[49 spoilers] Miguelito, pindicator and Adrien take Shiva by the hands

[AdrienIer]

There's one argument against spot 3 : it makes it impossible to use the banana.
Unless you want to settle on the sugar ? It wouldn't be so bad actually

[pindicator]

I think I still like #1 best. I think the gold should be picked up with a later city on the plains hill north of the grass hill sheep

[Miguelito]

There's one argument against spot 3 : it makes it impossible to use the banana.
Unless you want to settle on the sugar ? It wouldn't be so bad actually

or settle on the rice (seriously though, you're right, but I would be absolutely fine with it if that's the correct way to secure the two gold hills. But I accept that that's debatable)

I think I still like #1 best.  I think the gold should be picked up with a later city on the plains hill north of the grass hill sheep

for the three animals first ring you mean? N of the grass hill sheep would be splendid, but I'm not sure we can get there, with all the other spots we need, and it's really far out. 3 has the advantage of 3 first ring forests, and we *probably* will get culture at some point through religion spread (none at the cap though yet). Also while the first two animals can be improved straight away, the third competes for workers with the planned black or white dot from my previous post (thoughts on those btw?). But I'll consider it (and until now I've mostly been obedient...)

Meta-wise, OH and Rusten, free from pb46, are now logging in. We're not their neighbours thankfully for all we know, and I just hope they find other games to play themselves and keep them busy soon enough

[AdrienIer]

It's going to be important to scout what's west and north of the gold to see if there's another empire nearby

[Miguelito]

It's going to be important to scout what's west and north of the gold to see if there's another empire nearby

the good finds keep on coming:


no foreign borders though. The new ocre dot is a tentative placement for a defensible border city. A bit low on resources though, and a bit too much overlap with white (and invalidates black). We'll scout more in time. The image also contains my updated scouting/setlting plan.

Cairo's MFG is shooting up:


Maybehe's going for stonehenge? It would be unfortunate if he buidls it in his second city (and if the city is where I think it is). That would make white dot impossible, and put some pressure on black as well. In the capital it would be less bad for us, although I'd prefer him not getting it at all.

Cornflakes did his 4th whip this turn, and Elkad his first.

I made a little overview with where I think everybody is (Save Elkad and Rasko, whom we haven't met. I think one of them should be to the East of Cairo and one somewhere around the equator like us, maybe on the other side of our sea)



Demos/Power:

the second city grows again eot36, then this will look less awful (I hope)

[Miguelito]

Some questions for my dedlurkers:

1. third city spot. pindi, you said you prefer dark blue (formerly 1), why is that? I'm pretty much leaning light blue/3. Reasons are it gets more forests,  and of course the gold. We're settling far from the cap and hopefully a lot,  so the gold could be really helpful to save the economy somewhat before cottages are up in earnest / currency.  I feel like a city further west might come in too late for that (found it,  get a border pop, grow so it can work the gold...), and it might even be contested.  can't hurt to share the gold in any case. Dark blue has the advantage of having a another sheep and the oasis first ring, but the oasis isn't too important, as the cow goes online on the second turn,  and these I said I have some trouble improving the third animal worker wise,  so would rather whip of the third pop for a while.  light blue would benefit more from a religion spread during its first 10 or so turns,  that's of course a gamble,  but not with bad odds.
   
2. tech options after hunting.
   - We want sailing at some point,  but not right now yet (late 50s should be enough, if we aim for white/ black dot being our 4th city. Now if Cairo slams the SH in that area we may want to reassess)
   - Masonry gives us another good tile at Mahadeva, and we may want marble for the Oracle,  but that's after sailing still, likely 6th city. I probably want to get Monotheism before the currency run.
   - AH: I suppose we have a horse either 1N of Mahadeva,  or on the southern plains. So it either equates the stone,  or could make the southern city really good,  moving it up in priority. We could also get the elephant, although it can't be worked yet. It makes sense to slot in Agri before,  as we'll need it for black/ white or south.
   - Archery.  archers would be good at the capital (although Ruff got that nasty event,  but I'm more concerned about Cairo), at black/ white,  and later at the green dots.  it's cheap.
   
