AU 504 - Dar 2: 2150BC-1000BC

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by Modo44
Nice, real nice. The city placement in the southern part of your empire matches exactly my choices. Even your Twin Peaks and Port Sludge were cities-in-progress in the parallel universe at that time.

Thanks. Port Sludge is actually an interesting placement. Founding it where I did on FP wastes some food, but the alternative of pushing it one tile to the NW would require an Aqueduct, but of course provide more food. Longer term there will probably be another town on the other side of the mountain, so my current placement makes it a little close, but my preference for early towns is on rivers, since Aqueducts are real *****es to construct in the Ancient/early Middle ages.

Twin Peaks is another that could have been placed 1 tile further from the capital, on the hill. But I figured that I could get more longer term benefit out of mining the hill, so I left it there. This places it closer to the capital. but the capital will be able to "steal" tiles from the towns on the other side (NW) that will eventually be forced to use coastal squares....which will be great for commerce, but effectively nerf their production.

Oh well....when you make a "sea change" as I did several AU games ago and move towards closer spacing, you learn not to worry about production problems in some cities

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Aqualung71
Where's yours Dom? I hope you're playing this game!

I've run into some...troubles, with my savegame/scenario. Took me a bit to figure out what was going on. I'll have to start over.

[Aqualung71]

Ah, ok. Well, I'm confident that reading these DAR's will have no impact on the way you replay the game

[Dominae]

I've been reading them as I passed the appropriate checkpoints in my own game. But now that I have to start over, I'll definitely have some spoiler information to work on. I'm guessing it's not going to help me much on Deity, though.

[Aqualung71]

Errrr....no, I guess not

Personally, I think a cultural victory is the hardest (and most daunting) on the highest levels, so I'm looking forward to reading your DAR's when you get back on track.

And without wanting to put any pressure on you Dom, but I have complete confidence in your ability to win this game on Deity!!!

[Modo44]

Originally posted by Aqualung71

Thanks. Port Sludge is actually an interesting placement. Founding it where I did on FP wastes some food, but the alternative of pushing it one tile to the NW would require an Aqueduct, but of course provide more food.

After Delhi grows to size 12, you can steal some Flood Plains terrain from it in order to grow Port Sludge. With mined Deserts it should have decent production.

[Aqualung71]

Yes, mined deserts + FP makes it average....only marginally better than mined GL. Actually, it's already using all the available FP apart from the Wheat, which the capital needs for the Settler pump. Longer term, Port Sludge will have most of its worked tiles in the sea, more for commerce than production.

Officially, Port Sludge was put there to build Curraghs to explore for other civs, which it has done nicely. Next will be a Harbour to build Galleys and look for the other continent.

[Tall Stranger]

Not really a whole lot more to report for this phase than the last one. I've been continuing to focus on cranking out settlers (with the large amount of space, finishing the REX phase is going to take alot longer than most games, even with all this food around).

My gamble on sending a settler well outside my border to seize the dyes has (as far as I can tell) paid off. Not only do I have all the eastern dyes that I'm aware of, but the Persians are pretty well boxed in. So as long as I avoid ticking them off (at least until I can build up my mil), they won't be a major factor in this game.

1870BC: Trade Writing to Persia in exchange for Iron Working.

1725BC: Found Calcutta next to all three dyes in the eastern jungle. This should cut off the Persians from either expanding too close to me or getting too many luxuries.

1700BC: Trade Writing, Iron Working and 17 gold to China in exchange for Mysticism.

1400BC: Right now I have 9 towns, mainly with 3 cities cranking out settlers and the occasional worker. I've found the incense to the far northwest, and want to try to colonize that entire peninsula before my neighbors can build galleys.

1350BC: Hyderabad founded near the cluster of bananas in the eastern jungle. This should help make Calcutta a little more connected to the rest of the regime.

1300BC: Trade Code of Laws and Wheel to Persia for Literature, then trade CoL and Lit to China for Horseback Riding and all 44 of Mao's gold. China is polite towards me, but Persia remains annoyed.

1275BC: Bengal founded near the bananas and dye to the east.

1250BC: Stupid Chinese demand 22 gold from me. I'm so pathetically weak that I have no choice. I WILL kill Mao for that insult.

1200BC: Trade Horseback to the Persians for Pottery and all his 33 gold. Still annoyed at me.

1125BC: This historian declare us the happiest civ. Gandhi dances for joy. The first town in the western lands, Chittagong, is founded.

1100BC: The town of Punjab is founded next to the horses.

I forgot to get a screenshot at 1000BC, but I found an autosave file from 950BC, which should be close enough. I've got 13 towns, access to 2 luxuries (with a high likelihood of owning the rest of that peninsula and thus that third lux), I'm very competitive in techs with my neighbors, and I'm crushing the competition in culture. On the down side, I'm absurdly weak in mil, so a sneak attack could be devastating. Fortunately, most of my outpost cities are at good choke-points, so I'm not real concerned with a sneak attack on one of my interior cities.

