T10, 3600 BC
I'll try to keep a 10-turn report pace. Ynnek and I have 2 pop, 1 guy has 2 warriors.
The Village Gaulois is stuck up North in such a way that its culture will reach both ice sheet and desert:
Which, if I may vent a little:
Though to be fair, the South is looking better.
We have pretty little to look forward to in the way of commerce-rich rivers and resources. Tons of food in the capital, nothing outside of it. In hindsight I'd have settled 1SE on the coast for access to crabs and an easier time sharing cows.
So, planning. We have forests. Tons of forests. 1 silver and 1 cow are under forests. Enough forests to justify 2 workers chopping right away to kick-start workers and settlers. Worker #1 will come out right on cue for BW to allow him chopping ; starting warrior to 2-pop went better than expected in that regard.
So the opening will be warrior-worker-worker-settler-(settler?). Silver should allow for a painless REX to 3-4 ultra early cities.
Marble + I want WANT
WANT to exploit my UB on slaves. Rushing the oracle for CoL (not even going to pretend an attempt at a Philo or CS slingshot) seems like a no-brainer. Which brings us to the next, bigger, looming problem: economy.
Sure there's a good patch of grass down there ... on my frontline ... that I could fill up with cottages ... easily available for pillaging ... and I might just do that. There's also a few nice river grasslands in the capital. It'll be a hell of a bureaucracy metropolis.
But really, my most efficient way of building up $ this game seems to be the Wonderbread economy. Wonders and bread.
- Grow cities to size 4 with granary + sacrificial altar
- Put 4 into a 35 axeman (or anything to max overflow)
- 2-pop whip it down, gaining an axe and 29
- Dump the 29x2 into a marble wonder (+100% for marble)
- Use the short 5 turns of whip recovery to grow back to a happy 4-pop in a pinch
- Reap 58 fail gold when the wonder completes
- Repeat everywhere in the empire
That's the strategy, folks, and it means that we'll be valuing food above all: it gives more
and double the gold you'd expect from building wealth. I saw it on CFC, never tried it myself. HoF bigwigs seem to thrive on it. I have no clue how to best proceed with it so let's just hope it doesn't blow up in my face. I don't intend to practice it or make a test run either: we'll do it live.