3. My plan is for one worker to build a shared riverside grasshill mine after chopping out the settler, then chop the FPH for the granary. It speeds up the granary significantly,  and I guess a mine is good later on for settler production. But I recognize that mines are usually considered bad tiles early on. Do you think it's an error? alternative is the FP cottage while working the FPH for granary hammers (or just whip it growing on the FP), then chop out the granary,  losing 1 additional turn moving (or whip and have the worker do something else,  might be the best actually, I'll sim it.  though I really don't like to whip a granary,  spend pop to get pop 
   
4. In general,  do you like how this game is going? I do feel behind the others atm, but I don't know what grave errors we did. I accept that whipping off the copper was very questionable, though I maintain that it was neutral foodhammer wise and got the worker turns earlier. Perhaps a more traditional start with worker after WB and settling on the elephant would have been better, but that also had significant drawbacks. The very early second city doesn't really seem to have paid off, but with the 2 fish cap and the 2nd city options I fail to see what would have been really better.
   With all the talk of double moves in the Tech thread, while we're far away from anybody's borders even at our planned 3rd city site, I start to suspect that Ref's asymmetric balance gave us difficult immediate surroundings and a place in the middle, but more room to expand to.
   
   
5. Am I writing just too much? There are some walls of text in this thread that I have to plead guilty to. Well if you answer to this last question I'll at least know you'll have made it through this one
   
   

[Charriu]

1. Am I writing just too much? There are some walls of text in this thread that I have to plead guilty to. Well if you answer to this last question I'll at least know you'll have made it through this one

Thank god, I made it through :P

No seriously great reporting so far.

[AdrienIer]

-There are good reasons for both city spots. Both get 5 forests, but the northern one has them earlier. The southern one gets more fine early tiles in terms of food and hammers. Don't neglect the difference in defensibility coming with being closer to the core cities.
-What's the rest of the tech plan ?
-Not sure about how others are doing. They have more pop, we have a religion. We'll see later on if that was worth it.
-Please keep posting, I'm a little busy these days so I can't participate as much as I'd like (also I don't have civ 4 installed on my new computer so it's going to be tough for me to double check things)

[pindicator]

1. I'm not adamantly against picking up the gold, but my question to you is what is your plan for expanding borders to get the gold online? If you don't plan on doing so early, then I would rather get 3 bonus food tiles in the first ring with the dark blue (formerly 1) site. Unintuitively, the fact that there aren't good food tiles here (nothing over +4fpt) may be a reason to actually go for light blue: by the time the city grows to size 4 and wants to work a gold tile may be how long it actually takes to get 2nd ring popped anyway.
2. Masonry next IMO. That stone is a good production tile, lets get it improved.
3. For the early game you want to be working bonus tiles as much as possible. When you don't have any more bonus tiles to work then it's time to build a settler or worker. But really, a riverside grass hill is still a decent tile.
4. Honestly I hate this map. I hate having such a glut of resources crammed together - another reason to focus on growing onto bonus tiles exclusively early on, actually. But our jungle belt and then being encouraged to expand far from our capital to get the good stuff - I just played that game in 46.
As for us, I think we should be trying to establish a city in the north as a defensive border against Cairo. I kind of want to get ambitious here and settle 1) on sugar and 2) on that plains hill that sits between the sheep, spice, stone, and stone. That's a really ambitious plant so we'll need to back it up with military. But it locks Cairo out of all the good stuff we want to get up north.
5. You're writeups are fine. Keep it up.

[Miguelito]

1. Am I writing just too much? There are some walls of text in this thread that I have to plead guilty to. Well if you answer to this last question I'll at least know you'll have made it through this one

Thank god, I made it through :P

No seriously great reporting so far.

glad you enjoy it!

