[SPOILERS] Slowcheetah has thoughts, possibly writes them down

[slowcheetah]

Hello.

[slowcheetah]

I had a look through the mod changes a bit earlier today. Here are some of my thoughts.

Leader Traits

Fin- Loses some of its potency with the extra gold only kicking in at +3C. Fin fishing villages are no longer worlds apart from regular fishing villages and the trait loses some of it's early game power as the boost takes longer to kick in. It's still a very strong trait mid and late.

Exp- Entirely about the granaries now. Slightly nerfed, but still a powerful trait. I've played EXP a lot and have no plans on picking it this game though.

CRE- Only +1 culture is actually a fairly big nerf in my opinion. The extra time taken for the border pop means you can't just plop a city down with only one resource first ring, improve it and then move on to second ring resources. It also means you're cultural battles are a little weaker.

CHA- +3 happy in all cities is strong. Probably allows for an indefinite delay on monarchy, and means you can concentrate on better sites and strat resources earlygame.

AGR- The food trait. +1food on 4+ tiles makes crappier city sites a lot more viable that extra concentrated food is very valuable. Probably would be better on a map with less food then your typical torusland. A Commodorian type map could see this as very strong.

PRO- The production boost doesn't seem too big of a deal to me. It'll be powerful late in a workshop economy (Mackoti?). The worker and workboat boost is a thin comfort for the early game, but I think it's in the midgame that this trait falls down into a bit of a nothing boost. Possibly at its best if picked with India so you don't lose too much time getting those fast workers out early game.

[Krill]

Slowwcheetah

[slowcheetah]

Hello, here's what my start looks like thus far;






The first question which keeps springing to mind is 'Where's the food?'. The second is where is the scout who revealed this barren wasteland. After failing to uncover a good second city site Scoutyboos died to a bear. He was on a forested hill, had 63.5% odds and only managed to win one round with the thing. Hence, Scoutyboos.

From what I can see there are three possible second city sites that contain resources. They are all irritatingly slow. Firstly there is a city which grabs the clams to the west of the capital. That's out because clams are only four food, worse than the fish and the site doesn't house any additional resources that I am aware of.

Then there is a site around the gold and a site around the southern fish. Dealing with the gold first, there are two possible sites in my mind.

1) A city on the hill to the east of the gold. This is the site that claims the most resources, but would require a border pop before having any food.

2) A city 1S of the gold. This site can pick up the plains cow with a border pop but would rely on sharing 'Surf 'n' Turf's' cow for it's initial growth.

My decision is actually neither of them, for the second city. Two gets almost instantly disqualified, because I want a powerful capital to take advantage of my large CHM happy cap. I don't want a second city that's immediately dependant on one of the caps two high food tiles. It's also rubbish even in the midterm, with one three food tile of its own, and irrigation two eras distant. It'd basically just claim a happy resource which I don't even need with a city due to my 8 happy faces in the capital.

Option 1 is a little bit tighter. With a border pop and workboat it would be able to sustain itself, the plains cow is a nice production tile and the place itself could be used for earlygame production with a nice boost to research. The problem is the only way it's really viable that early is landing a religion there. Buddhism has already gone so I'd have to land Hinduism there (which I can get T43 and I am going to attempt). However, that's an awful big risk and the city could be stuck as a size one gold mining community for far too long. This won't be my second city either.

So as the only other visible food resource I've selected the fish to the south as my second city site. This city can share the capital's fish which will certainly prove useful. It also has a lot of food when I get a cheap organised trading post installed thanks to those lake tiles.

Anyway, I'd initially visualised a second city somewhere in the resourceless eastern lands of the bountiful plains hills. I was going to go for a relatively late BW in order to get an early pottery and my cows in pastures. Then hope to pick up horses for an early defense. Unfortunately, that wasn't to be, so I've altered my tech path to;

The Wheel->Agr->Pottery-> Mining->BW

This was necessary because it is very slow getting a WB up for the second city without a chop, and the delay in BW just dragged its development too much. Note it's still a pretty slow second city, and will only start functioning really well when I have a granary and a trading post up. But it's the best of what I've got to work with.

Following BW I'm going to attempt to address my culture problems with a hinduism run. I can land it T43. There's less of a risk because I'll carry on for Judaism regardless, as I feel an early OR, HR switch and a seriously embiggened capital could be a very strong play here. GLH is also strong, but it's hard to tell where my future plans will be exactly with so little map knowledge.

[slowcheetah]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5194...ot0307.JPG

Instructions- The signs in game should be fairly self explanatory.
- Move the warrior to the signs on the written turn.
- Worker Roads the grasshill forest, then moves onto the forest to the southwest and roads there.
-The city builds a settler.
- My civs password is nappy. He's not happy about that.
- I probably won't need anyone to play more than one turn if that.

