Epic4 – Rome
Pregame Analysis:
Well, this is going to be a bit above my level. As someone who has not played above Monarch (though I am comfortable at that level) nor touched a Raging Barb map I was immediately tempted to take the help, however once I had read through Sirian’s advice a couple of times I felt confident that I could guess parts of what he would do. Go back and reread it for yourself now: http://realmsbeyond.net/civ/c4tourney/epic4.html
Sirian’s advice is to focus on
military, so in twelve turns his likely builds are Warrior->Warrior, with
research going Hunting->Archery. That is fairly easy to replicate, and
keeping the starting Warrior on local scouting duty is also easy to accomplish,
so that leaves a single variable – the placement of
Now while I wouldn’t normally do something like this, I
wanted to find out two things; 1) what the base Happiness limit is at Deity,
and 2) when the Raging Barb armies initially take the field, will they be
Warriors only, or will there be Archers in the initial waves. Both pieces of
knowledge were easily obtained by rolling up a Deity map (Highlands for lots of
space), using Worldbuilder to make sure I was away
from other civs and map edges, founding Rome and
hitting enter until the Barb hordes arrived. The answers of course, were 3 and Yes … making the decision of where to found
Here is is:
Why, you ask … well with the potential of Archers coming in
the initial waves, defensive bonuses become all-important. There are two
sources of bonus here; the river and the hills, and the rivers only give
bonuses verses attacks from a maximum of half the surrounding tiles … and
besides, once I get an Archer or two fortified in there,
Oh, and a Plains/Hill/Gold tile with a city on it produces an extra Hammer and an extra Commerce, so Rome will always have access to a 2/2/2 tile regardless of how many Barbs attack and where they’re standing.
On to the game…
With Rome founded, and initial build and Research orders set, all that remains is to do some exploring before bracing for impact. Our noble Warrior moves to pop the hut and … nothing!? Hmm, nope, it’s just disappeared:
Oh well, maybe Deity gives you empty huts? Anyway, our
Warrior heads off Southwards – as there’s a hint of coast at the edge of the
fog. Yep, Sheep as well. OK, well we’ll try and straddle
an exploratory line between the coast and the river; I figured at this stage
that my second city would be founded along it, thus allowing an un-pillagable connection to
The Warrior survives a Lion attack (sticking to woods/hills
here as there’s no sense taking risks), and
The Scout meanwhile has headed NE along the river and encountered a hut:
That’s a nice boost! Immediately afterwards, he survives attacks from a Wolf and a Panther, promotes to Woodsman I, and fortifies to heal.
In 3460BC, the long-awaited news arrives; “Barbs sighted to the West”!
Will