Early Landing Comparison Game #3

[Scouse Gits]

Solo ... I will attempt to play both!

I vote against any change in the Barb settings for these games. In game #1 my play was hindered by Barbs capturing the Aztec capital. As in real life we must adjust to such events and attempt to turn them into an advantage.

If we are going to call the exploits from these games records they must reflect the most difficult level of play the game's designers devised - otherwise we may as well play at Prince Level with barbs from villages only.

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SG(2)

[solo]

Makeo,

Pinning on tails can be a tricky business, but you might start off by running 'round and 'round the mulberry bush.

SG(2),

I plan on playing both too, and am starting with the medium map. The SSC location is probably the best we'll ever see in these games. Your point about barb settings is well taken.

[Heerscher]

Woohoo! My first apolyton-civ game (I never played in any sxn-game)!

Count me in, but don't expect any great results! I can win at deity level and have studied the GL extensively, but still consider myself a rookie by the 'academie standards'

I'll play the large map and will try to make a complete log, so the more experienced players can comment on my game.

[Bloody Monk]

Welcome Heerscher!!

Prepare to have some fun.

You can also do partial logs along the way, and feel free to ask for a consult if you feel the need.

Monk

[Heerscher]

Here's my first partial log and the save for those who want to take a look at it:

B.C. years

4000 Trondheim founded
3750 Kaupang founded. Trondheim builts warrior.
3550 Alphabet
3500 Kaupang builts warrior, it is sent out to explore
3250 Code of laws. I coulnd’t choose ceremonial burial next, so I chose pottery.
3050 Settlers rushbought in Trondheim
2900 St. Augustine calls us the largest civilization in the world :P
2750 Uppsala founded. Kaupang builts settlers, they are sent out to road the terrain around Trondheim, my SSC city. The gold special and the wheat special, which will be mined into silk and the numerous ocean squares around the city, made me decide to use Trondheim as my SSC city.
2700 Pottery
2550 Uppsala builts warrior
2150 Ceremonial burial
2100 Temple rushbought in Trondheim. Work there is started on the Hanging Gardens.
1700 Monarchy. Immediate revolution brings us finally in monarchy in 1650

I had a hard time getting to monarchy. By effectively using the specials around Trondheim (gold), Kaupang (silk) and Uppsala (whales) I could keep my science rating below ten turns most of the time, but having to research pottery really slowed things down.
I read that Solo among others usually goes straight to republic in ELG, skipping monarchy and revolting from despotism straight into a republic. How does he do that??! In my game it would take me ages to get there.
I intend to use Kaupang and Uppsala as helper cities, maximizing their shields (even by building mines) and keeping their size under three, to prevent them from revolting. When I have trade, the only thing they will do for the next couple of centuries is building caravans to help building wonders, the first of which will be hanging gardens.
Right now I am researching map making and plan on building triremes to colonize other continents and contact the other civs and hopefully my key civ.

[solo]

Welcome Heerscher!

Research costs on a large map are higher, which may help explain why it takes longer to get out of Despotism.

Fortunately, more cities can be added during Despotism on a large map before getting that first unhappy citizen, so the best thing you can usually do to speed up early research is to use the earliest settlers to found some more new cities quickly, until you have about 6 in place. Afterwards you can make some other settlers for developing the terrain.

See Oedo's "next available" thread in the Great Library, or my description of it in my early landing guide to understand when certain techs are omitted from the lists presented for your next research choice. Tech trades and the sequence in which techs are acquired have an important effect here.

[Elephant]

I took a quick look at the medium map at lunch today; for those of you without HutFinder use a Seed of 15 in MapEditor. Looks like a clump of Whale-specials, at least one hidden, with two 4-special sites to choose from near the start. More clumps of Whales east and west, and a band of Fish to the north about 8 tiles. Good start, but if many of the specials are under grass we have some mining to do.

[Heerscher]

I think I'll try again, using your tips. I'm not very happy with my start and I think it will prevent me from getting a good landing date. I'm afraid playing out a game to the end without a good start is a very boring and frustating exercise...

[Elephant]

Originally posted by Heerscher

3250 Code of laws. I coulnd’t choose ceremonial burial next, so I chose pottery.

I had a hard time getting to monarchy. By effectively using the specials around Trondheim (gold), Kaupang (silk) and Uppsala (whales) I could keep my science rating below ten turns most of the time, but having to research pottery really slowed things down.
I read that Solo among others usually goes straight to republic in ELG, skipping monarchy and revolting from despotism straight into a republic. How does he do that??! In my game it would take me ages to get there.

Heerscher:
The Early Landing games all start with no freebie techs. This means you need Alph, CodeLaws, and CerBur to get Monarchy. But there is always a "round" of tech choices in there when you cannot research anything on this list. The game puts the techs into three lists and "hides" one of the lists each round. So you need to add an "off-path" tech, which I usually choose as Bronze because it is on the path to Trade, my next priority. Bronze also gives me the ability to RushBuy 20-shield rows, a better defender if Barbs attack, and access to the first useful Wonder, the Colossus.

Solo seems to be the master at Early Republic, which does take longer to get to. You need Alph,Write,CodeLaws,and Literacy before Republic, and there is another off-path round in there too, so without tech trading or popping huts it will be the sixth tech you research. Once you switch to it you get more trade arrows in your cities, but you lose shields to any supported units and Settlers cost two food per turn. You can build more cities without unrest, though, and there is less corruption than in Monarchy. Sort of a tradeoff, but Early Republic is (in my perception) an art form I have not mastered yet.

If you want to see how the tech lists change I recommend downloading the utility called CIV2PLAN, either here or from CFC. It will run in a DOS window, but is very quick and simple, allows you to input bypassing techs you get in trade, and can be set up to keep a running list in a file.