-There are good reasons for both city spots. Both get 5 forests, but the northern one has them earlier. The southern one gets more fine early tiles in terms of food and hammers. Don't neglect the difference in defensibility coming with being closer to the core cities.
-What's the rest of the tech plan ?
-Not sure about how others are doing. They have more pop, we have a religion. We'll see later on if that was worth it.
-Please keep posting, I'm a little busy these days so I can't participate as much as I'd like (also I don't have civ 4 installed on my new computer so it's going to be tough for me to double check things)

- yeah, I'm reassessing plans between the two still. Last sims have me delaying the 4th city in favour of some growth, in which case dark blue looks better, as there will be a worker to improve the second sheep. Note that defense wise, both cities are equally close to the core, however light blue is closer to Commodore (oh yeah he's there! See the report!)
- there's not really a rest of the tech plan. Immediate goals are, as said, Sailing, Agri->AH, Archery, Masonry. If by about t60 we think it likely that we have a shot at the Oracle I'll go for priesthood (although Buddhism was just founded, and it could have been superdeath, who's IND). After that, we have to discuss whether to slot in IW and/or Monotheism (for OR), or even Metal Casting, before Currency.

1.  I'm not adamantly against picking up the gold, but my question to you is what is your plan for expanding borders to get the gold online?  If you don't plan on doing so early, then I would rather get 3 bonus food tiles in the first ring with the dark blue (formerly 1) site.  Unintuitively, the fact that there aren't good food tiles here (nothing over +4fpt) may be a reason to actually go for light blue:  by the time the city grows to size 4 and wants to work a gold tile may be how long it actually takes to get 2nd ring popped anyway.
2.  Masonry next IMO.  That stone is a good production tile, lets get it improved.
3.  For the early game you want to be working bonus tiles as much as possible.  When you don't have any more bonus tiles to work then it's time to build a settler or worker.  But really, a riverside grass hill is still a decent tile.
4.  Honestly I hate this map.  I hate having such a glut of resources crammed together - another reason to focus on growing onto bonus tiles exclusively early on, actually.  But our jungle belt and then being encouraged to expand far from our capital to get the good stuff - I just played that game in 46.
As for us, I think we should be trying to establish a city in the north as a defensive border against Cairo.

1. I have no plan for border popping other than natural religion spread, which of course is feeble. I would not expect to actually work the gold before 20 turns after founding the city, but I see the advantage in getting it into borders in case we don't get another city there, and otherwise (if we get a city) sharing it. But I'm warming up to dark blue at the same time, as we may need raw foodhammer output more (and I'm starting to accept that we have other problems than getting Oracle).
2. I've gone for Masonry, as I could fit it in before Sailing (AH was more awkward)
3. Opted for the FP cottage and then the worker goes directly for the quarry. Granary at capital is whipped (have to see when).
4. I don't hate it (I think that could be because I haven't been frustrated as often yet), and I still assume that Ref has given us something good to make up for the difficulites (that something might be less neighbour pressure). I do think though that the start is more difficult than the others', and maybe above my skill level. Or maybe I should just accept that we're bound to be starting slower than the others.
However, I stumbled upon this from the mapmaking tutorial, and can't help but quoting it:

Also, double seafood starts are difficult, best to not make them either. Single 6 yield fish is fine as the food can go straight into a worker, and the path to the second food resource being hooked finishes in a similar time frame, civ and trait dependent. Double seafood is slower as the food can't be dumped into the second workboat, and in best case scenario with a 3 hammer tile, the capital hits size 3 before you can even start the worker and it doesn't finish until around t20 given none exp, and double inner ring freshwater lake fish.

This is about the only scenario that double seafood is comparable to other starts. And then it gives a massive commerce advantage: none fin gives up to 40 commerce above a double land food, fin start gives up to 60 none river tile starts to turn 20. So basically, it's not worth doing.

and there he's talking about lake fish! Well, again, I trust Ref to know what he was doing.

 I kind of want to get ambitious here and settle 1) on sugar and 2) on that plains hill that sits between the sheep, spice, stone, and stone.  That's a really ambitious plant so we'll need to back it up with military.  But it locks Cairo out of all the good stuff we want to get up north.

what good do you see in the sugar, other than connecting the cities? On that other one - I am reasonably sure that that's in Cairo's second city's BFC. As I said, I would love white dot, but if he builds stonehenge we would have to settle for black even