Turn 2, 3960BC

[DeepO]

initial build order will probably turn out warrior-scout-scout-warrior or warrior-scout-warrior-scout before going for food-units. Anybody know by heart how many other teams started with a scout?

DeepO

[Mudhut]

I too think Hunting first is the way to go. If anybody thinks we should research something else, they really need to speak up soon!

[Dominae]

I just re-installed Civ4 today, so I'm a bit rusty; bear with me.

Religion:

Is it conceivable that a high-Commerce team tries to mop up the three early Religions? If so, any team that reasons as we do and plays it safe will not be able to deny any of the Religions. The same thing happens if we or another team guesses wrong, since we have to switch gears at the same time as the founding team, who are obviously going to beat us to the next one.

It's not a particularly safe course of action (going for the three Religions) but the payoff is likely to be huge. Sarantium is Philosophical and could make the most of it, and is Financial so has a good chance of pulling it off. Fried, on more than once occasion, expressed an interest in this strategy, but of course wrote it off as unsafe in the MP environment. But a demogame is a great opportunity to make it work, since in theory most teams want to be as defensive as possible early on.

As a team that was not dealt a high-Commerce start (at least, for the moment), should we worry about this? Should we do something about it? Our capital is likely to be a research giant, surely one of the best in the game barring multiple Gold resources: perhaps we should forget Religion altogether for now and try for Confucianism instead? The risk of such a beeline is reduced by our Skirmishers.

Settler:

Um, what will our Health cap be like if we settle on the Plains Hill? +2 (Prince) +1 (Forest) +2 (Fresh Water) -3 (Flood Plains) = 2, or 3 with the Sheep. That's way too low if we plan to put Cottages on those Flood Plains!

We might consider moving the Settler 3 next turn and founding there. Although we lose a Flood Plains and the extra Hammers from founding on the Plains Hill, we can grow much bigger due to the additional Forests and still have access to a high number of Flood Plains.

[notyoueither]

The fp's with cottage are net 0 f, 3 c (and growing) over the He cap.

With the sheep we have 4 healthy pop (enough for the sheep, a cottage, and two mined plains hills on river. 12h, 7c ++.

[Dominae]

Doh, forgot about the Flood Plains supporting themselves... (like I told you, rusty!)

I'm still not sure how you are getting 4 healthy pop, but I'm relying on screenshots and memory - one of these is not entirely reliable.

Still, any thoughts on a more Health-friendly location?

[notyoueither]

We have a limit of 3 before the sheep (for city on the plains hill we are on) according to the map I made based on noble diff.

Our starting fp has a higher limit (it eliminates a fp, gets away from a couple others, and adds 2 forest) but we give up a lot of early hammers. Early hammers that help massively in getting the early explorers/protection out.

[notyoueither]

I'm not concerned by the health on the plains hill. Early on we only need a limit of 4 to work the sheep, a cottage and two plains hills. We only rush to grow more to occupy a cottage.

Later on we'll have another 3 to 5 He from resources, easy.

3 grains, 3 more animals, 3 seafood; we'd be unlucky to get only 3.

[notyoueither]

OTOH...

City on the starting fp can get us to 15 hpt. That could be the difference on an early wonder, and the 2 fpt lost to He at the Ha limit slow down workers and settlers.

Not so obvious anymore, given the 3 plains hills that we can mine.

[Blake]

Is it conceivable that a high-Commerce team tries to mop up the three early Religions? If so, any team that reasons as we do and plays it safe will not be able to deny any of the Religions. The same thing happens if we or another team guesses wrong, since we have to switch gears at the same time as the founding team, who are obviously going to beat us to the next one.

It would be extremely unusual for a team to try such a thing.

It's not a particularly safe course of action (going for the three Religions) but the payoff is likely to be huge. Sarantium is Philosophical and could make the most of it, and is Financial so has a good chance of pulling it off.

I'd actually put it like this:
"It's an extremely unsafe course of action and the payoff is likely to be minimal".
They aren't spiritual (we know this is true of all other teams), they can't build 3 cheap temples for happiness. They will have crappy terrain improvement so the chances of building Oracle and/or Stonehenge will be minimal, meaning difficulty getting Great prophets to actually build any shrines.
Opportunities to spread the religions to other teams will be few and far between, denial will be meaningless since it’s usually done for diplomatic reasons (ie the power to chooe who your AI neighbour likes). Spreading internally will be the main avenue for profit from religion, and it's very expensive to spread more than two religions - really the lion share of the benefit is with the first.
While there might be some passive spread from rivers and/or coast, they aren't spiritual so can't use religious scouting to much effect.