[rjmatsleepers]

Originally posted by Elephant
I took a quick look at the medium map at lunch today; for those of you without HutFinder use a Seed of 15 in MapEditor. Looks like a clump of Whale-specials, at least one hidden, with two 4-special sites to choose from near the start. More clumps of Whales east and west, and a band of Fish to the north about 8 tiles. Good start, but if many of the specials are under grass we have some mining to do.

Interesting - I made the seed 7

Have I been confused by the difference in co-ordinates between the game and the map editor? Are we using a different map editor? Are we using a different starting position? Are we using a different numbering system?

RJM at Sleepers

[solo]

RJM,

The map editor uses a slightly different coordinate system, using only 50 horizontal coordinates for a medium map. Each coordinate represents two adjacent columns of tiles. In the game, each column has its own coordinate, so the number of horizontal coordinates doubles and is 100 instead. The coordinates I used to identify the center of the SSC are those observed from the game.

[Elephant]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers


Interesting - I made the seed 7

Have I been confused by the difference in co-ordinates between the game and the map editor? Are we using a different map editor? Are we using a different starting position? Are we using a different numbering system?

RJM at Sleepers

Perhaps you are looking at the Large map start? I was referring to the Medium.

[Elephant]

Originally posted by Scouse Gits

If we are going to call the exploits from these games records they must reflect the most difficult level of play the game's designers devised - otherwise we may as well play at Prince Level with barbs from villages only.

I see your point.

[solo]

I have continued my medium map game and have just built a ship in 600 AD which should land in 615. In this game I went to Republic as quickly as possible and put the next priority on Trade. Normally, I pick up Ceremonial Burial and Mysticism before doing this and build temples early, but in this game I decided to use luxuries to keep all cities happy while zeroing in on Marco Polo’s as early as possible, so the first 8 techs I learned were Alphabet, Code of Laws, Writing, Bronze Working, Literacy, Republic, Currency and Trade.

By the time Trade was discovered, MPE was halfway built by a helper, so two settlers being built were converted to caravans to complete the wonder in 1600 BC. At this point the AI had 6 techs I lacked, which were Horseback Riding, Pottery, Warrior Code, Ceremonial Burial, The Wheel, and Mysticism. As expected, MPE provided about 5 more techs than usual through trades during the rest of the game, and getting it early gave me more chances to set up some of the AI as research assistants by providing them with the pre-requisites needed for techs I hoped they would try to learn. Of course not all of the AI followed my plans for their research, but the English did happen to move along to Navigation & Physics before I needed to acquire either, which was very helpful. Just knowing the paths being followed by the others came in very handy, too.

The other benefit of going for MPE early was that I could start trading caravans much earlier than I had been used to. In previous games, I was really hurting for gold early on, but early trades made a huge difference in this game. Establishing early trade routes with my best research assistants really paid off, too, by increasing their research speed. These extra arrows make a big difference in their progress. As long as each research assistant was kept below the 20 tech level, they were picking up new techs at a good pace, and by the time I hit 20 techs, this slowed me down enough to let them learn techs I ordinarily wouldn’t expect them to learn in time for trades.

I think the combination of early Republic along with early trade and MPE worked very well for me, so I played out the rest of the game in the usual way, by building up the SSC quickly, followed by helper and colony growth later. By 500 BC, I had Shakespeare’s Theater and the Colossus and the SSC was already size 12 and bringing in a lot of gold from its early trades. By then I had 24 techs, with 8 more available from the AI by trade (only 2 of these were useful, though). Up until this time I had been using 40% luxuries to keep all cities happy and to get the SSC celebrating, too. In previous games it had seemed a waste of luxuries when celebrating the SSC since they were wasted on helpers that already had their temples. After the SSC was size 12, helpers added temples, which were all rushed with gold coming in from trades.

There were some stretches along this game where I was short on gold, but techs were coming in quickly enough to make these pauses in growth worthwhile. The rest of the game went as usual, with the exception of my trade to an AI for Monotheism, which I thought was worth doing to build Michaelangelo’s for happiness. Had Mono not been available directly through trade, I would have proceeded normally with colosseums, instead. The rest of the game went very well, with excellent trading opportunities and with a hard to beat SSC site (beakers maxed out around 1400!). I don’t expect to beat the date in this game for a while, but the combination of MPE and early trade worked extremely well with early Republic in this game. One thing I might consider in a future game is using HG, too, something I almost did in this one.

A save at the time of launch is attached after the summary.

Medium Map Game Summary

Republic – 2050 bc
Democracy – 25 bc

MPE – 1600 bc
ST – 800 bc
Colossus – 700 bc
Copernicus – 425 bc
Michaelangelo’s – 125 bc
Isaac Newton’s – 20 ad
Darwin’s – 120 ad
Apollo – 560 ad

Size 8 – 675 bc
Size 12 – 550 bc
Size 21 – 50 bc
Max. size – 30 in 280 ad

Key civ contact – 1600 bc
Trade – 1750 bc
Invention – 100 bc
Railroad – 40 ad
Automobile – 320 ad
Nuclear Power – 400 ad
Computers – 480 ad
Flight – 500 ad
Space Flight – 540 ad
AC arrival – eta 615 ad

[Cliff]

615AD is very impressive Solo!

My goal is still 1000AD though but your game makes my approach less competitive in this challange. Maybe the large map will suit my method better? For medium maps it is probably obsolete already

In 1AD I had 32 cities and all were size 3 or about to grow to size 3 within a couple of turns. To accomplish this fast growth I built the Pyramids and they also make it easier to build settlers. I want to built settlers in size 3 cities with 30 food in the food box and the Pyramids contribute 20 of the 30 food.

But I should have switched to Republic much earlier!