PP vs RIK - Civ4. *** PP's spoiler ***

[ProPain]

And once again the PBEM virus rears its ugly head. Starting a CIV4 pbem against Rik. The CDZ meeting got me excited about Civ again but as I've rarely played Civ4 I'm expecting a severe beating

turn 1 - the start
See the turn 2 pic for the start tiles.
Well there we go. Now what race are we? Apparentle we're the ProPains and the Riks.... they're not in the civilopedia. After checking traits and mousing all leaders in the pedia it appears Rik is Chinese. Thinking to be smart I look at my start techs so I only have to look for civs in the pedia. It seems I;m the Japanese but.....heck....leader traits dont match??? So I look up my leader traits and it seems I'm Chinese as well . So we're both Chinese but my starter techs dont match: I have fishing and the wheel. Weird, weird, wondering what that means for the techs that Rik got. Well lets just settle a city then.

First tiles look ok, I move the warrior up the hill to see how the south looks. Nothing to gain so I settle on the spot. Ah, it's gonna be called Beijing. At least that means we're Chinese and we get the weird Crossbowman as our unique unit.

Now what to build?
The clam tiles look the best in this setup and I have fishing so workboats seem the way to go. But do I go all out on hammers or go all out on food on the flood plains 1st? After some quick calculations it seems better to go all hammers, sacrifice food and 1 commerce and get that workboat out asap.

What to research?
Hard, on the one hand mining seems important to get those hills mined. Also that's a preq for bronze working which is needed for forest chopping. Otoh there's the mysticism line that leads to buddism and polytheism religions (setting has free religions). We're only two players so even if Rik has myst as a starting tech I should be able to pick up one religion hopefully. Also I;m starting to think we might have started with the same techs because they're modified from the civ started techs which would mean Rik needs myst 1st as well.

I decide to go the myst route and try and snag a religion for extra happiness. On top of that mining will take about 6 turns to research and considering I want the workboat and a population pop before building a worker I wont need it before turn 13 anyway. Maybe even later if I decide to go workboat or warrior after that.

turn 2 - what's the competition doing?
Turn is in and I move my warrior to another hill. How nice! A hut is in sight.

182.38*KB

Between turns it occured to me that we both have the same 21 start tiles and that with only 2 players the demographics will tell me exactly which ones Rik is using. Seems he started out on the flood plain. I wonder what he;s building then. I suppose warrior/worker/workboat but I'll know in a few turns cause the changes in the F9 should give me tell tale signs. Also I;m thinking that should he not be building a workboat he probably didnt start with fishing and maybe starting techs are randomised. We'll see. For some strange reason Rik's people are more healthy, he must have a biofood operation going on



149.32*KB


turn 3
Move warrior, check f9. Nothing special.

turn 4- hut ahoy!
We pop a hut, get maps and see another hut. I just hope that other one contains a warrior. Just noticed we have nasty barb settings so it seems I need to build some proection for Beijing ni the near future

191.32*KB