The Bloody Monk HOF Celebration Succession Game!!!

[Bloody Monk]

Originally posted by DaveV

Phalanx? I remember building warriors for martial law and a few horsemen for barb hunting (a free chariot is very helpful in this regard). Why spend 20 shields for a unit that will be sitting in a city its whole life?

I've found my MGE CD and can play either before or after -Jrabbit.

I have to agree with DaveV. Perhaps this is a memory override from having played in MP Games -v- other Humans. Against the AI, warriors are fine.

With a free-for-all, anyone but the last player can call the game and play. If folk would prefer a set roster, it's not too late to set an alternate scheme. As I said before, "discuss'.

It good to see the interest showing.

Monk

[-Jrabbit]

Yeah, guilty as charged, DaveV. All my most recent experience has been MP, plus we play RAH Rules, which is single-move, double production. Obviously, you move much faster up the tech tree that way. Perhaps that's what I was remembering. And in MP, you gotta defend.

Jeez, I can't even remember how to RCC!!!!!

For the 4th city, my vote is a canal town on the dotted grass 2 tile NW of the unused whale. That will connect the 3 non-capital cities by boat, helping gain early trade route bonuses without roads. (This is based solely on the jpg posted by Verrucosus. I have no idea what the coordinates are.) Plus, it might get us ocean access.

[Bloody Monk]

Unfortunately the screenshot cuts off further explored territory to the West, if just a little more. I bet that when you open the save you will not want to site on the "dotted" grass as there is a second whale available. Two canal cities are possible in that area, both on regular grass that leaves those 'dots' for shield development.

Double production would be much faster, no question. Hope you don't find this game too slow.

Monk

[rjmatsleepers]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I plan to play during the course of today and post the save plus log by this time tomorrow.

(As far as the co-ordinates are concerned, right clicking, sleeping the warrior, fortifying the warrior, anything that stops him flashing makes the co-ordinates appear. They don't appear when I left click on a tile if he is flashing. AFAIK, I didn't do anything in my scenario building to cause this.)

RJM

[rjmatsleepers]

Turnlog 3050 BC to 2100 BC

We have 27 beakers towards the 48 required for CoL, Producing 6 per turn means 4 more turns, but Strabo will give us an extra beaker for a couple of turns
3050 BC: Move Seville warrior west to explore.
3000 BC: Madrid produces settler who moves west. Warrior discovers a 2 whale site west of Seville, which looks like a good location for city 4
2950 BC: Saville warrior finds nothing of interest, so settler moves towards 2 whale site.
2900 BC: CoL->Monarchy. Warrior west of Sevillle discovers hut. I think it's save to pop it since we're researching monarchy.) Madrid warrior starts back. Rush 8 shields in Madrid.
2850 BC: Seville produces settler. Hut gives us 50 gold
2800 BC: Strabo gives us settler. Buy some shields for Seville. Toynbee says we are only number 2 in the list of advanced civs.
2750 BC: Buy some more shields.
2700 BC: Buy more shields. Start to explore river system NW of Seville.
2650 BC: Monksville founded on 2 whale site.
2600 BC: Barb horseman sighted north of Madrid. Can we reach him with our chariot? Buy more shields.
2550 BC: Barb horseman disapears.
2500 BC: Buy more shields.
2450 BC: Dull turn.
2400 BC: Monarchy->Currency but next OEDO year is 2250
2350 BC: Chariot finds barb horseman, Try to tempt it away from leader.
2300 BC: Horseman goes away.
2250 BC: Spanish monarchy established. Barb horseman sighted again.
2200 BC: Chariot kills horseman and gets promoted; now to chase leader! (just noticed we have an iron mountain north of Monksville.
2150 BC: Dull turn
2100 BC: I seem to have lost the barb leader and my turns have come to an end.

[rjmatsleepers]

Here are a few comments on my turn set. There were at least 3 things I would do differently if I could replay the turns.

I spent time micro managing to bring forward the discovery of CoL and Monarchy. Since I couldn't reach the next OEDO year this was wasted.

I should have realised that the Seville settler would reach my city 4 site before the Madrid settler and set him working earlier.

I should have noticed that Monksville couldn't reach size 2 before the settler was complete so I ended up producing a fairly useless phalanx.

