[SPOILERS] Novice and SevenSpirits play Suleiman of Korea

[novice]

Got it.

[novice]

Circumnavigation on turn 17. Is that some kind of record?



Here's our capital before ending turn:



Now, how to dotmap this thing?

[timski]

Circumnavigation on turn 17. Is that some kind of record?

Did you get a sense of which direction to send your scouting units in from flying camera mountain analysis, or gut feeling about the map layout? Or were you just lucky that your scouting units found a valid circumnavigation route so fast?

[novice]

Did you get a sense of which direction to send your scouting units in from flying camera mountain analysis, or gut feeling about the map layout? Or were you just lucky that your scouting units found a valid circumnavigation route so fast?

Well, we knew from t0 that the map was toroidal and 40x40 tiles. Also, knowing the map maker and natural balance considerations, we could make some pretty confident assumptions. My initial map hypothesis had diagonals connecting us to our neighbours in all directions, though. We now know that only the SW-NE diagonal connects us to our neighbours. However, from t0 scouting information this also seemed like the diagonal most likely to provide circumnavigation.

So a bit of luck, and a bit of awareness. Of course, having our warrior trundle through jungle while the scout scooted through open land was also ideal - this was due to how Commodore positioned the initial units. I'm pretty sure he positioned the units identically for the other players, though. (Our encounter with Gaspalium's scout supports this hypothesis.)

[SevenSpirits]

Woohoo!

Did you get a sense of which direction to send your scouting units in from flying camera mountain analysis, or gut feeling about the map layout? Or were you just lucky that your scouting units found a valid circumnavigation route so fast?

So we sent our initial warrior NW and scout SW. When it became certain that the scout was finding a path to the other players we turned the warrior NE and didn't look back. We probably got a little lucky. We don't know right now if the other players were trying for it too. It seems like an obvious play to me. The map was such (extra starting scout/warrior, map size, promise of all being on the same continent, world wrap, and enough water tiles that circumnav is available according to the score mouseover) that circumnav was going to be grabbed with the initial units. (Incidentally, I don't like it when that's possible on maps. I wish the +1 move bonus could be turned off. It's a bit broken.) It seemed like a long shot (should be less than 25% chance, seeing as we're last in turn order) of getting it but I still thought it was worth trying for because the effect is so strong, and with our leader/civ I feel like we're in a bit of an initial hole. Plus as IMP we get to grow/whip our settler and basically make a couple free warriors at the start of the game - other people might be less willing to alter their economy-focused builds. (E.g. in pbem23 our opening build contained no military forEVER so we kept our warrior at home.)

[novice]

Our capital grew to size 5 after ending turn. Will start a settler and switch to the newly mined plains hill (and FP's to forests? Hope I didn't mess up by working max food this turn). Then adopt slavery the turn after and then whip the settler with overflow into a 1-turn worker.

[novice]

Okay, I checked the sandbox, and by working max food this turn, flood plains + plains hill next turn, and the plains hill after the whip, we finish the worker with no overflow. If we work forests over flood plains we just lose commerce, as the extra hammers disappear through overflow roundoff. So it seems I remembered our "micro plan" correctly.

We need to decide what to tech after BW, what to do with our worker(s), and where to send the settler...

[SevenSpirits]

Max food was good. We may have a worked -> settler option too that's worth considering though.

[Commodore]

So is the Oracle -> MC forge Engineers -> bulb -> ??? -> profit plan still in effect? I assume you'll be snagging religion at some point too for culture and happy.

[novice]

So is the Oracle -> MC forge Engineers -> bulb -> ??? -> profit plan still in effect? I assume you'll be snagging religion at some point too for culture and happy.

We haven't discussed the Oracle further. Religion depends on our dotmap really, since we need to decide if/how we're going to expand borders.

Updated sandbox:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/PBEM29/...dSwordSave