AU501 - DAR1: 4000BC-2150BC

[ducki]

I'm not sure I really understand ducki's "balance thingy" myself (sorry ducki).

No, my bad. It was misleading. Yes, I'm sure I wasted some food and could have MMed further to make sure I didn't, but in the first few turns(and knowing I was going to be MMing a pump) the balance I was looking for was growth and completion at the same time so that I didn't waste either 3 turns waiting on growth or an _excessive_ amount of food. It was mostly about timing, not the super-duper level of MM balance that it sounded like.
Sorry bout that.

[Fosse]

Fosse's game

I'm playing Emporer

I don't tend to favor micromanaging nearly as often as some people here, but I'm hoping my game stands up to the test...

I built Constantinople right where the settler was, and got to work on a barracks prebuild to a granary. I started researching potteryj at a 12 turn pace. That seemed shockingly fast to me, but hey.

3550 BC. Border expansion pops a Settler! He heads South East to take advantage of that lovely game.

3350 BC I found Adrianople SE of the games, and discover pottery. I switch to a granary, and start a curragh in Adrianople.

3100 BC Curragh starts sailing south, and I start warriors. My curragh gets to watch the volcano on the south west island erupt. Hooray!

2900 BC Warrior finished, starts to explore.

2800 I meet Japan, and buy the wheel for Alphabet and 23 gold.

2710 My first settler completed, he heads to the coastal hill NE of Adrianople, where he will found Caesara in 2550.

2430 My next settler founsd Nicea in the forest SW of the cattle. I am packing cities much closer than I like to on a bigger landmass, but I am now aware of the size of my continent (how DARE you call it an island ) and know that having lots of cities is going to be important. Maybe I'll disband some later...

2310 I pop some barbarians from the second hut, and meet Sumeria. They have Warrior Code and Ceremonial Burial, just like Japan, but also Masonry. I can buy the first two from either, but I want Masonry so I can sell it to Japan. I plan to save and hope that Japan doesn't research it on their own. Neither has curraghs, so I know that contact is mind alone for now.

2150 I am about to found a new city in the North West of Byzantium (the landmass), have 23 turns to writing, and still can't afford Masonry. But Japan doens't have it either. I feel like I'm off to a nice start, and enjoy the landmasses Dom gave us for the Curraghs to look at. I have two, and will have a third next turn. In the next turns I want to get more workers (3 now), to start clearing those marshes... ugh, what project that will be. But I need the land for cities, and I need them now.


Luck, all.

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by E_T
Did I hear someone say spreadsheets??

Wow, You really know that you've had an influance, when you start seeing AU posts that use your WF designation system.

* E_T thinks that this might earn him a spot in the HoF.... naaaaa



E_T

Indeed. Using your WF designation system is great for record keeping.

As for the spreadsheets, I know for certain it would improve my game, but I REALLY don't want to take the time it would require. Occassionally, I'll stop to plan out a city 12-20 turns in advance or so (god forbid planning out all of the tile swapping between cities 30 or 40 turns in advance...), but it's relatively rare and I'd rather just keep the game moving.

[Rhothaerill]

Rhoth’s DARs, AU501, Chapter 1

Emperor level played with the AU mod

4000bc – Settle Constantinople on the starting spot. Workforce stays on the fish tile. First build set to worker. Begin research of pottery at 100%. Worker begins roading to cattle.

I had already decided when we first saw the screenshot how my first few turns were going to begin. I didn’t go through the level of detail that Arrian used in the other thread, but I knew what I was going to do. Knowing the new tendencies of huts I had my first build be a worker. Not only would I have no military when the culture borders expanded (which meant barbs could not be popped), the second worker so early could only help in getting Constantinople set up as a pump city.

3500bc – Culture expansion and the hut pops…a warrior. Sigh, I was hoping for at least some tech. Warrior begins exploring the southland.

During this time my workers were concentrating on getting irrigation to the cattle tile. Constantinople was a perfect pump city with cattle and the lake fish to provide 5 food per turn, while with the amount of bonus grassland tiles meant I could maintain the 5 food per turn while having good shield production. After the hut pop I built a few warriors to roam my lands and protect my cities from barbs.

