Civ 4 BTS Succession Game

[Enoch]

Welcome to the second-ever semi-official Obsidian Forums Civilization IV Succession Game Thread!!!

 

As discussed in this thread, we'll be taking turns playing through a game of Civilization 4, with the relatively new Beyond the Sword expansion pack.

 

So, lets get on with it!

 

Game: Civ4 BTS v. 3.13 (no unofficial patches)

Settings: Normal speed, Standard size, "Big and Small" map script. Mostly standard stuff.

Difficulty: Noble

 

Leader: Willem of the Dutch, renamed as:

Fear the Mighty Obsidian Empire and its Glorious Leader, Feargus!

 

I picked Willem because I wanted to do one of the BTS new leaders, and he's one of the most popular of them. The Creative trait is nice for the land grab, and gives us cheap libraries. The Financial trait makes cottages and coast tiles commerce powerhouses. The unique unit is a souped-up Galleon, and the unique building (Dike) is really, really good, although it isn't available until Steam Power.

 

So here we go:

 

Our starting location:

 

Lots of nice green grasslands to cottage over. There's Corn to help our early growth, and lots of river for extra commerce, health, and hammers (once we get our Dike built), and enough hills to get production going when we want to. I'm a little bummed that such a good naval civ doesn't have a coastal start, but I can't complain about this terrain. Lacking a good reason to do otherwise, I decide to settle in place. Thus, Irvine, HQ Capitol of Obsidiania!

 

Since the Dutch Obsids start with knowledge of Agriculture, I set our first build on a Worker, to get that Corn farmed. Some prefer to let the city grow before going with a worker, but I find that 1 population working an improved tile is better than 2 or 3 pop working unimproved tiles.

 

Our first research priority will be Bronze Working. It's simply the most valuable early tech. It enables Slavery (and, with it, pop-rushing), forest chopping (which is invaluable for speeding production of those first settlers), and reveals the most important early resource (copper). I set our first tech to research at Mining, which is a necessary pre-requisite for BW.

 

I moved our Warrior to see what's in that hut to the West, and got a free technology!

Not a particularly valuable tech, but I won't turn it away.

 

At this point, I screwed up a couple of screenshots, so I'll summarize:

 

In general, I continued to move our warrior in a counter-clockwise direction around the capitol.

 

Turn 7: Finished Mining, began BW.

 

Turn 9: Somebody founded Buddhism. I don't like going for an early religion very much. BW and the early worker techs are just more valuable. If I want a religion and a shrine, I'll either conquer one or rush to Code of Laws for Confucianism. But I don't even do that very often. To me, the best play is to pick an ally I want to get close to and adopt his religion. Unless you devote a lot of hammers to missionary production, diplomatic flexibility is worth more than a holy city. With every faith you found yourself, you reduce the likelihood of rival AIs having different faiths (and thus religious wars).

 

Turn 11: Our warrior ran into some animals NW of Irvine. Beat the wolves, healed for a couple of turns, and then beat the Lions. I gave him the Woodsman I promotion, which helped him heal a bit.

 

Turn 15: Busy one. Got 50 GP from another hut. The Worker finished in Irvine. Lacking a reason for another Worker (which I often build right off the bat if there are a lot of forests to chop), I set production on a Warrior. The Worker, of course, will go and Farm the Corn tile.

 

Turn 20: Another hut-- this one gave us a free Warrior. Bronze Working is finished, but, unfortunately, the known world contains no major Copper deposits.

 

That's where I stopped. The Known World:

 

The Northern part:

 

Tough to tell where our next city should go yet. I'd like to claim that Gold sooner rather than later, though. Here's Irvine at turn 20:

 

I've left it building the Warrior, although with the free one we just got, we really don't need it. Were it my decision, I'd keep production as-is for 2 turns until Irvine grows to size 2 (and get our Worker mining one of those riverfront hills), then switch to a Settler.

 

Research is set on Animal Husbandry (to reveal Horses), but I'm not committed to that. The Wheel might be a better choice (pre-requisite for Pottery and cottages!). Or maybe something else. I'll leave that decision to whoever goes next. Also, I didn't switch to Slavery immediately, so you all might want to do that. The earlier we do it, the less the 1-turn of anarchy costs us in terms of commerce and production.

 

The starting and current savegames are attached. Happy Civving!

