This is gonna be good: von Adlercreutz and Taotao

[taotao]

World News:

Hinduism was founded this turn and (though I missed it) Buddhism went last turn:
Suspected culprit for Hinduism: AdrienIer - (has to be either him or REM and A started with myst.)
Suspected culprit for Buddhism: HAK? - quite a lot of people got techs, namely HAK, Molach, Barteq, dtay, DZ, plako, Commodore, theWannabe, Grimace and AT. Of these, the three first started with myst. My bet is on HAK as he has one tech less researched than the others and might be that this also was his first tech?

I reported plako earlier as going BW first, but I've later seen him getting a tech on turn roll too early, so perhaps he just changed his mind mid-research?

This ought to mean that no one has gone BW first which I actually find slightly surprising.

Also, HAKs capital grew this last turn, so he ought to be first to size 2 and has therefore not gone worker first (not sure if it's possible with workboat first).

Edit: Also, Tsargon and NylesStandish have both popped techs from huts.

[taotao]

Regarding aggressive border settling towards DZ:

Now, if DZ has nowhere to settle but our direction, this will probably be nothing but wishful thinking.
Similarily, if he has copper and we don't, we probably need to rethink this, but anyway...

When DZ wants to expand his empire to the north I'd say he has two main options of where to settle. We can't stop him from settling this one city in our direction and I don't think we should try.

Option A would be to settle on the sugar tile. This is probably what I would choose in his situation. It lets him have some use from the sugar immediately, he gets the happiness instantly after researching calendar, the clam is first ring and he gets to share 3 tiles with the capital.


If he settles here, what we could do is settle aggressively on the hill 1W of the peak. It's a rubbish city initially, but once borders pop (perhaps chop the two forests in front of it into a library?) it claims three different food sources and stops him from expanding to the NW (theoretically he could settle where you've put the C-sign, but that's just ridiculously vulnerable to us). IF we do this, then we definitely need at least 1 axe from the second we found, but preferably 2 axes from the start and a spear shortly afterwards...

However, DZ has earlier said that he wants to maximise bureaucracy by not sharing tiles with the capital , so it's quite likely that he'll instead found 1N of clams. If he does that we could theoretically found in the same way as above, but then I believe that we might actually be better off by backing off a little bit, let him have his sheep uncontested and settle the plains hill NW of wheat and the c-sign earlier instead:


I'm not too fond of relying on rivers for defensive bonuses (as mounted/impi units often can cross before actual attack) and there's two tiles in our borders from which he can fork both cities, but at least we have some kind of bonuses in such a scenario.

If he doesn't settle north for his second city, there's also the possibility that he'll found a city with both sheep and clams first ring, but then I'm no longer sure what I'd want to do. Settle 1W of C-sign and instead push by settling 1E of wheat?

Anyway, this is all some way off in the distance still, but just throwing out some ideas.
Btw. I'm reading through his pb25 thread again and in the beginning he repeatedly says that he wants to get 3-4 academies in his cities. Sure would be nice to capture those...

[taotao]

Ok, so I just logged in and...




Rubbish.
DZ has "doublemoved" us coming from the south. How do you want to proceed? Still scout his capital or head back north to hopefully pop a hut or two before he beats us to it?
Scout is still unmoved and I'd say we have until this evening to decide (but the sooner the better).

[von Adlercreutz]

Hmm, the plans to take a look at the cap didn't take into account huts. And getting to know land east and north of us is important for expansion. I say let's go 2N, we can't confuse DZ about our direction anymore.

[taotao]

I say let's go 2N, we can't confuse DZ about our direction anymore.

Did this and was greeted by an insofar uninspiring sight.




Do you feel like going W-NW to reveal the last two tiles over in this region or head straighter north?

In the screenshot you can also see that we're up 4/2 espionage points on DZ, so apparently he's already met someone else and hasn't allocated focused EP spending.

[taotao]

World news:
Donovan Zoi, Serdoa, Krill, Barteq, Ichatep and Elkad all grew a pop point this turn. So presumably all went workboat first and have now grown on a warrior? What will they do with their warriors? I see a tiny risk here that we could end up having to finish our warrior before the second worker, but then we really have to be unlucky…

[von Adlercreutz]

Scout move, went to see the tiles near the proposed city spot:


Marble! Dotmap may need adjusting. Also found plaincows in east, NE of marble would pick these resources.

Victory screen confirms that DZ has grown. Do you know how to interpret the land stat? Does DZ just have so much coast his land percentage is 0%?

[taotao]

Marble would be nice

Do you know how to interpret the land stat? Does DZ just have so much coast his land percentage is 0%?

Those land area values are rounded down to the nearest whole percentage, so I believe that he theoretically could have 0,99% of total land mass and it would still say 0%.
Of course, looking at the demo table we see that rival worst land is at 16000 i.e. has 5 water tiles in the capital.

[von Adlercreutz]

Marble would be nice

Do you know how to interpret the land stat? Does DZ just have so much coast his land percentage is 0%?

Those land area values are rounded down to the nearest whole percentage, so I believe that he theoretically could have 0,99% of total land mass and it would still say 0%.
Of course, looking at the demo table we see that rival worst land is at 16000 i.e. has 5 water tiles in the capital.

But that isn't applied to our number?

[taotao]

Do you know how to interpret the land stat? Does DZ just have so much coast his land percentage is 0%?

Those land area values are rounded down to the nearest whole percentage, so I believe that he theoretically could have 0,99% of total land mass and it would still say 0%.
Of course, looking at the demo table we see that rival worst land is at 16000 i.e. has 5 water tiles in the capital.

But that isn't applied to our number?

No.
You can see the same in the population statistic. We have 3,33% and thus he should have 6,67% being at size 2, but it is displayed as 6,00% (yes I consider this strange as well...)