3250bc – Finish research of pottery and start writing at 10%

This was a bit of a gamble. Research on writing would be slow anyway with my current lack of an acceptable level of commerce. I decided to bank up some gold now to have the future possibilities of both upgrades and deficit research spending. Because of my need to use the slider a great deal in the early game to keep my pump running at full speed, this ended up being the way to go (at least for me). I may have researched writing a lot slower than others, but I had gold in the bank and ready to use.

3150bc – Multiple forest chops speed up a granary

Not only was Constantinople well stocked for a pump city, it also had several forests surrounding it that were just begging to be chopped. As soon as I finished irrigating the cattle I sent both workers on chopping duties toward where I wanted to road for my future cities. One more forest chop that happened after these two simultaneous chops and my granary was complete.

3000bc – My exploring warrior spots culture borders to the southwest.

The south was by now completely explored while the north was getting there. I had this sneaking suspicion there wasn’t much more to the north. It was going to be even more important to get to map making and gain the ability to not only get off the island, but to attack my neighbors for their land. I soon spotted more borders to the northeast. Now my curraghs, when built, would have plenty of places to go.

2710bc – Warrior pops barbs from hut.

The only other hut on the island was popped with the idea of maximizing my settler potential. I still only had the one city and was about to build my first settler so I changed the build before popping. But to no avail as my hut luck did not rise.

2510bc – Settle Adrianople on the coast.

There were several decent sites for my second city including a two-game site and a wheat site, but I wanted to have the opportunity to put exploratory curraghs in the water as soon as possible. I finally chose the current site as shown on my screenshot. Not only could the settler get there in one turn because of the roads already set up, the site had several bonus grasslands and could even use the cattle tile if it became necessary (it hasn’t yet). The first build was naturally a curragh to start making use of my seafaring trait.

2350bc – Settle Caesarea near the game tiles

Caesarea was designed to be my primary military base with its high shield production from the forests and the usefulness of the game tiles. A forest chop would get the barracks up quicker and I could start spewing out warriors for (hopefully) eventual upgrade to swordsman (assuming I had iron).

2190bc – My first curragh is built and I contact Japan to the southwest. Trade alphabet for warrior code and 11 gold.

Japan already did not like me and the feeling was mutual. He had three techs, his starting techs and the one I finally received, but would only trade the one. I couldn’t get anything else out of him even if I had offered most of what I had in gold. I wasn’t about to do that, but I did earmark Japan as my likely first target when Dromons became available. I don’t want them to see the light of Samurai. And they have ivory.

2110bc – Settle Nicaea on eastern coast.

This city would also be a pretty decent city with its bonus grassland and tobacco tiles. But it would take a while to bring up to speed. The city shows a warrior, but that is only because I did not change it until the next turn. It actually built a curragh first. I unfortunately went one turn beyond the DAR length before realizing it, but that shouldn’t make any difference.

So at the end of the first DAR I have four cities settled and contact with one other nation, but I am behind on tech by several (which is normal). My military only consists of three warriors (having lost one to barbs) and a curragh so I’ve been actively seeking out barb camps to keep them from descending on my workers. I essentially have one worker per city, which has been working out fine so far, but I will need several more workers soon as my city count will increase dramatically and I need to drain that ugly swampland into refreshing grassland tiles. I’ve already decided on my city placement scheme, but that will come in the next DAR installment.

To be continued…

[Rhothaerill]

What is this with all these people getting a settler from the huts? I received a warrior and barbs.

[Kloreep]

I opened up notepad, then Conquests, started playing, and promptly forgot to take notes. So this brief summary is from memory.

I moved SW to the grass to have the cow in the initial ring, and started out with a build order of Warrior-Warrior-Worker-Granary. My worker first irrigated & roaded the bonus grass by the lake, then irrigated & roaded the cattle, and only then moved to mine some of the bonus grasses.

