Yup, all of that makes sense to me, although if we find out Krill is near us (still unlikely) it might still be worth reassessing the possible dangers and opportunities his move presents. It's safe to say we're not getting Q-rushed unless there's a major demographic change in the next few turns, but Krill and his newly-near neighbor are going to be in a prretty early war one way or the other, I think.
Please note that neither the whales nor the pigs are fresh water, meaning we have inland seas at the east, north and west of Borte! There are probably isthmuses connecting to the other players. Hard to tell exactly where they are though.
Just Couerva left to play. Maybe we`ll get another turn today!?
The scout could check for seafood by going W-NW or he could head north asap. We should stick to defensive terrain and hope no animals get in our way. I like N-2NW for a second city site. It could share the clams to get to size 2 quickly. We could place it 1N of that tile in order to get coastal access. This would of course mean less sharing of tiles with the capital - for good or for worse. I`m just really happy that we finally discovered a good site nearby with two food sources in the first ring.
Wow ... this would be a lot easier to dotmap if it were a little easier to scout efficiently! Really great to finally see some food on the map though! (More later....)
I'll keep spamming the thread in installments, supposedly because of the timing of breaks at work, but actually because it'll help with our post count!
So, from the latest demos, thanks to bonus information from civstats:
Coeurva/Bacchus, as Cyrus of Carthage, are going Work Boat first, and are now working their grassland forest hill. They'll be the first team to get a tile improvement - their clams, on T10 - and the first team to grow, on T11. They won't have a second tile improvement until we get our third though, and we'll beat them to size 3 as well.
GermanJoey, by contrast, playing Churchill of Greece, is still working his clams and building a Worker.
I think that's all I've got until next turn (I assume the next scout move is 2NE?) - presumably China and the Zulu switched from their FPs to their Oases, but that doesn't count as news - in terms of immediate thoughts on the game. So I'm going to make this a really long message for a different reason!
From Journeys of the Üneg: First Explorers of the Ancient Khatunate, by Ref Gan:
No one in the Üneg clan remembered the city of Borte: After decades of scraping together such livings as they could through hunting and foraging in the wild, making their way as nomads from wood to wood, through the wide and waving grasslands, and at last to the isthmus between two great lakes, the clansfolk were a tribe apart, remembering the Eternal Empress of the Khatunate as a mythic figure, but imagining her palace-city and its high hill less as their home than as part of an origin legend, as though it lay in another world and not at the northern terminus of the highland ridge they could just make out behind them from their isthmus camp. Their shamanistic leaders - always women, in accordance with the Khatunate tradition - prayed to the eternal Izabyella Khatun herself for guidance as well as the spirits of whom the legend said she had spoken below Deed Tusgal Nuur, but only they ever knew for sure what answers they received. Certainly they claimed to hear the spirits' words and wisdom - urging them to make their way from the isthmus toward a high and lonely hill, in whose shadow local plainsfolk told of big-horned, thick-wooled sheep that browsed the wild grasses - and the clansfolk willingly prepared to go that way, traveling as they had since they were born, but whether they were led by the spirits or merely by the obvious appeal of its prominence, who now can say?
In accordance with tradition, the clan sent word of all that they discovered, both by prayer to the spirits and by word of mouth among the primitive peoples of the river valleys, back to the Palace of the Eternal Empress in Borte - but deeply though they might trust that their words were heard and their messages welcomed, and that their leaders spoke true when they claimed the Spirits had offered thanks for the knowledge they brought, and though rumor and stories spread faster than any living being, it's impossible to know how long it really took for word of their discoveries to wend its way back to the Palace, or in what form the stories finally reached the thrones. Yet at least the city of Borte was real, not in another world inhabitated by spirits, but in their own. It was the seat and the beating heart of the ancient Khatunate, where cowherds gathered from the plains below to barter their produce and exchange stories and tricks of the trade, developing and broadening a body of knowledge and of skill that they hoped would enable them to breed better cattle and improve their grazings, though the gradual improvements might not see their greatest fruit for centuries to come.
