[SPOILERS] enough is ENOUGH! scooter opens some windows and finishes first!

[scooter]

(note: I had this post all written up in Notepad so I wouldn't lose it... then I refreshed this page before posting and the server was up fine still... So I paste it in and I guess in those 3 seconds it went down. Just my luck. )

T15 - I'm running out of semi-creative ways to announce a new turn. But okay. Capital is still nice:



That worker will be here just in time to do some chopping when BW comes in! The settler is on the move:



You also can see the warrior coming in to help. I should be able to keep the city safe. Not much interesting in the south:



All these snaky rivers are really interesting to me. My scout to the southeast is still moving and safe from Lewwyn's warrior:



Marble. Seems to be in a spot that is an equal distance from several players. I'm going to dig up SevenSpirits PBEM25 diagram in a few (read: later which means in 20 minutes or a month) and try to illustrate. For some perspective on where this is in comparison to my capital, I zoomed out a bit:



So that town is pretty much right between me and Lewwyn. Demographic-type things:



I did notice on previous demos that someone jumped out to 31,000 land. That has to be Brian Shanahan's creative culture though. No one else is at 31k though.

[scooter]

Yeah, that's one difficulty in playing a specially made map. You can't play percentages about what's likely to be where, you have to guess how devious the map maker decided to be.

(Not a spoiler, I don't remember Seven saying anything about it.)

The town on an island is not only cool but it's convenient in that you can actually get good use out of that tile without sending a worker to it. Now, how nasty do you think this map is? Is there a resource under it that you have to decide to mine or not? It can't ever be hooked up so i don't see how that would be worth it anyways, but theoretically, it could be a iron/coal or something like that.

See here's the thing about both of these sentences... I'm trying to think like Seven here, and so was he trying to be devious here or was he trying to have fun? Evidence of both.

Fun/nice things
1. Farm on Oasis
2. Lochness Monster lake (my favorite personally)
3. Plenty of seafood
4. Random forest preserve that maybe will get us a free forest (fingers crossed)
5. Bunch of random tile improvements all over that can be used immediately or pillaged for gold while still in neutral territory
6. A happy resource already hooked for us just nearby (incense)
7. <bunch of other random things>

Nasty/mean things
1. Elephants that are tricky to access. And that's basically it. Though the mere existence of ivory is almost a nice thing here given the presence of Byzantium.

So... The evidence so far makes me think it's not really set up to be particularly nasty. So that's something to consider anyways. It gives me hope for horse. Thing is though, even if there IS horse there, I'd be researching AH and settling pigs/gold before I even got to the horse spot, so I'll know before I need to make a decision... So I'm not too worried about it. If we were closer to someone else I'd be more concerned and more liable to rush to the spot, but we're pretty spread out... I'm also not going to stunt my own growth just to quickly harass someone with Keshiks, so there's that too.

[scooter]

Is there a resource under it that you have to decide to mine or not? It can't ever be hooked up so i don't see how that would be worth it anyways, but theoretically, it could be a iron/coal or something like that.

Wait, these sentences just clicked with me. Is this true? I didn't think it worked this way...

So, say there's coal on that 1-tile island. I thought if that coal is in your culture you could drop a worker on it, mine it, road it, and it would then be "hooked up" as long as you had Sailing or whatever the tech is that allows trade on waters. Right? Or am I wrong and the only way to have it hooked is to settle on top of it?

It matters greatly because of the elephants.

[T-hawk]

A tile improvement plus road does not connect a resource on a 1-tile island. Only a city or fort can (and the fort needs a road and must be inside your culture.)

[dazedroyalty]

A tile improvement plus road does not connect a resource on a 1-tile island. Only a city or fort can (and the fort needs a road and must be inside your culture.)

A fort works eh? that's good to know!

[scooter]

A tile improvement plus road does not connect a resource on a 1-tile island. Only a city or fort can (and the fort needs a road and must be inside your culture.)

Ok thanks. Judging from this:



If I can't hook it up with a camp, I may just consider settling on the elephants and making that a fishing town (the one to my north, not that particular elephant). Might be a perfect Moai city.

[scooter]

T16 was not terribly exciting so this will be brief. My warrior keeps on moving.



Grassland windmill. Well that's fun. My scout...



Kinda feel like I should've ended on the plains hill instead.



At size 1 it will start on a worker which will be chopped with the original worker once BW is in. The only real dilemma here is whether I finish the road on the grass hill that I've started. At end of next turn I finish BW which means I could abandon the road and chop a worker 1T quicker. That would mean wasted worker turns later when I have to move onto the hill and finish it in return for a worker 1T sooner. Not sure what's best here but I lean towards abandoning the road until later. A second worker completed for me at EOT and that will move 1SW onto the forest and will immediately be able to chop. Yay. Here's the demo screen:



Someone settled their first city. That's interesting. The average land area went up. Gotta be Serdoa or Commodore. Commodore makes more sense as he's been building settler for awhile I think. Though Serdoa would make sense too given that he's before me in the turn order.

[T-hawk]

Judging by that screenshot, I'd settle SE of the fish, which can reach both fish and the elephant and also banana. Hook up the elephant with a fort as mentioned. A further plan could be to whip the library here and run two scientists for the first Great Person for the capital academy.

[scooter]

Judging by that screenshot, I'd settle SE of the fish, which can reach both fish and the elephant and also banana. Hook up the elephant with a fort as mentioned. A further plan could be to whip the library here and run two scientists for the first Great Person for the capital academy.

Yeah that's a pretty likely possibility and definitely stronger than settling on elephants. That spot actually grabs two fish so in the short-term that's an absurd amount of food.

Tomorrow night I think I'll try to do another dotmap-type post. Not going to happen tonight, but after that I can take a good look at what our future prospects are and what will be the priority.

[scooter]

T17 boys and girls. It is here. Founded city numero dos.



Pretty sure Serdoa and Commodore both have second cities now actually.

Workers are ready to begin chopping next turn:



I'll revolt to Slavery next turn. My scout finds another elephant source:



This confirms that the elephant river is NOT big enough for galleys and such assuming the 20-tile rule doesn't scale with map size... Which I don't believe it does. That concerns me. So next priority will be to find if the adjacent river does meet 20 tiles in which case I could found a canal city. Capital is going right into another settler:



-1 turn for revolt but +1 turn for chopping. So I hit enter and begin looking for copper and... uhhh... this doesn't look good. I don't see it anywhere at all. And then I find... one.



I was disappointed at how far away it was at first but I'm actually happy about it now. My main advantage would be to have horse nearby which is still possible, but if nobody has easy access to spears, I'd be at a great advantage. Of course, it's also possible that all strategic resources are a good distance away. I still have the land SE of the my capital to scout of course, but still, the theme seems to be that we're supposed to expand heavily towards these contested areas of elephants/copper and maybe something else like iron. That's my guess at the moment anyways - it would be a cool idea. The interesting thing will be to see which snowy resource land will people go for? The one to their north (closer) or the one to their east (probably more natural to scout that way)

Finally, I got this message from Serdoa with the save:

Lewwyn is Lewwyn is Lewwyn ... we need a trash talking thread

Ironic to me given my earlier comment in my thread that "Serdoa is Serdoa is Serdoa"... But either way, seems like Lewwyn may be harassing Serdoa. Works for me! The only question I'm concerned about is if I make a trash-talking thread will one of the players in this game suddenly lock the thread??