Once the granary was completed, I produced 3 4-turn settlers in Constantinople (the third is with the warrior to the northeast in this screenie; it's about to settle). As you may not be able to see in the shrunken screenie, I'm currently having Constantinople produce more workers before building more settlers.

[Master Zen]

DAR 1 - AU Mod, Demigod

Ok, this is my very first SP C3C game since the beta test. I just have to say that it is looking to be a very fun scenario and kudos to Dom for making it


I decided to give it a shot on demigod, since I don't play Civ much these days anymore other than PBEMs and demo games, so I'll gladly take the challange. Byzantines are of course an excellent civ and I will expect a lot of island hopping. Since the map is archipielago, it will be of utmost importance to get everything out of the likely-small land-mass you will start in, as well as get rid of any neighbor very early on.

The Story

I decided to build the capital right on the start as it looks to be an excellent place, no need for an aqueduct and a cow nearby. The only scary thing is the volcano but there's also a goody hut. First build was a worker so as to pop something nice from the hut, switching between the fish and a BG I got the first worker in 7 turns in sync with the growth. However, unlike some other lucky souls I only got a free warrior from the hut which went out to explore the south and southwest.

On 3300 BC Constantinople was at size 2 and working on both the cow and fish, I synched a settler by chopping one of the forests and built my second city, Adrianople, besides the game tiles. I also got Pottery in 2950.

In 2670 BC I got contact with the Japanese and traded Alphabet+Pottery for CB+WC+12g. In 2430 BC I built my first Currah which went exploring the northwest. It soon found itself followed by 2 barb galleys and with this began a pursuit that would eventually take this little galley halfway around the world (stay tuned for DAR 2).

Other cities built were Caesarea on 2590 BC and Nicea in 2150 BC. I am going for a very tight build since it looks like I'm going to be very short on space and I'll need as many cities as I can get. Among other things that happened during this time, the Volcano erupted - twice. Fortunately I did not have anything close nearby and no units or improvements were destroyed.



During the period up to 2150 BC

[cracky]

Cracky's first AU

AU 501 --Monarch --stock rules.

Okay, this is my first AU course, so any and all advice is appreciated.

I settled on the hill and set the worker to work on the shielded grassland before heading down to irrigate and road the cow. Constantinople started to build another worker (after I read that you can't get barbs from a hut with no military units). Started researching pottery at 100%

When the culture border expanded, I got 25 gold from the hut.

Obviously I'm not doing a turn by turn breakdown here, I did try to take notes on all the important updates however.

The first few builds for Constantinople were worker, warrior, settler, granary, settler. This brought me to 2150 BC two turns before that second settler was done, but more on that in a minute. The warrior was sent to explore while the two workers finished up on the cow and began a road up the the wheat to the north-west (my second city site).

The settler was finished in 2900 BC, and headed for his spot. This was also the turn I popped the hut in the swamp and got Warrior Code (WooHoo!).

The second city was built on the wheat in 2750 BC. I tend to go for a CxxxC city spacing, but I'm going to have to 'cram' in some CxxC to take advantage of all the land on what I've realized is a fairly small island.

Ceremonial Burial was also fininshed in 2750 BC. With only Masonry and The Wheel left in this first tier, I decided to go for The Wheel before bee-lineing for philosophy. Adrianople's first build is a Curragh because the my lone wandering warrior has spotted at least one nearby island to the north-west, and besides the course is the power of seafaring.

Curragh built in 2470 and sent to explore. Constantinople is at size 3 with 5 turns on the granary and 7 turns before growth to size four. Have to put the luxury slider at 10% to keep the peace.
Adrianople builds a warrior with a settler in mind for the next build, and maybe a granary or a second curragh after that, I'm not sure

2430: Japan contacted. I trade pottery for The Wheel and 10 gold. On to writing and philosophy.

2390: Crap! The Volcano is now active. My two workers are still mining the tobacco for Adrianople. Looks like they're be on clean-up duty in the not too distant future.

