AU402 DAR1: 4000BC-2150BC

[Dominae]

This is the DAR ("during action report") thread for the first 40 turns of AU402 - Gargantua. Use this space to discuss early-game moves and strategies for the future. For instance, where did you plant your first Settler, and why?

This is purely optional, of course, but should turn out to be critical in helping each other learn.

[burly]

My First AU-DAR

This is my first AU course, and my first time really documenting my game. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the best CIV player, so ANY comments, suggestions, etc. will be very welcome. I’m playing regent, which is the highest level I’ve finished a game with. I’ve started a couple of games on Monarch, but just haven’t gotten around to finishing.

I decided to go with the English because their combination of commercial and expansionist traits put me one tech away from Map Making and I could get up granaries quickly to pump-out some settlers (which didn’t work out as planned, I’ll get to that in the next post).

I moved my scout and worker first, in order to see my surroundings better, and decided on the spot 1-tile East of the start to get a river, coast, whale, fish and gems all at once. With the shielded grassland, the hills (iron?, coal?), the floodplains and the previously mentioned reasons, this looks like it will be a GREAT place to put the capitol (once all that pesky jungle is cleared – Damn mosquitoes!). I settle London and start building a warrior for defense in case anyone else is on my island. I set my worker to roading the gems to the SW of London before remembering there were some already under the city! Wasted turn no.1! Luckily, my scout popped ceremonial burial out of the first hut to the NW. Unfortunately, the two huts on the south end of the island were desserted.

Here is a shot of my first city location.

[burly]

My initial build-order was Warrior/Granary/Warrior/Settler. I built the second warrior to give the city time to grow to size 3 before starting on the settler, that way it would be quicker to start on settler no.2 later.

Here is a shot of London in 2550BC, as I am about to complete my first settler in 2-turns. However, 2-turns becomes 4 as I am hit by disease TWICE!!! I decide it’s time to forget about the floodplain food bonus for now and stick with the fish.

[BigDork]

Boy, it'd sure be helpful if there's some oil in that desert. I guess we'll find out later.

BigD

[burly]

I decide to place my next city to the SSE at the river delta to pick up an equally stunning array of bonus tiles (after culture, of course). York is founded in 2230BC. I start building a temple to quickly take advantage of all the bonus tiles. Luckily, the culture link back to London allows York to utilize the irrigated grassland tile, to grow more quickly. I’m thinking I should have mined it for the extra production, but too late now.

My plan is to settle my next city on the desert tile just south of the river delta to the SW of London. I’m tempted to start it 2-tiles farther to the SW to get the 2 whale tiles, but I can’t mine those, now can I? Also, I won’t waste any of the productive tiles to the south of my capitol by building S of the Delta.

I've been bee-lining for Map-Making. Having no neighbors, I decide it's paramount to make some contact. I researched Writing at 40-turns, thinking I'd pump some extra cash into researching Map-Making faster, but even at 100% science I couldn't get it faster than 40 turns also. As of 2150BC, I'm about 38 turns away from Map-Making. I'm considering making the Temple in York a pre-build for the Great Lighthouse, I'll still get culture that way, plus the GL. I've currently got London building a barracks while I wait to grow to size 3 again for my next settler. Things are shaping up well, I guess I'll know how well when I meet the other CIV's.

Here’s a shot of the fledgling English empire. You laugh now, but just you wait!

[BigDork]

WtF Dom??? That's a lot of desert.




Just kidding.

BigD

[vmxa1]

I suspect that doing any report at 2150BC for this map is not going to take much time. I move to the coast to shoot for the lighthouse from the capitol.
I am going to take a reckless chance here and not start on more settlers asap. I am hoping to delay that and get a settler out of a hut due to being below the curve for cities.
I scout around find three huts in total. Got the first one for CB, then next for a warrior and decide to hold off on the last one. Here is were I hope that I could get a settler by waiting to allow the other to get a second or third citiy.
That blew up, I got Bronze Working IIRC. Oh well, I got big problems now. Capitol has gran/temple and an extra worker and a warrior (2 with the hut one).
Got to get settlers going now. Worried about barbs, so I will set out to cover the land quickly.
Him while I am typing away Civ crashes?
This is an ugly looking location so far.
Researching at 10% and I am working on Map now (not sure of the date I started as I am past 2150 a bit.

[Rhothaerill]

Spain, Glorious Spain

Well, I took the plunge tonight into this new AU course. Ouch! The initial load took about 15 seconds, but it's gone a little quicker after that. Toward the end of the game I may have to read a book between turns. But I knew going in it might be like that.