My goals for the next segment are to complete my expansion, get temples (and, when available, libraries)up in every town, and start looking to suicide galley my way to another continent. I may take a run at SoZ, depending on the timing.

[Aqualung71]

Originally posted by Arrian
300 shields for the SoZ which produces AC w/o the hit point bonus... that's a strong nerf. Ouch. Took me forever to build it, and then the payoff isn't really all that good.

Of course, all depends on individual game circumstances, so based on my game Arrian I can't agree with you. My AC ended up being fairly important in my defeat of China. I like to think that even though most of them were killed, they softened up the defences for my Horsies to take out the wounded units I had also pillaged China's Iron, so Pike's weren't an issue.

Also, since I slowed the tech pace to a crawl after Astronomy, then went chasing the optional Wonder techs, I doubt that I'll even get out of the middle ages before my game finishes....meaning I'll be producing AC until the end of the game!

[Modo44]

Plus a city with SOZ has military production covered for the long time. Anything that allows your cities to skip military units will be great in this game.

[punkbass2000]

AU mod, Emp.

No save from this time period, so it's a little rough and there's no screenshot.

After its temple, Bangalore started a barracks and military, and few other cities all squeezed an archer or spearman here and there. This was good, as the Chinese came up and declared war without provocation. Despite my puny military, one vet spearman killed 3-4 archers/horsemen at the chokepoint directly south of he starting location (on one of the mountains). The other spearman at that choke point fell back to the hill just north and killed about two more incoming units. Beyond that, good luck with the RNG + extremely conservative and efficient use of my few troops + incidental use of the AI moving towards undefended cities exploit, I managed to stave off the Chinese with a good kill ratio and without losing any cities long enough to get peace for ~20gold.

Other than that, during this time period I researched Writing and went for phil. at 50 turns and was 20 turns from it by 1000BC. I likely founded ~5 new cities during this time. Delhi started a prebuild for the SoZ, but we didn't end up trading for Math in time, and ended up building the GLib a few turns after this DAR. (Still got the SoZ in Delhi anyway). The Chinese built the Pyramids in Beijing.

It was also about this time that I decided to deviate from the course a bit. I decided not to capture any cities the I didn't found without a very precise reason (a common variant for me, minus the exception, which there ended up being infuriably many of, as we'll see in the next few DARs.). I did this for a couple reasons:
1. I don't like how similar dom. an culture victories tend to be. Generally, the fastest way to 100k, generally, I would think, is to do HoF style conquest (up to ~65% land) and then rush culture buildings everywhere ASAP. This is practically a domination victory. I wanted to see a more builder focused attempt.
2. I prefer playing with little war.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by punkbass2000
1. I don't like how similar dom. an culture victories tend to be. Generally, the fastest way to 100k, generally, I would think, is to do HoF style conquest (up to ~65% land) and then rush culture buildings everywhere ASAP. This is practically a domination victory. I wanted to see a more builder focused attempt.

Still, you will have to conquer somebody at some time. At Emperor any religious or scientific AI will probably bypass you culturally and become impossible to catch without a big war. It's even more so with the AU mod.

Originally posted by punkbass2000
2. I prefer playing with little war.

Same here. But this game dictates otherwise, I'm afraid.

[punkbass2000]

Originally posted by Modo44

Still, you will have to conquer somebody at some time. At Emperor any religious or scientific AI will probably bypass you culturally and become impossible to catch without a big war.

Well, I was never anywhere close to getting bypassed culturally, though I did end up having to take a few core cities from one civ to prevent them from reaching 50k during the last few turns of my game. The war was far from big, it was a cakewalk.

[Paddy]

thanks A.Lung - great yarn indeed

[Dominae]

Diety - Stock

Again: notes then comments, with screenshots.

1950BC: Calcutta
1870BC:	Disease strikes Delhi
1830BC: Disease strikes Delhi
	Bangalore completes Temple, begins Granary
1790BC: Lahore
1725BC:	Karachi
1675BC:	Delhi completes Temple, begins Settler
1650BC:	China and Persia discover Writing
1625BC: Writing
 	Karashi poprushes Temple
1600BC: Karashi completes Temple, begins Warrior
1575BC: Arabia completes Colossus
1525BC: Bangalore completes Granary, begins Palace
1500BC: Madras completes Granary, begins Settler
1475BC:	Karachi poprushes Temples
	Karachi completes Temple, begins Worker
1425BC: Kolhapur
1400BC: Lahore completes Temple, begins Barracks
	Jaipur
1325BC:	Hyderabad
1300BC:	Silks
1275BC:	Germany completes Oracle
	Bengal
1225BC:	China completes Pyramids	
	Philosophy
	Code of Laws
	Chittagong
1200BC:	Punjab
	Code of Laws to China for Map Making and The Wheel
	Code of Laws to Persia for Mysticism and 116 Gold
1175BC: Kohlapur completes Temple, begins Barracks
1050BC: Dacca
1025BC: Hyderabad completes Temple, begins Galley
1000BC: Indus
	Ganges