2150: Wow, that was fast. I only have two cities founded, but Constantinople is two turns away from producing a settler and Adrianople is 5 turns away from one. The two workers you see will finish mining in one turn and turn into a road crew for two settlers almost done.

Overall, I thought I was doing fairly well until I read this first DAR and saw that most people had three or more cities. Any ideas on why I'm so far behind on this? I admit I haven't been attempting to match shield/growth numbers perfectly. Every tile being worked by a citizen has been improved though, and Constantinople is now geared up for settler pump status...


[edit: screwed up the attachment the first time with my 'leet windows skills ]

[vulture]

Emperor, standard rules.

I decided to go with building on the hill, and setting up a settler pump. Constantinople built a worker to set the pump up, 2 warriors to go exploring (happiness controlled with the luxury slider) and then started on the granary. Research pottery at 100% at first - which only required 60 beakers rather than the 80 quoted in the teaser thread.

I let my expanding borders pop the hut in 3500 BC, which gave me Ceremonial Burial. Not really much of a boost. Finished pottery in 3300 BC, and started on writing at 50 turn pace (which was a mistake - I later upped it to max science).

Granary completed in 2710 BC, with settlers every 4 turns thereafter. By 2670 BC I'd explored then entire island, and got 25 gold from the second goody hut. Some barbs had popped up in the NW mountains, so I sent a warrior to go and look at them. Two neighbours were visible - green to the south (Japan or Aztecs in vanilla civ3), blue to the north (usually America in vanilla).

My first new city was founded on the coast and started producing curraghs asap, to go and meet the neighbours. In fact, all cities apart from the capital are founded on the coast. I'd planned to have 10 cities in total on my island, once the swamp is cleared.

2230 BC was my first ever volcano eruption in C3C.How exciting. It was also the year the first curragh completed. It quickly went south to meet the greenies, who turned out to be Japan, with Ivory. Traded Alphabet plus 28 gold t get the wheel, and discovered Constantinople was founded on horses. They still have warrior code, which I don't, but I'll get it off them soon.

2150 BC, 3 cities founded with a settler on the way to build the fourth. Settling the south at first, due to barbs in the north. The first curragh won't bother exploring Japanese coastlines, but will head north to visit our otjer neighbours as quickly as possible.

I'm already thinking along the lines of invading Japan to get the ivory, and making a play for the Statue of Zeus. I'll have to invade them with them having the SoZ otherwise...

[steven8r]

Re: Re: Man, I've got lots yet to learn!!!

Originally posted by Dominae
Hope you're up for a couple of constructive criticisms, steven8r:

That's why I'm here Dom. I'm trying to put my mind in 'sponge mode' and absorb the vast wisdom from the Apolyton Community.

Putting Science at 50% on the first turn is a bad move 99.9% of the time. In Civ3, you either want to do either all-out research, or all-out capitalism. Obviously you cannot leave your Science slider at 100% for the entire game, because you've got citizens to keep happy and improvements to upkeep. But in general if you're researching a tech yourself, you want to have very little gpt income. . . . If this sounds complicated, here's the basic rule: if you want to research a tech, always put your Science slider as high as it will go without getting into serious debt (or unhappiness problems). On the very first turn, you should always put it at 100%.

Check. Sci at Max (reducing as necessary for Happines) while emphasising Commerce to turn into Beakers.

I'm not sure I really understand ducki's "balance thingy" myself (sorry ducki). If you've got a tile that produces 3 Food per turn (here, the Fish), there's only a couple of ways you can fill the Food box from size to size 2 without wasting any Food. . .

This is from the 'Pump' discussion from "Ducki does C3C at Emperor" thread. (An excellent treatise on MicroManaging a 4-turn Settler, 2-turn Worker Pump).

Typically you do not want to your cities to display that they're going to grow and complete a build on the same turn; this is bad:

Constantinople: 1
Warrior: 1

This is because whenever a city grows you always get one or two extra Shields from the new Laborer; when your city is producing a Food surplus, the Governor will typically select a Forest or other high-Shield tile, which gets you 2 Shields you were not expecting. You waste these if your city is producing 2spt before growth and has 8 Shields done on a Warrior build. So if you want to micromanage production, try to take these precious "free" Shields into consideration.