Per the initial thread my first thought was to play Spain. I thought commercial would be a necessity for a map this large so that left out the vikings and Americans. I've played both Carthage and Greece before, so that left Spain and England. I almost decided to play with England for the expanionist bonus, but in the end I stayed the course with Spain. I ended up heading back down to Monarch level since I've only just started playing Emperor and wasn't used to some of the Emperor nuances yet. I also left all the non-PTW win conditions on.

My first view of the map (since I hadn't looked at the one in the other thread) was one of . Industrious would have been quite nice. . I couldn't bring myself to settle on that hill so I moved my worker east to try and get a picture of what was up with the continent. Ooh, a nice little spot on a river with fish and whales and flood plains and diamonds all in the city radius. Great starting place! And so began the soon-to-be far flung empire of Isabella.

I had already decided beforehand my tech progression of pottery to writing to map making. It's a necessity! And after my first few warrior builds and exploration of my island, it's become even more of a necessity. Thanks to settling on top of some diamonds my early tech progression through pottery went quickly, but then I hit the 40 turn wall for writing and moved my slider down to 10%. Better to get some money going too.

My first 40 turns have gone very quickly (so fast that I completely forgot to take a screenshot . Not that much happened anyway. Out of the only three huts I popped barbs twice, and a warrior once. The expanionist trait might have given me something out of it, but I'm really glad I chose the Spanish now. Three huts and a quick 15 turns for pottery and that's the end of the expansionist trait. Though of course there could be more huts on other islands once I get to them. In terms of production capacity I have settled only one other city after my first so far. It is down near the first wheat/flood plains area and is currently building a granary. This is going to be a great worker farm since I'm in need of them for not being industrious.

Ouch this continent! It has so much potential, but so many desert tiles to get in the way. I sense saltpeter and oil won't be too hard to come by later on, but first I must survive. Got to get to map making fast and find out what else is out there!!

BTW, I've never seen quite so many whale and fish resources off the coast before ( Dominae ).

More to come later

[alva]

However, 2-turns becomes 4 as I am hit by disease TWICE!!!

Happened to me too, I'm really surprised that **** bug is still in there (post 1.21)
-
My capital in at the same place, but my second is 8-9 (keypad direction) from yours.
third is east from your warrior

I got a warrior and two tech from the huts. Not bad seeing how huts there are.

Build que in capital:
scout- granary* - settler - temple - settler - barracks - warrior - spear (still building)
second city
worker-worker-granary* (almost finished)
third city ( not sure, probably pre-build for Gr-Li but too soon to tell)
* forest chop assisted. (was initially going to keep one to counter food production, but changed my mind)

I'm currently somewhere around 1600BC though (Viking - emperor)

[alexman]

Excerpts from Queen Elizabeth’s diary.

4000 BC: We have heard tales of the lush green English landscape, but nobody said that it was all jungle! No, we cannot start the great English civilization in the middle of a jungle, amongst monkeys and other savages. We shall move elsewhere. The land to the east looks promising because of the river, which we shall call the Thames. We shall send our royal Workers towards that direction, but only after our royal scouts make sure there is nothing better to the west. Indeed there is no better land to the West, and our workers and settlers move east.

3950 BC: The royal workers, relieved to finally to exit the terrible jungle after 50 long years, run towards the fertile grasslands to the east. Founding London on the edge of a monkey-infested jungle is a small price to pay for getting rich from all the jungle gems. Meanwhile, the royal scouts have been waiting patiently for the first city to be founded so that they can impress the local Khazak tribe with the superior English culture. Perhaps they can even be convinced to join our civilization and become Anglo-Khazak settlers. Alas, the Khazaks hand over some low-grade maps and vanish into the jungle. Nevertheless, this experience with maps is eye-opening for me, so I order the royal cartographers to produce some maps of their own. The dumbfounded cartographers reply that they cannot do that, as they haven’t been taught the science from the royal scientists. When I turned to the greedy scientists for help, they demanded 400 gold coins to show the cartographers how to write, and 750 gold coins on top of that to show them how to make maps. Disgusted with their greediness, I informed the scientists that they get a salary of 1 gold coin per 50 years, and they better teach everyone how to write by the year 2150 B.C.! The terrified scientists complimented me on my firm attitude.

3900 BC: The royal workers mine the grasslands, the royal scouts continue to explore, and London begins training another Scouting unit.

3800 BC: Royal scouting report reveals fertile floodplains with abundance of wild wheat growing upstream of the Thames river.