And I don't think it's right that teams will be as defensive as possible... rather teams will be quite proactive, trying to learn as much as possible about their neighbors. Information... that's what it's about. The chance of a religious "Hyrdra" going unnoticed... zero, it'll show up in top cities anyway. While the chance of being eliminated early is probably lower than usual (kind of fun-spoiling and a black mark on the eliminator), I'm pretty sure most teams would happily jump at the opportunity to extract some concessions from a team who puts themselves in a militarily weak position (extortion is fun!).

I think it can be summarized that snowflakes have a better chance in hell than another team trying this.
And we don't have to worry about it anyway since it's a very weak strategy, if it does happen we should laugh instead. A team would only do it as a declaration of non-competitiveness, and I believe all teams, including Banana, have declared their intention to play seriously.

Sarantium is Philosophical and could make the most of it, and is Financial so has a good chance of pulling it off.

I have to wonder: What on earth does philosophical have to do with religion? It's a trait which provides greater profits from wonder building and specialists, religion does not make it easier to work the philo trait. It's marginally useful for getting the 4 later religions via prophet lightbulb, but an early religion isn't needed to use philo for that. (except with Saladin for a fast priest). Philo = religion is I feel one of those things that does make sense cognitively, but the logic doesn't back it up.

[Arrian]

Ok, looks like most of us favor Hunting first. I like it because not only does it open up archery, but also animal husbandry (for our sheep). It's a pretty safe research choice. The more difficult debate will be what to go for 2nd (AH, Pottery, Mysticism, Bronze?)...

First build - warrior, no doubt. Work a floodplain, I'd say (growth - pop is power).

-Arrian

[Hot Mustard]

Top post updated - let me know if GS has something else to indicate what I'm attempting with the bold/italics.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by dejon
Top post updated - let me know if GS has something else to indicate what I'm attempting with the bold/italics.

Looking good, dejon

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Blake

I'd actually put it like this:
"It's an extremely unsafe course of action and the payoff is likely to be minimal".
They aren't spiritual (we know this is true of all other teams), they can't build 3 cheap temples for happiness. They will have crappy terrain improvement so the chances of building Oracle and/or Stonehenge will be minimal, meaning difficulty getting Great prophets to actually build any shrines.

Got to disagree here... early temples means early priests. With 2 religions in 2 cities, you gain 2 prophets easily with PHI. Religion means no Oracle or Stonehenge, but you won't need them either...

Information... that's what it's about. The chance of a religious "Hyrdra" going unnoticed... zero, it'll show up in top cities anyway. While the chance of being eliminated early is probably lower than usual (kind of fun-spoiling and a black mark on the eliminator), I'm pretty sure most teams would happily jump at the opportunity to extract some concessions from a team who puts themselves in a militarily weak position (extortion is fun!).

I'm not so sure about a Hydra city being unprovacative... I would certainly welcome to take a capital with 3 religions present!
But that only deminishes the appeal of going for a Hydra, so we end up with the same idea: not going to happen.

In case someone tries, Buddhism won't be on their most-wanted list. Monotheism is key here: I think at least some teams will eyeball it. Meditation doesn't lead to Monotheism, so you've got to have loads of commerce to even dare to try doing Meditation before Poly.

I have to wonder: What on earth does philosophical have to do with religion?

Early temples... by the time you've got your first prophet, you can lightbulb Monotheism. By the time you can go for CoL, you can Lightbulb that one too. And one of the later religions will certainly fall to yet another GPr. As Sana is the only PHI team, they can be sure to get 4-5 religions easily in case they decide to go for it. I doubt they will, but if they do they're nearly unstoppable.

DeepO

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Blake
I'd actually put it like this:
"It's an extremely unsafe course of action and the payoff is likely to be minimal".

If one team got all the Religions they would be the only ones to benefit from Shrine income plus they would gain free line of sight to wherever Religion spreads. All other things equal that's pretty advantageous. Oh and they would have pretty good control over the religious Civics (except for Liberalism).

That said, if it ever came to that they would be distrusted by most other teams on principle. Or maybe they would play it diplomatically and "sell" Religion to others in order to keep friends.

Even "extremely unsafe" courses of action end up happening in demogames. Oftentimes the bold are rewarded. I'm not advocating that we should play a high-risk game, simply saying that risky moves can and will happen; we should not simply assume our "rational" opponents will minimize risk.

They aren't spiritual (we know this is true of all other teams), they can't build 3 cheap temples for happiness.

We're the only Spiritiual team? Neat!

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Arrian
The more difficult debate will be what to go for 2nd (AH, Pottery, Mysticism, Bronze?)...

Pottery requires Fishing or Agriculture (IIRC) - we have neither.

Also, if we at all plan to use your Skirmishers offensively we have to start thinking about it pretty soon. Once other teams get Archers, Skirmishers are only really good at choking (which, I think we agreed somewhere, is not in our best interests).