Yep, I agree. It's just that there wasn't anything else that I could build w/o wasting even more shields at the time. I was having a severe run of Bad Luck vs Barbs and my military force was rapidly depleting and I needed replacements. This was more of a panic reaction than a calculated Action (which I prefer--don't we all?)

Barring Barbs and other civs messing with your plans, you can always ensure that your cities will not Riot by checking the F1 screen at the end of your turn. If each city has at least as many Happy Faces as Unhappy ones, you will not get any Riots. Conveniently, you adjust the Luxury slider in the F1 screen, so you can tell right away how much you need to keep your populace happy (and never more than that!).

I thought I had done this. I checked and it seemed OK at the time. But when I moved the Warrior out to explore, that changed things. I've since started checking Moods w/ the Warrior just 1 space out from the city. If I need to, I can move him back in or re-adjust the Lux Slider.

Overall, I think you're doing pretty good. At least you're thinking about your actions, which goes a long way in helping you learn all this stuff. Keep it up!

Dominae

Thanks Dom. My game (at least I felt) was pretty bad (as compared to others posted here), but I do think that I AM learning--which is why I'm here. I appreciate your, Court Haus', and others' constructive criticism/helpful pointers, etc.

Steven

P.S. I'll post more in the 2nd DAR, but I did manage to turn on the Pump shortly afterwards and have begun to do MUCH better.

[Dominae]

Re: Re: Re: Man, I've got lots yet to learn!!!

Originally posted by steven8r
I thought I had done this. I checked and it seemed OK at the time. But when I moved the Warrior out to explore, that changed things. I've since started checking Moods w/ the Warrior just 1 space out from the city. If I need to, I can move him back in or re-adjust the Lux Slider.

If you moved our Warrior out of the city, you lost some Military Police which made your citizens Unhappy again. To avoid situations like this, the last thing I do in every turn is check moods in the F1 screen. If I forgot to place some units on MP duty, too bad; it's much better to lose a few Commerce on the Lux slider than losing a rioting city's entire turn (at least, in the early-game).


Dominae

[alexman]

Theodora's smile: Part 1

AU Mod, Deity

The year was 4000 BC, and Theodora gazed down at the landscape from the top of the hill. She acted as if she was looking for a place to found a city, but she was really wondering whether her good looks were enough to dominate the world one day.
“Any promising locations, your Majesty?” asked one of her hopeful workers.
That question seemed to wake Theodora from her day dreams.
“Huh? Yes, of course, we shall found a city where we stand!” she replied, not knowing what else to say.
“But, your Majesty, we are a seafaring people, and the coast is barely visible from here!”
“Um, yes, well… how about building fishing boats in that lake to the north? Yes, that’s it! We shall become the world’s greatest lakefaring civilization. Now will you get started on my Palace please?” Theodora asked with a smile. After that smile, the worker couldn’t remember his concerns any longer…

Theodora named her city Constantinople (just to annoy a Turkish ex-boyfriend) and she sent her workers down into the grassy plains to bring irrigation to a cattle field to the southwest. She also told her scientists to discover pottery, because she needed to host important dinners at the palace.

Theodora loved the idea of having many workers to landscape her gardens, so she decided to hire more workers (3650 BC), even before she hired Warriors to protect her.

In 3550, the cultural borders of Constantinople absorbed the friendly Thracian tribe, who were obviously in awe of Theodora’s looks as well. They had nothing but maps to offer the Byzantine people as a token of their friendship, but maps were more than welcome, as the Byzantines had not yet explored the lands around their city. In fact, these maps were a major reason why Theodora decided to fund a Granary next, instead of a band of explorers.

[alexman]

Theodora's smile: Part 2

Theodora could tell she had limited space within which to expand her empire. It looked like she was on either an island, or on the southern tip of a peninsula with inhospitable marshland to the north. A very astute observation, Theodora!