3700 BC: The second scouting unit is ready to explore Britannia! Although all royal subjects are currently happy because of all their wealth in gems, I know this won’t last for long. I order the formation of a special royal Warrior unit for military police.

3600 BC: The royal mines of London are completed. Now to construct a road to bring citizens to work in them.

3550 BC: Now it’s the turn of the Vandals to humiliate our people with their map knowledge. Maybe we should fire the royal scientists and hire some of these Vandals. Alas, they vanish into the desert dust before we have a chance to do so.

3500 BC: Aha! Our second scouting unit runs into another vandal settlement. This time we will have none of that map-and-vanish nonsense. We convince them to become Anglo-Vandals! Our royal expansionist trait just paid off.



3450 BC: York founded near some wild cattle grazing grounds. Worker begins chopping down forests near London to supply timber for a Granary construction. Our royal scouts report that Britannia is but a small island.

3200 BC: York trains a Warrior and begins work on a Worker.

2950 BC: Worker from York begins the Great Irrigation Project to bring fresh water through the desert to the South.

2900 BC: London’s Granary completed.

2590 BC: Settlers leave London to found a new city, closer to the fertile floodplains of the South.

2510 BC: Nottingham founded, starts building Granary

2430 BC: Tacitus has completed his Great History of the World. 1) The Glorious Ottomans, 2) The Great Germans, 3) The Fine Babylonians, 4) The Mediocre Iroquois, 5) The Puny Russians, 6) The Pathetic Chinese, 7) The Hopeless Japanese, 8) The Forgotten Egyptians. Evidently, Tacitus’ vocabulary lacks adjectives derogatory enough to include the English!

2310 BC: A second Settler leaves London to found a new city to the West.

2230 BC: Hastings founded. Exactly equal distance from London as Nottingham ensures that Hastings and Nottingham both have the same low corruption due to number of cities (and due to distance of course). It also brings a new bonus grassland in Nottingham's cultural boundaries.

2150 BC: The Royal English Army consists of 2 scouts, 4 Warriors, and 4 Workers. We are building Warriors because there is nothing better to build between Settler and Workers. The MP doesn't hurt. Our lazy scientists will finally learn how to Write next turn, and will start researching Map Making. Nottingham will become a 4-turn Settler factory and it will flood the continent with Settlers, founding tightly-spaced cities to take advantage of our commercial trait. London will build a Worker every 4 turns until we have the technology to build harbors.

[vmxa1]

Great report, wish I could have gotten a settler, oh well.

[Dominae]

Agreed, amazing job on the report alexman!

As far as I can see, you're the only one so far that has researched a tech in 40 turns to end up flush at 2150BC (works out nicely with the DAR setup). Would it be better to push up research beyond 10%, given all the Commerce tiles and the need to reach Map Making as quickly as possible? My thinking is that this is one of those cases where you do not mind losing the Gold to research, since getting to Map Making is so important.

alva and alexman, had there been one or more neighbors on the continent, would you have "gone economic" anyway and set up those two factories (Worker and Settler)? Looks to me like you two made good use of Expansionist in terms of information gathering and response.


Dominae

[alexman]

With the tech rate on this map, Writing costs 8*400/8=400 commerce on Emperor. That's an average of 10 commerce per turn for the first 40 turns. I couldn't have lowered the time to Writing (note how I have less than 400 gold saved up at 2150 BC), even if I had gone with 100% science.

Map Making requires 750 commerce (or an average of 19 gpt for the first 40 turns), so I am researching it at minimum science as well. There is no real harm in this delay, as I think that I will be done REXing just in time to start building harbors and galleys in 1000 BC. I then hope to have a strong enough economy to research at maximum science.

Even if there were neighbors, I doubt I would have done things much differently. For sure I would have been building a Barracks and Archers (the AI loves to research Warrior Code right after Bronze, so they could surely be convinced to sell it to me) instead of all those Warriors though.

[vmxa1]

Dom I think I hit that tech marker as well. I just loaded up 2110 (the only save near that time) and I am on Map Making.
I know I went straight to 10% on Writing and the MM.
After that IIRC I went to max reseaching to get the older stuff at 4 turns. This was usually 70-90%. I think one or two needed 5 turns.

[BigDork]

Hi all...

Not too much happened for me. I fought a whole bunch of barbs, built some cities. Got crap from the huts. That's about all. Nothing stellar. My computer isn't that old and it's slowing slightly between turns. But I've been having problems lately with it and am about to do a reload of my OS. Hopefully that'll fix a few things. Here's hoping anyway.

BigD