 

 

Post-Preview Edit: Photobucket's 800-pixel breadth limit is irritating. But I think you can make out all the important stuff.

Feargus_BC_4000.zip

Feargus_BC_3200.zip

[Enoch]

On turns: I took 20 turns, but we can change that as we go along. If you reach a major "decision point" that would be good for discussion (e.g., to war or not, where to settle, etc.), try to pause your turn at that point and post it for our feedback.

[Llyranor]

Hold on, shouldn't the leader name have been Llyranor?

[Atreides]

This is awesome!

 

I don't know how to play Civ, much less optimally but it's fun to watch. Remember to post screenshots with the descriptions.

[Pidesco]

I won't have the time to play until late afternoon, but once I can, if no one has taken dibs until then, I will. Remember, financial means cottage spam!

 

Edit: I created a new image account at http://www.imageshack.us/ for the bigger image size.

 

username: mca01a password: feargus

Edited October 10, 2007 by Pidesco

[Tigranes]

Civ4 takes much too long to load then lags too much on my POS, but I always liked the game, so I"ll be following the thread.

 

Never was very good at it though. My early game is more of a random expansionfest.

[Avakki]

Good choice with creative and financial leader. Creative gets you land and financial makes sure that land is good

 

I usually go for alphabet first so I can get some tech trading done. Bullying others to get new techs and giving sucky ones to friends is good way of diplomacy.

[Deraldin]

Civ4 takes much too long to load then lags too much on my POS, but I always liked the game, so I"ll be following the thread.

 

Never was very good at it though. My early game is more of a random expansionfest.

 

I don't play very optimally either. I tend to pattern my cities into huge grids. Totally not optimal, but I do it anyway.

[Pidesco]

Good choice with creative and financial leader. Creative gets you land and financial makes sure that land is good

 

I usually go for alphabet first so I can get some tech trading done. Bullying others to get new techs and giving sucky ones to friends is good way of diplomacy.

 

In techs, usually the way to go for me is bronze working and iron working, whatever is necessary to get workers moving and an oracle slingshot for Code of Laws, Metal Casting, Machinery or Civil Service. Or, occasionally, Monarchy.

 

Also, in the lower difficulty levels tech trading is kind of useless unless you're following a very specific tech path.

[Enoch]

Good choice with creative and financial leader. Creative gets you land and financial makes sure that land is good

 

I usually go for alphabet first so I can get some tech trading done. Bullying others to get new techs and giving sucky ones to friends is good way of diplomacy.

 

In techs, usually the way to go for me is bronze working and iron working, whatever is necessary to get workers moving and an oracle slingshot for Code of Laws, Metal Casting, Machinery or Civil Service. Or, occasionally, Monarchy.

 

Also, in the lower difficulty levels tech trading is kind of useless unless you're following a very specific tech path.

The usefulness of tech trading also depends heavily on the number of other civs you have contact with. If there's only 1 or 2 opponents on your continent, the trading opportunities will be few. We haven't met any rivals yet, which feels odd to me-- I doubt that the Big & Small map would generate us a landmass this large that is isolated. Although I'm used to playing Monarch, where the AI has extra explorers in the beginning and usually finds you (and most of the goodie huts) pretty quickly.

 

I usually don't prioritize the Oracle's tech requirements enough to beat that AI to the wonder on Monarch, but we should be able to build it in this game if we want to. (I'd still vote no, unless we find some marble first-- those hammers could be put to better use.)

 

My current favorite early-game gambit is to research Metal Casting, build a forge somewhere, and run an engineer specialist as quickly as possible. A couple dozen turns later (depending on game speed and whether I'm a playing Philosophical leader), I get a Great Engineer that I can use to build the Pyramids instantly in whatever city I wish. I doubt we need to do that in this game, though. We're not going to be running a specialist economy (i.e., farm everywhere and get our commerce from scientist/priest/merchant specialists), and we're not going to be hurting for happiness on Noble with 2 luxury resources within sight, so the two big bonuses the Pyramids bring won't help us very much.

 

 

I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with the next round. And thanks for opening the imageshack account-- it was getting late when I was uploading and I was too lazy to shop around for a less-restrictive image hosting site.

[Pidesco]

I'm now home, and I will proceed with my 20 turns, so if anyone has anything to say now is the time.

