IMO Pyramids is always a bad idea without Stone/IND. You don't need it for a successful early-mid game SE. In fact relying on it too much can become a crutch that's hard to discard.

That's your opinion... and it's wrong. Even without Stone/Industrius, it can usually be built before the AI. And if by some chance you get beat to it, you will get a substancial amount of money that can be very useful, allowing you to run at a deficet if needed early. You call it a crutch, but it's really a tool. Like any tool, it just needs to be used right. If the situation doesn't call for it, fine. But to claim it's a bad idea without stone/ind ignores the fact that the land and situation might call for it.

Any of the ideas you suggest could also be considered crutchs... what makes your ideas ok but pyramids a crutch? Just asking

If you are expanding slowly on an island where there is little need for a strong army at first, a city can be dedicated to building it. It makes a SE economy far better and will give you the edge in tech development. So at least when you meet the neighbors, you will probably be ahead of them and can back fill the less important techs.

The fact that it never expires is just another bonus...

[rah]

Yes, it's an expensive wonder, but if you're all alone and don't need a big army or have to expand quickly to block the ai, I say why not, what else are you going to build that will return that value. I'd probably be doing the GL COL thing but if you have a high production city not doing anything critical, go for it.