Probably others will notice further errors.

RJM

[Bloody Monk]

Okay, it is now 2100bc and we are a Monarchy. Good job, rjm.

Who wants to talk about what we see in this map?? Besides me??

Who wants to be next?? Step forth and call the ball. defrancoj & DaveV have expressed an interest. _Jr. said later in the week. Anyone else. First to call it goes.

Monk

[Bloody Monk]

@ rjm, et all

A little Robust Constructive Criticism (RCC) if you don't mind.

When I suggested that we needed more cities, cities that could support Settlers, and that building on grass was preferable, it was to avoid the situation in Monksville. When you build on trees, you give up an arrow and a food, meaning a stunted city is the result.

You say in your log..."Warrior discovers a 2 whale site west of Seville, which looks like a good location for city 4."
a) Not such a good site, at least not now, and
b) It is actually a 4-Special (2 Hidden) site. It's another 2-4-2 pattern.

But with a continuing sparsity of food, how long before even the 2 Whales can be worked, much less the other two specials...and the 6 other tree tiles.... The emphasis in the early game has to be starting viable cities and building toward a critical mass of gross production. And we still need a canal city for ocean access for Sev, and SF. (70,24)

Another question: Why did you dump out to a Phalanx rather than moving off the Whale?? And why build a Temple at this stage in the game?? The first decision has become a cascade.

It was mentioned that building cities in the early game is favored over roads and irrigation. I can see a road out of SF and on the Madrid Wheat, but irrigation in those two cities postponed building additional cities. The same goes for the irrigation (but no road) on the grass above Seville. And a road on the Grapes, while really great, isn't even being worked yet.

It's obvious we have a different sense of the early game, and that's cool. That's what Succession Games are all about. But if you didn't agree with the developing discussion, something more than, "Thanks for the suggestions guys," might have been in order. (This is me clutching my chest when I looked at the save. )

But I have a suggestion for how we can work out of the hole in M'ville. Before doing anything else, click on the Sett irrigating the Grapes. Then march him down to M'ville to irrigate the city square, changing it to plains, probably very quickly if it is charged up.

Others can debate what to do about the Temple or the other working Setts. I look forward to what comes next.

Monk (wondering where I put the popcorn popper)

[rjmatsleepers]

Why did I build Monksville? I am used to playing Civ 4 where each city gets a minimum of 2 food, 1 production and 1 commerce. I simply forgot that in Civ 2, the terrain on which you build a city has an effect.

Why did I build a phalanx? By the time I noticed the problem with Monksville, it was already on the second row of a settler. If I allowed it to continue, the city would be disbanded (or a lot of production would be lost). A phalanx seemed to me to be the least wasteful.

Why build a temple? I like all my cities to have temples to reduce problems when moving to republic. I took the view that a temple was more useful than a lot of non-settler units. You (Monk) don't like the site for an early city, but even in its current state it is producing 2 science and 1 tax, which is better than Madrid or Strabo's.

Why not more cities? If my memory is correct, four cities pre-monarchy and then six is the limit to avoid extra red faces. Once we were in Monarchy I could have built two more, but for different reasons I was not comfortable with many of the suggestions. The best SSC site appears to be the multi special site north east of Strabo's Folly. But to know this uses "hut finder" type knowledge which I try to avoid. Other possibilities were to build canal cities southeast of Monksville or south east of Strabo's. But I found it difficult to convince myself that a canal would be valuable. Since I was already close to the end of my turn set when we hit monarchy I thought it was better to leave the next player a lot of settlers and let them choose where to build cities.

RJM

[DaveV]

I can play tomorrow morning (20 hours or so from now); if someone else can play between now and then, have at it! If not, I'll call the save later today.

Like RJM, I'm a lot more used to Civ4 than Civ2. And when I used to play Civ2, my goal was nearly always conquest rather than space. So what's our medium-term goal? Marco Polo, or just a swarm of boats and settlers?

Edit: oops, I meant camels, not settlers. Must ... resist ... ICS!

[rjmatsleepers]

I believe the next (research) priority is trade, which allows caravans as well as MPE. I suspect MPE is less useful in MGE than in classic, but presumably worth building and it can be built in any convenient city. After that, I believe we need to select an SSC and build Colossus. Both MPE and Colossus need four caravans so they should be reasonably easy.