 

 

Regarding the Oracle, in the lower levels, I don't see much of a reason not to build it, as it can give you a huge boost if you use it with a more expensive tech and it's fairly cheap. We just have to time it right with our research progress.

 

Well, let's see how I can bork everything up right at the beginning.

[Walsingham]

BIGGER EDIT: I'm an idiot. I totally misunderstood. I leave the bit below as ilustration of my total incompetence.

 

 

 

 

Right. Yer on!

 

EDIT (20 turns later)

 

I chose to play as Winston Churchill, obviously. This is because I regard him as the best leader for walloping the other powers in a nearly ceaseless round of warfare.

 

The opener is as below.

 

 

I hope you can make out the terrain. I picked up a map in the first turn. You should be able to see a perfect place for a money farm bottom right highlighted in red. Three gold mines and flat farming land.

 

 

 

Time fair span past, illuminating the fact that the Spanish are off to the East. Normally, on marathon setting I'd launch a sneak attack, but on this setting they've more than likely got defences up. I'm going to have to just try and get my settler into position before Isabella can move Westward. Once in position I should be safe. It's hard to take anything until you get catapults.

 

As for tech, I tried to get a leg up by heading toward a religion, and having failed to get Hinduism I'm pushing for Judaism.

 

Actually that's hard to see. If you want to see the full thing that badly just PM me.

[Pidesco]

Here I go!

 

 

Turn 0: I hope you don't mind, but I changed the tech from AH to The Wheel, mostly because I'm generally a cottage spammer, and we should start making use of Feargus' financial trait.

 

Turn 1:So I've sent the warriors exploring, one to the left, the other one to the right, and the left one discovered the first copper and the first Civ's border. All I can say for now is that it's a purple civ. Maybe the Romans. The other Warrior found a bear and hopefully will get some experience points from Yogi. Meanwhile the worker was sent to the lower hill to mine it.

 

 

 

 

Turn 2: Turns out the civ is Hammurabi, the Code of Lawer. He is aggressive, and his great UU is an archer with an added 50% against melee units. Not good if we decide to crush him early. Also Yogi ran off and I changed the city's production to the following. Production stays the same, it adds one turn to our growth(5 to 6), and reduces the time to complete the the wheel by one turn.

 

 

 

 

 

Turn 3:Met Hattie.

 

 

 

I think one city should be here. It gets the gold, the spices, five flood plain tiles, health from the river and whatever is under the fog. Also, the two hills will allow it to have some production. We can use it as a specialist city or as a gold factory. Incidentally, I'm betting there's an iron on one of the hills in the capital's fat cross.

 

 

 

 

 

Turn 5: The warrior's done, so I started a settler. I'll send the unit to explore to the southeast. Meanwhile, Irvine's culture reached 100 (Avellone probably read a book or something), and the moo moos are within our borders to the north. Finally, I've changed to Slavery as Enoch seems to want it. I won't use it, though, as I think slavery is evil. I have never ever used whipping in a civ game.

 

Turn 6: An Obsidz marketing peep committed a faux pas with the Babylonians. -1 to our relations with the bugger. Kept exploring.

 

Turn 7: Yaqob found us.

 

 

 

The wheel is done, and I've started pottery. Soon Obsidian will have containers to keep the misbehaving QA testers. The settler will take 12 more turns.

 

Let's take a look at city locations. The follwing are my suggestions, however I'm thinking of moving the purple city 1 square north in order to fit a city below it that can take a bucket load of floodplains plus the gold and the wheat.

 

 

With this mind, I think the first city to be founded should be either the red one or the blue. Probably the rblue, though to see if we can snatch away that copper from under Hammurabi's beard. Because it's really long. I'm funny. Note that most of the cities are not next to rivers but have several river tiles that get the extra gold to maximize financial.

 

Turn 13: I'm chopping a forest to help rush the settler and make available another river gold tile. One warrior offed a lion, and lost a load of health, but will get a woodsman promotion next turn.

 

Turn 14: More exploring. The warrior hurt during enoch's turns killed another lion, has a total of 4 exp points and is almost dead. I'm going to heal him before sending him back into the fray.

 

Turn 15: Finished pottery and switched to Iron Working. It was either that or Animal Husbandry, but I'm following my gut feeling that there is iron on a hill near Irvine. Also I'm moving one of the warriors north to take care of the fog there, and start the fog busting.