She decided to expand as fast as possible to settle all the land available to her, and not to worry about military. There were no other civilizations nearby to threaten her safety, and barbarians didn’t scare her either. She knew that they would be after her money, so she made sure to spend the entire treasury on science funding, so that even if barbarians attacked, they would leave empty-handed. Theodora also decided to recruit as many Workers as she could. There were acres of land to be turned into public gardens, not to mention marches and lava to be cleared.

The Byzantine scientists discovered Pottery in 3150, and then Theodora asked them to figure out a use for these strange symbols called “Alphabet”, inherited from their ancestors.

The Granary of Constantinople was finally completed in 2850 BC, much to the delight of Theodora, who was eager to feed her people so that she gets even more admirers. The food surplus quickly turned into a baby boom, and in 2670 the first band of settlers left the city, as Constantinople was getting to be a very crowded place indeed. They founded Adrianople in 2630 BC. The second band of settlers left in 2550 BC, after using food from a nearby forest for their wagons, and they founded Caesarea in 2510.

Theodora was delighted to learn that Caesarean citizens had spotted foreign lands across the channel from their coast. They had not yet made contact with those foreigners, but that was fine with Theodora, who needed some time to choose her dress before having a foreign leader for dinner her palace anyway. Company at last!

At this point, the Byzantine Empire still consisted of no military whatsoever. Leave it to a woman to rule without violence...

In 2390, after having produced two Workers, a Granary, and two Settlers, Constantinople sent off a third Worker. We did mention Theodora’s fondness for landscaping her gardens, right?

In 2270 BC just as the unknown French civilization was completing the Colossus, Theodora finally met Tokugawa. Much to her surprise, the Japanese emperor didn’t seem to be impressed with her smile, and even short-changed her in a trade of Alphabet and Pottery for Ceremonial Burial and Warrior Code plus 4 gold. She could tell that he was annoyed with her, but she could not figure out what she did wrong. “He must be gay, there’s no other explanation” she thought to herself.

In 2150, the Byzantine army consisted of 5 workers and 3 Warriors, with the first Currah almost completed for coastal exploration. The northern part of the island remained unexplored.

[Rhothaerill]

Re: Theodora's smile: Part 2

Originally posted by alexman
We did mention Theodora’s fondness for landscaping her gardens, right?
...
She could tell that he was annoyed with her, but she could not figure out what she did wrong. “He must be gay, there’s no other explanation” she thought to herself.

I just had to laugh at these! Nice job with the story alexman.

[jshelr]

Let me post this start (emperor) and then read above what I should have done.

We moved to the coast on the first turn and, on building the city on turn two, decided to sacrifice food in order to build a warrior in 5. Writing in 50 at 20%, heading for philo.

This idea proved to work too well as the natural arrival of the warrior at the nearby hut was timed to pop a second settler.

This settler moved to avoid the volcano, having had a size 12 city wiped off the face of the earth in a recent game. That proved lucky as well as the volcano turned active in 2950 and soon messed up a tile containing game.

The build order arrived at curragh and warrior exploration had already suggested an island start (no surprise there )

A warrior had already identified an island to the south and workers were bringing water to the arrid second city.

Uncooperative Japanese met in 3000 BC.

Second curragh in 2900 set sail.

2670 -- Japan is pitiful and small -- lick chops. We are working up the west coast of an apparently uninhabited island to the NW of us.

Need mapmaking.

Hints of more land to the west off the North point of the neighboring island led to another land discovery.

To the East, Hittites were met in 2430 by the first curragh that had discovered thier land mass after completing the circumnavigation of Japan. We brokered deals getting us all tech ex pottery. (Worried that the Hittites had a lot of tech and might therefore have neighbors which would have meant I would have done better by waiting. But what the heck.)

We have three cities, number two by the game and three past the wheat, pretty widely spaced and are building some barracks at the moment. Workers are in good supply. Will build along the southern coast and then get to work clearing the swamps.

Game looks like fun at this point.