Thanks

[classical_hero]

Can you give this an update so I know what is going on, so I can have a better clue as to what is happening in this game?

[Donovan Zoi]

Hi this is Donovan Zoi and it looks like I will be taking over for slowcheetah. I just finished the 225BC turn.

Posting the mod details here for my own reference: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=6632

I'll be giving you lurkers updates soon but first I have a few questions:

1. What is the best way to reach out to the other players in the game, just through PM here? I know I can only contact those I have met in-game so far.
2. Related to that, I had read somewhere that communicating via the diplo screen was verboten. What about through the game chat?
3. Can someone point me to any other rules I should know regarding this specific game?
4. How can I update the title of this thread?
5. (to slowcheetah) Any updates you can give me on current diplo would be greatly appreciated.

I think that's it for the moment. I am pretty excited for the opportunities that lie ahead in this game and can't wait to share my thoughts with you.

[novice]

Don't know where the rules are summarized but it's a no diplo game, i.e. No talking with other players about the game. If you want to just chat I'd use PMs to exchange gmail handles.

I'd ask in the tech thread for the rules/settings summary.

You can use the in-game diplo screens to trade resources, propose open borders, etc, but you can't type text there, use numbers as code, or otherwise try to circumvent the "no diplo" rule. The game setting "no tech trading" is enabled, I would think. (Check F9).

Welcome, and have fun!

[slowcheetah]

Hi this is Donovan Zoi and it looks like I will be taking over for slowcheetah. I just finished the 225BC turn.

Posting the mod details here for my own reference: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=6632

I'll be giving you lurkers updates soon but first I have a few questions:

1. What is the best way to reach out to the other players in the game, just through PM here? I know I can only contact those I have met in-game so far.
2. Related to that, I had read somewhere that communicating via the diplo screen was verboten. What about through the game chat?
3. Can someone point me to any other rules I should know regarding this specific game?
4. How can I update the title of this thread?
5. (to slowcheetah) Any updates you can give me on current diplo would be greatly appreciated.

I think that's it for the moment. I am pretty excited for the opportunities that lie ahead in this game and can't wait to share my thoughts with you.

Hi Donovan, I'm glad you want to take over .

This is actually an AI diplo game. You can make trades i.e. sugar for silk, open borders etc but there is no written communication.
Diplo wise the only major thing that happened was I declared war on Gawdzak a few turns back to try and snipe his island city. He had an extra unit so the attack wasn't feasible and we made peace the next turn.

Here's a full list of the settings from the setup thread:

Collected settings:

MAP SETUP
* Pitboss, normal speed.
* Barbarians on.
* No vassal states, no tribal villages, no random events, unrestricted leaders.
* Edited torusland map with scattered improvements.
* More info provided by mapmaker to be added.

RULES/GUIDELINES OF PLAY
* No talking. (You can't communicate with other players about the game. No using text in-game to send messages. You can still do in-game diplo.)
* No city trading/gifting of any sort.
* Anyone who does annoying things with the turn timer will be taken outside and shot, then made to wear a dunce cap, then brought back inside and shot again.
* The goal of the game is not just to strive for sole victory but also simply to improve your civilization, explore how the game works, and survive. Not every nation will be America, but they are still worth something! (mischief)
* We will try to maintain a brisk turn pace.
* No smurfs, please! Does this really need to be said? Well it's said.
* We will do our best to have fun and help our fellow players have fun.

Since we got several new player signups I'm going to elaborate a bit more on "doing annoying things with the turn timer". Due to pitboss turns being simultaneous, there are issues when two players are in a war, or trying to settle the same spot, or something like that. The basic rule is this:
* When it's relevant, don't play twice before the opponent can move once. Don't double move your opponent.
This is difficult to make hard and fast rules about so we rely a lot on good sportsmanship and vague guidelines. Here are some more guidelines:
* Try to play your turns consistently and at a convenient time for other players.
* End your turn as soon as is convenient for you, signaling that you are done moving units.
* If you want to declare war, try to play in the same order relative to your opponent on the turn before the war as you plan to play on the turn of war.
* If you want the second half of the turn but you'd have to wait a long time for your opponent to play, please consider taking the first half of the turn instead, even if this isn't ideal for you.
* If it's your opponent's half of the turn, don't take any in-game actions.
* If it seems useful to do so, you can make an exception to the communication rules and coordinate with your war opponent about when you each play.
* If you are unsure about any of these things, you can ask in your thread for lurker guidance.

I am not the final authority on this, so if some other people want to chime in that would be cool.

To rename the thread you could either ask a mod (T-Hawk, bRICK, Xenu) to change it or I believe I can do it. Alternatively you could just make a new thread because there is nothing much in this one anyway.

[Donovan Zoi]

Thanks to you both for the info. The "no diplo" angle actually sounds fun.

I think I will just go ahead and start a new thread.