 

Turn 16: The worker finished the chop, and will connect the wheat to our city. After that, I'll send him after the settler to mine and connect that copper.

 

Turn 17: First casualty. The southermost warrior was killed by a bear. As such, I've started a warrior in Irvine as the settler is done. This will allow the city to grow to three before assigning to another worker. The settler was sent towards the blue location.

 

Turn 20: The settler and the worker are on their way. The warrior is done, so I've started a worker.Meanwhile, it's 14 turns until Iron Working is done. Some defense will soon be needed for our new city.

 

 

 

 

 

Here's what the world looks like, right now. Use this to suggest city locations. Note the gems and the flood plains.

 

 

 

 

 

Save:

Feargus_BC_2400.zip

[Nick_i_am]

I'm not playing as the freaking dutch. THANKS FOR IRELAND YOU JERK!

[SteveThaiBinh]

I'll take the next turn - won't be able to do it until I get home in an hour or two, though.

 

Before then, if the settler's due on my turn, I'd like a consensus for where to send it. I prefer Pidesco's purple dot/city over the far away blue by the copper. I agree that it's unlikely there'd be no iron near the capital, given how far the nearest copper is, and maintenance might also be an issue at the blue site? What do you think?

[Pidesco]

The purple site is definitely an option, but if you do that, I think you should put the city one square to the north, like I said during my turn. With that in mind, however, I still think the location next to the copper is better. We get the copper and also take it away from Hammurai, most likely crippling his military for a while. Furthermore, with that city in place, I think Hammurabi will attempt to expand in our direction much later. And if he expands anyway, that city may become a prime location for a culture bomb.

 

Also, if we hurry and put our third city next to those gems, we can close down our side of the continent to the rest of the civs. However, if we do that, we should prepare to play a more aggressive game, and start setting up proper defenses for those two cities.

 

Checking the last map, the following is a good place for that gem city:

 

 

 

The line above is the fat cross border for the copper city. With the two cities at 100 culture, which is easy with the creative trait, and the help of that mountain, we can block the passage towards our side of the continent.

 

And of course that also seems like another great food location for a city. Cows, corn, bananas, and a flood plain.

Edited October 10, 2007 by Pidesco

[Enoch]

My attempt at a dotmap:

 

 

Purple first-- I don't like to build a city on a floodplain, and I think the Rice will help get that gold worked as soon as possible. White and Yellow are potential GP factories. Pink is a production city (Moai Statues + Dikes!). The others are mostly commerce pumps. I threw Yellow up there just to start the conversation. We really need more info about the northern reaches, but it looks like there aren't any rivals that way, so settling there can wait.

 

Alternative I just thought of: Move Green and Red bot two squares south. You don't need that much food in a commerce city (and, with 2 gems, it won't be anything but a commerce city), and, as the Dutch, we should be building on the coast whenever possible. Red become a first-rate GP pump with 2 food bonuses and 7 workable floodplains. Actually, I like that much better. (But I'm too lazy to re-do the dotmap.)

[SteveThaiBinh]

2400 (Turn 0): Ah, so the settler is already well on his way. I hadn't noticed that. I'm happy to stick with Pidesco's plan and get the copper, then.

 

2280 (Turn 3): The settler has arrived in place. As this city exists mainly for its mining, I've named it Peragus. Hope that's not a bad omen... Peragus is producing a warrior, because cities feel naked without warriors. Judaism's been founded...

 

I also moved a warrior to the west, as some bears were eyeing him up, and not in a friendly way.

 

2240 (turn 4): The warrior is now being chased by panthers, and has retreated to a forest. Doomed, I reckon, but time will tell. The workers arrived and are mining copper.

 

2200 (turn 5): The panthers attacked, the panthers lost, and my warrior got his Woodsman II promotion meaning he can now move two squares a turn through forests. I've moved him to a forested hill for defense while he heals.

 

2160 (turn 6): Worker produced in Irvine has been set to build a cottage, and Irvine is now working on another settler.

 

2080 (turn 8 ): Peragus finished its warrior, and I've set it to build Barracks, more to allow the population to grow than anything else.

 

2040 (turn 9): I've switched Peragus to producing an Axeman, now that the copper is connected, and I'll send the worker to the rice next.

