[SPOILERS] naufragar and Rusten get nickel-and-dimed

[Rusten]

I believe I found a big improvement if we're willing to delay copper hook-up until T43 (only 1 worker goes north). I don't see why that should be a problem as I doubt anyone has it in their starting BFC nor do they have time to get horses yet.

Changes:
T33: Only 1 worker chops the forest grass hill 1SW of city #2. The southern worker chops forest 1SE of capital instead (then roads the tile after to speed up settler movement 1T). This results in the settler being 1-pop whipped instead of 2 (70/100), which means that we can immediately go into another settler or worker while still working the plains hill.
grass hill mine is never roaded (it was only roaded earlier because we had 2 workers there anyway).

If we get a worker after the cow-settler in capital then we can immediately whip an axe in city #3 after it's grown to size 2 if we need it, which means that city #2 can go immediately into a settler on size 3 (T43, finishes warrior same turn as it grows) while working fp+clam+copper. That's the settler for gem plant, which city #3 can produce military for.

If threat levels are fairly low then this is far superior to what I wrote in the previous post. But we have the luxury of choosing a slower/safer path if we need to. None of the starting cities are settled towards bowmen, which are the only reasonable threat at that stage, so T43 copper is good in my book. Especially when there's the option to speed it up if absolutely necessary. It's also tucked away nicely so no threat of pillaging.

[naufragar]

Just about time to turn around, and look what we found:



Cairo and Superdeath have 36 EP into each other. MSCC kept pumping us with EP, so we've lost their graphs, but I've switched to Superdeath anyway. I'm a touch more interested in getting his graphs right now than having an espionage arms race with MSCC. Given the position of Mr. Cairo's scout, I assume he'll meet them soon enough.

I'll comment on micro stuff in a bit.

[naufragar]

For those following along at home, I've suddenly become a touch busier and haven't had a chance to poke holes in Rusten's plan, so that's what we're going with.

MSCC know where we are.



Rusten, how would you feel about rolling the dice on animal spawns and moving the scout N-NW next turn? After that, he can fogbust the desert or something.

MSCC have met Mr. Cairo, but they haven't put any EP that way. We'll check again next turn. If the situation doesn't change, we get cranky.



I'll try to do some demos work tonight. One drawback of Ram's mod is that unmet players don't have scores displayed. I haven't been taking screenshots of PBSpy, so my information won't be complete. My mistake.

[Rusten]

N-NW to fill in the blanks sounds good, there could theoretically be a luxury resource (or deer!) on the forest tile to change our city priorities, but we don't want to fogbust the desert if we follow my plan as it's settled 4th with copper available. The scout should head towards the cows and start fogbusting there early. We only have 1 warrior assigned to the area when we're scheduled to settle our city and he won't arrive much in advance either. Just parking the scout on the jungle tile SE of the peak would help a lot. We don't want to have to deal with more than 1 barbarian warrior if possible, and hopefully none.

PBspy: You can recover opponent information by using the filter on the right hand side if you care enough. Filter by player, turn range, type of event, you name it.

[Rusten]

In response to your earlier PM, the possibility of deer probably means that we should tech hunting before pottery as there's no gain from pottery anyway.

edit: I logged in and switched the anarchy tech (beaker overflow) to hunting.

[naufragar]

In response to your earlier PM, the possibility of deer probably means that we should tech hunting before pottery as there's no gain from pottery anyway.

edit: I logged in and switched the anarchy tech (beaker overflow) to hunting.

Thanks, I was about to log in and saw you did. Didn't know anarchy still gives you the free beaker.

I played out your microplan. Thanks for making it crystal clear. The worker-settler queue dance is lovely.

My suggestion for fogbusting the desert was more my worry that a barb would wander in from that direction, whereas if it wandered in from the south, we've got a warrior already earmarked for that area. I take your point, however.

[Rusten]

Barbarians won't enter borders until later so desert barbarians will be at a distance, and MSCC's culture with help fogbust a lot as well. The exact wording escapes me at the moment, but I think they enter borders when average city count on landmass = 3 (+1). Something along those lines anyway. The information is available if we feel the need to know the exact turn.

I'm not sure about any extra beakers, but whatever overflow we had for finishing agriculture gets put into whichever tech you have selected during anarchy. Sometimes cute tricks are available to make use of this mechanic. You can complete a tech even during anarchy if you have enough overflow.

[naufragar]

Barbarians won't enter borders until later so desert barbarians will be at a distance, and MSCC's culture with help fogbust a lot as well. The exact wording escapes me at the moment, but I think they enter borders when average city count on landmass = 3 (+1). Something along those lines anyway. The information is available if we feel the need to know the exact turn.

I was curious. If this thread is to be believed (since it draws from the dll and not the xml), it's based on NumCities > 2*NumPlayersAlive.

It's past my bedtime, but based on intense demographics calculations I can say with 80% confidence that MSCC have only that one lake in their BFC and they are not bowman rushing us yet.

[naufragar]

MSCC declared war and double-moved us.  



Immaterial, since they knew we didn't have a warrior and it kept the turns moving. Just something to keep in mind for later.   I accepted the cease fire I opened the turn up to.

Note also the incense. We won't get Calendar until we already have samurai, so dotmapping that matters little, but it's very nice to have.

[Rusten]

I'm absolutely incensed, how dare they! 



That thread is correct and is my go-to usually, but the number you picked out very rarely comes into play. It will only be a concern if you "bait" a warrior in. The number to take into consideration is B)*, so I did remember it correctly, except it's players alive and unrelated to continent.

*See DanF's post.