SE1: first attempt is a failure!

Huh. You know how I said the timing of the Oracle in City 1 and the completion of the Forge in City 2 is crucial? Yeah, it's a pain in the keshik. Let's review the final steps in the gambit:

1. Acquire Priesthood
2. City 1 whips a building to completion that had been previously halted with 1 turn of construction remaining
3. City 1 begins building Oracle, benefiting from the overflow of step 2
4. City 1 whips/chops to finish Oracle quickly
5. Choose Metal Casting as the free tech
6. City 2 whips another building with 1 turn remaining
7. City 2 begins building Forge
8. City 2 whips/chops to finish Forge WITHIN 6 TURNS OF COMPLETING THE ORACLE (this is why pre-chopping the forests is so important)
9. City 2 tweaks its population so that it has an Engineer Specialist
10. City 2 will eventually spawn a Great Engineer
11. City 2 begins building Pyramids
12. 'Pop' the Great Engineer to build the Pyramids
13. Convert to Representation, Caste System, drop your Research Slider to 0%, maximize city populations (without starvation/unhappiness) and use tons of Scientist Specialists

Congratulations. If you did it right, you should know be cranking out tons of research, and making good money to boot. Great Scientists will be popping out like crazy. And you can do this all by 1000 BC!

Or you can be like me and pull it off by 325 BC... Not so good then. Even though I got Priesthood and access to the Oracle in 2000 BC, I could not get the Forge built in my second city for quite some time. I hadn't been growing the population fast enough in City 2 to allow for two whips in rapid succession and still have population left over for an Engineer Specialist. I also needed a mine in my second city - once those forests were chopped down, there weren't a whole lot of hammers around.

A little late?

The other issue I encountered is the population of my first city would occasionally increase while I was waiting for the Great Engineer to spawn. This new pop would invariably be a Scientist and if I didn't catch it right away, it would destroy the careful Great People Point (GPP) planning. I would end up with a Great Prophet spawned in my first city (from all the GPPs generated by the Oracle) rather than the Great Engineer. This is also the same reason why you must finish the Forge and assign an Engineer within 6 turns of completing the Oracle - if you take even one more turn, your first city will generate enough GPP to create a Great Prophet first.

So, I must have reloaded from 2080 BC and made tweaks 10 times. The best I could get is the Pyramid at 325 BC. I suppose I could have reloaded earlier to around 2700 BC and done a better job but I got rather frustrated and would rather start over.

This was a fun experiment, and is highly recommended. It was very cool to move the Research Slider to 0% and still crank out research points like crazy.

SE1: to 2000BC

Wow, the past millennium just flew by. Not a ton happened. I continued to explore but alas, only one more goodie hut (48 gold). Peter is indeed waaay to the north, so I can ignore him for a while. No religions discovered in my hood apparently.



I built Bombay on my chosen spot and built a Fast Worker. My two workers are rapidly roading and pre-chopping according to plan. IMPORTANT NOTE: I misread the worker's estimated time to completion. When it says 3 rounds to chop down a forest, that means [The Current Round] + [Next Turn] = Finished. So to do this right, cancel the order the very next turn. I had to reload after I accidentally chopped down my trees ahead of schedule.

In fact, I'm really learning to save often - I also nearly missed my chance to stop work on the Barracks in my capital before it was done. If I'm having trouble watching 2 cities, I'm in deep doo-doo once I expand...

Unfortunately, the Civ4lerts mod doesn't seem to be working. In theory, that is supposed to show a blurb whenever your city is about to have an angry or unhealthy person, or the population is about to go up. With the SE strategy, micro-managing is important so it'd be really nice to have...

My research has churned out Bronze Working, Meditation, and Priesthood (just this turn).

Here's my current situation:


Not bad. I'd like to snag those Horses and Copper quickstyle so I can shift to offense.

Next Steps
1. Reseach Pottery, Masonry
2. City 1: queue Oracle after Barracks, whip-finish Barracks to give overflow to Oracle
3. Continue pre-chops and roads
4. Build 1 mine in each city to boost hammers (if time)
5. Chop down forests around Oracle to finish
6. Build Warriors while waiting for research to complete
7. Use Oracle bonus to get Metal Casting

SE1: to 3000BC

The first big event was a goodie hut with a Scout in it. Sweet. Followed by a second goodie hut for 46 gold. Then a 3rd goodie hut which gave him XP, and he's now a speedster woodsman blazing through the northern jungles, trying to find more huts and enemy civs.


Reseach-wise, I think I've made good progress:
3680 BC: Agriculture
3280 BC: Animal Husbandry
3000 BC: The Wheel.
I'm now on track to get Bronze Working shortly.

On the diplomatic front, I found my neighbors. Mehmed II is on my west, while Peter is somewhere to the distant north or northwest. This will be interesting. I think both are moderate but not great trading partners, and both are moderately but not exceedingly belligerent. I will try to court Peter and focus on crushing Mehmed as he's the closer threat.

The geography is pretty good. I appear to be in the lower corner of a continent with a big jungle barrier to the north. I can use that jungle as a buffer as I consolidate the south.

Most importantly, how is progress on the gambit? Well, I'm not totally stoked about options for my 2nd city. If you look below, I'm leaning toward the space directly NE of my capital. It'll overlap on a couple forests, and has some +3 Food squares. I think it'll work. My Fast Worker has finished up making a Farm on the Wheat and a Pasture on the Pigs and is now making roads in the NE Forests.



Next Steps
1. Finish Settler
2. Worker builds roads
3. Settle NE site
4. City #1 begins a Barracks but stops just 1 turn shy of finishing
5. City #2 begins a Worker
6. Workers pre-chop 3 Forests pre city (esp. around City #2) but stop 1 turn shy of finishing
7. Research Meditation
8. Research Priesthood

Specialist Economy attempt 1: Pre-game

And now for something completely different. There's a crazy way to win at Civ4 where your research slider is at 0% for most of the game. All your research comes from scientists. It's called the Specialist Economy and much info on it can be found at the CivFanatics website.

This as totally piqued my interest so I'm going to try it, preferably using the equally intriguing Oracle/Metal Casting/Pyramids Gambit. This gambit aims to get a Forge super-quick, use an Engineer specialist to then get a Great Engineer, use him to build the Pyramids, and then use the Pyramids to get Representation really early. To pull this off requires ridiculous timing and min/maxy sacrifices with Slavery and pre-chopping of forests.

Game settings
Version: Warlords v2.13
Difficulty: Noble
Game Speed: Normal
Map: Continents
Size: Standard
Climate: Temperate
Sealevel: Medium
Era: Ancient
Civ: Indian
Leader: Gandhi

To help with micro-managing, I'm also trying out the Civ4lerts mod.

I choose Gandhi because the starting techs are perfect for these strategies. Philosophical appears necessary for a Specialist Economy (SE). I plan on switching Civics a lot to maximize timing of Theocracy/Vassalage benefits for war.

Here's a screenshot of my starting position:


I think that will work. I have lots of 3 Food tiles, lots of Forests, and it appears that I can position my second city on the opposite side of one of those forest clumps.

Here's my initial plan:
1. Research Agriculture
2. Queue & Build Worker
3. Explore
4. Set Worker to prepare gambit
5. Queue & Build Settler

Next post will cover how it all goes...