 

2000 (turn 10): Bandits strike - costing 10 gold from the treasury.

 

1880 (turn 13): Iron Working is done, and Irvine does indeed have iron. I'm doing animal husbandry next, but we need to think about The Oracle and whether we want to found Confucianism soon.

 

1720 (turn 17): Axeman is finished in Peragus, so we have a little time before Hammurabi can attack us, I think.

 

1600 (turn 20): So that's it. Animal husbandry revealed two horse resources fairly close to Irvine that neighbouring cities will pick up. We're researching Mysticism now, to keep the Oracle open as a possibility. Money is tight, and will be tighter once we've founded our third city.

 

As for the third city, here's the general area. There's a warrior waiting near the centre of the picture on some gems, and that's one possible location for the city with a nice bunch of resources and fresh water. Move a little to the west, and we'll get ivory (chances are Hammurabi has some and those war elephants are nasty). Two squares to the east and we'll be on the coast, still get gems and bananas, and not be quite so much in Hatshepsut's face (She's not usually that aggressive, and we know we're going to be fighting Hammurabi soon enough). Alternatively, we could chicken out, swing the settler back towards Irvine and get another city connected to the iron resource.

 

The woodsman warrior is way out west.

 

By the way, I think I'm going to stick to two screenshots per go from now on. I'd forgotten how time-consuming it is to do them.

[Pidesco]

Regarding the third city's location, I suggest north of the hill with the gems. that way the city radius gets the two food resources, and one of the elephants.

 

Or we could just found the third city near one of the gold sites. We need to start raking up the gold now, and increasing our army. I'm guessing swordsmen and horsemen would be best for now.

 

@Enoch: Overlapping fat crosses is evil. Evil, I tell you!!! :shakes fist:

[Enoch]

Hmmm... I can't say that I like settling 1 tile away from the coast, especially as a naval-oriented civ like the Dutch. But it is nice to grab the copper and deny it to our neighbors.

 

I'd either fill in with a city to claim the Gold next, or go for my relocated Green dot (one square SE of Steve's warrior)-- if we can beat Egypt there, that'll be a huge advantage. But 2 cities way out on the frontier will tax our economy heavily. I wouldn't worry about the Heffalumps for now.

 

@Enoch: Overlapping fat crosses is evil. Evil, I tell you!!! :shakes fist:

Not as evil as settling on a Flood Plain or 1 tile from the coast.

 

Seriously, for 90% of the game, your cities will not be at maximum population. That means that the overlapping really doesn't cost you anything. And sharing a high-value resource can make sure that you're always getting the benefit of it, even when one city is focusing on something else.

Edited October 11, 2007 by Enoch

[Pidesco]

I don't think we need more than three coastal cities in the area around our capital to churn out the necessary naval units.

 

With your general views on city placement contrasting with mine, we could turn this into a thread war. Left to myself, I would never ever place the gems city on that coastal site.

 

Regarding the economy, if we start putting the financial trait to good use, the city placement shouldn't be much of a problem.

[Enoch]

It's not all about building ships. Coastal locations get significantly better trade route income (via harbors), and the Dutch Dike adds 1 hammer to each riverfront and coastal tile (but can only be built in a coastal or riverfront city). EDIT: Also, we're financial, so working coast tiles is much more attractive, but only worthwhile if we have coastal frontage in the city so that we can build a lighthouse.

 

My point about the Double Gems site is that, with all that grassland around (under the jungle), we really don't need more than 1 food bonus to make the city grow-- you'll want to be working those gems and some cottages, not the extra food bonuses. If we can move the city so that those extra food-bonus squares can contribute to a different city that would use them better (by using them to feed specialists), we'll be in a more advantageous situation.

Edited October 11, 2007 by Enoch

[SteveThaiBinh]

On balance, I tend to avoid putting cities near but not on the coast if there's more than one coast/sea square inside the city cross, which in this case there wasn't. To move Peragus to the coast would have meant losing the rice resource and the more fertile land by the river. Moving it further east and inland would have left Hammurabi an opening to reclaim the copper resource.

 

I don't think the gem city (names, anyone?) needs to be on the coast, as there'll be plenty more coastal cities soon enough.

[Walsingham]

I don't think we should worry about Hammurabi. Let's place the city optimally, and then skrag him toot sweet.

[Enoch]

So who's next?