With luck, MPE will allow us to get a map which will give us a nearby trading partner and we can begin the conveyor belt of caravans.

RJM

[-Jrabbit]

Definitely trade. We will want a couple WoWs. I' much more a fan of Hanging Gardens first, as it negates growth issues and makes WLTMonkDays possible. We will also want a way to rush the 3rd row for faster camel breeding. Personally, I would divert to boats shortly after Trade in hopes of establishing early intercontinental routes. But no huge rush on that, since the early camels will most likely be needed for WoW production.

But what do I know? I don't even remember the benefit of Marco Polo...

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
Definitely trade. We will want a couple WoWs. I' much more a fan of Hanging Gardens first, as it negates growth issues and makes WLTMonkDays possible. We will also want a way to rush the 3rd row for faster camel breeding. Personally, I would divert to boats shortly after Trade in hopes of establishing early intercontinental routes. But no huge rush on that, since the early camels will most likely be needed for WoW production.

But what do I know? I don't even remember the benefit of Marco Polo...

MPE gives you an automatic embassy with all AI civs and the consequent intelligence.

In classic, you can then gift technologies to the AI and thus get them to research off path technologies. You can then exchange when you are forced off path(sometimes they even research an on path tech for you). Plus the possibilities of extorting tribute for a while. Plus maps which will enable you to find good destinations for your vans.

I understand that in MGE the AI is less compliant.

Writing will open up diplomats (3rd row) as well as allow us to build libraries.

I don't tend to build the hanging gardens, but I can see that it would help celebrate. I usually build the Globe in my SSC and use the luxury slider if required.

RJM

[Verrucosus]

Lots of good news here, mainly the adoption of Monarchy and the discovery of the long river in the west. Here are some comments for discussion:

Additional cities:
We should get two more cities as soon as possible. After that we need to balance expansion with roadbuilding for additional trade and easier caravan movement.
I would suggest to found one city on the western river next to the iron deposit (67, 11). I'd go as far as abandoning the Madrid settler's irrigation project on the Seville winehill to speed things up.
The second location should be whereever we want the science city. I have no problem with using knowledge (or, in my case, learning more) about hidden specials (feng shui civ-style) and I accept the resulting advantages of tile 83, 19. Nevertheless I would like to put 79, 29 once more up for discussion. The river squares combine immediate (pre-road) trade income with excellent growth and the pheasant can help us build the Colossus as long as we do not have enough caravans to serve all wonder projects at once. In the long run, it will have very good trade income (bridges), growth potential (with a harbour) and indirect sea access (with another canal city).

Wonders:
There seems to be a consensus about the Colossus for the science city and Marco Polo's Embassy for tech trading. (Why would the Embassy be less useful than under 2.42?) I would agree with -Jrabbit about putting the Hanging Gardens on the list. They really help with early expansion, completely balancing the additional unhappiness from a second set of six cities. The location is a bit tricky. The science city would greatly benefit from the extra happiness, but waiting until after the Colossus would delay it quite a bit. So I'm thinking about the Colossus for the Science City, Marco Polo for Seville (slow growth at this point) and the Hanging Gardens for the River City next to the iron deposit. Monksville with its two whales will be great for sending out caravans in all directions. Madrid and Strabo's Folly can keep producing settlers for roadbuilding and more expansion.

Temples:
While a slow-growth town like Monksville doesn't really need one at this point, I must admit I'm fond of them as well. Building them makes me feel civilized.

Defense:
Not my forte at all, but looking at the F2 screen makes me feel slightly uneasy: four warriors, one phalanx, one chariot and no good road network. Then again, it does seem that we are alone.

[-Jrabbit]

Once we have diplomats, a couple of them should provide all the defense we need.

I have rarely built Marco Polo, mostly because I don't like starting every turn with another round of diplomacy. Boring! It's simple enough to outstrip the AI on the tech tree without it.

HG, on the other hand, makes The Republic viable for growth, getting you a nice group of size8 cities (WLTMonk) without doing the Elvis dance. Trade is more profitable with the bigger cities as well.

For 200 arrows each, I think HG and Colossus make the most sense for the early WoW rush.