For all the conveniences of the city as a meeting place and center for barter and trade, the lives of the cowherds remained focused on the plains below, where their cattle grazed. What set Borte apart from their camps and dwellings among the plains was the Palace of the Eternal Empress. Standing at the crest of the highest hill in the Toli region, the "Palace" served more nearly as a center of spiritual and secular learning, though by local tradition it was considered the dwelling-place of Mönkiin Izabyella Khatun, the legendary founder of the Khatunate, said to possess the gift of eternal life and youth. Tribal elders gathered in the Palace meeting-halls, and young women and girls purportedly selected for their spiritual connection to the Eternal Empress and the land - a quality expressed, according to some, by the resemblance of their countenance to that of the eternal Khatun herself - underwent secret shamanistic training in cloistered chambers, learning to lead their clans in accordance with the will of the holy spirits.
Whatever else might be said of the Palace and its people, it was certainly united: Elders and shamanist teachers and students alike made it their first business, with the help of certain people of the city still growing around the Palace, to invest themselves in the holy spirits and to learn the deeper secrets of the Tusgal lakes by which the region and its central legend were defined. This course of study naturally had a spiritual component - the traditions and legends of Deed Tusgal Nuur in particular were central to their belief system - but in time they would also yield more practical results. Considering the interest taken by the Palace's people in old fishermen who hunted the rivers and other nearby lakes for taimen trout, there is even some reason to believe these practical considerations were intended, or at least anticipated, as much as their relevance to spiritual matters connected to Deed Tusgal Nuur.
Though the laws of the land were yet to be codified or recorded in any form, and wouldn't be for millenia to come, the Palace of the Eternal Empress also served as a center for - if not strictly law - then justice, rule, and the ordering of ancient Khatunate society. According to tradition, the Eternal Empress Isabyella herself would hold court from the thrones of the Palace, render judgment, and address her people, though whether she was understood to be represented by one of the young women in training to be shamanistic leaders, appropriately dressed, or whether the citizens of Borte believed the figure they saw was truly an eternally-youthful Empress, cannot now be known - nor yet can the process by which, or the persons by whom, the decrees of the Eternal Empress were actually decided. Whatever the process, they were taken seriously, and put into action as though Izabyella Khatun had indeed stepped out of legend and into the Palace throne room, bearing all the responsibility and authority of secular ruler and spiritual leader alike, and bearing up under both with the aid - according of course to Khatunate tradition - of her beloved holy spirits.
It is left to the modern reader to judge what aid she really received, and how or whether she knew of the Üneg clan whose people remembered her title and name long after they forgot her city: The Üneg clan that from the top of the prominence its leaders had observed would discover the Great Western Sea, rich in fish and seafood of every variety, and lead their still-nomadic lives along its nearer shores for generations to come, always moving northward in accordance with their leaders' visions of holy spirits - real or imagined.
Image credits:
Mongolian Sheep: Photo by Stefan Schinning
Cattle herd in Sumber, Mongolia: Photo by Wolfgang of ipernity.com
Han Palace: Painting by Qiu Ying (16th century)
Spear fisher: Photo by Edward S. Curtis (c.1923)
Mongolian queen: Painting by Dolgorjavin Bold
Ocean bay: Photo by Chris of theaussienomad.com
Okay, I was wrong about having nothing else to add - just nothing else very exciting. Since they were (as mentioned) working FPs and then Oases, dtay and Ventessel managed to get the first techs of the game this turn. In each case, the tech was Fishing. (Nothing else could complete this fast.) In dtay's case, that's completely unsurprising. In Ventessel's case, it's possible he's no longer working the Oasis and is now working the Clams (I haven't tested to see if the oasis counts for the Financial with this river configuration, but suspect it might not) - which makes this kind of make sense, though I think the whole China opening is a bit iffy on this start.
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![[Image: DrivingTheGreatOceanRoadBayOfMartyrs.jpg]](http://cdn.theaussienomad.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/DrivingTheGreatOceanRoadBayOfMartyrs.jpg)