[SPOILERS] Team Unpronounceable Unicode Symbol: True Grit

[Ceiliazul]

any progress on that sim?

[Sisu]

Another completely boring turn - scout healed, workers worked. Next turn Veh pops out and we discover Agriculture->AH, and also can resume our scouting.

any progress on that sim?

Some! Almost done updating the sandbox with the terrain we've uncovered. Tomorrow's Memorial Day in the USA, so instead of work I can run the sim forward and start figuring out what to do next. Lack of The Wheel is a real pain, as it means we'll be wasting a ton of worker turns; I'd really like to send all three workers down to my second city to farm that flood plain (7 worker turns ughhh) and camp the ivory for quick stagnation at s2 until borders expand while the capital works foodhammer stuff at s3, but lack of the ability to make "free" roads (and then loss of turns from moving over unroaded terrain) will really hold my development back at the capital. I'm going to sim out sending two forward to get the improvements up fast, but then they have nothing good to do but prechop the small city radius forests for eventual Oracling.

Conclusion: Lacking Wheel is stupid and also dumb, but we need to hurry up and get some of that old-time religion or we'll be relegated to... shudder chopping out monuments.

[Sisu]

Logged in to look around and think about expansion paths. Currently thinking that I'll plant my second city for the flood plains/wet corn/ivory to the south and the third city 666 of the capital, on the plains hill that claims cows and shares corn, but wasn't sure what to do about my fourth city. I could go near the grass cow site, onto the desert hill for clams and flood plains, but then I would want Fishing tech and I really would prefer to race to Oracling Metal Casting. Will need to sim it out once I know maintenance costs and see how much Fishing sets me back, especially since it gives me 20% more on Pottery research. If I can't go to Fishing, then I will probably grab the grass cows to my north, on the edge of the jungle. It doesn't share any resources with the capital, but is in prime position to incubate lots of cottages and claim more grass cottages (some even rivered!) of its own. There's also the plains sheep to my south; 88 of that could share wet corn with my second city, and then it would have the plains river sheep (4/1/3), incense, and three plains hills (plus two desert) to be a potential strong production city, with the oasis powering three grass farms pre-CS.

...now that I think about it, I really like that sheep spot (future heroic epic?), but maybe not for my fourth city. I'm also not sure how close suttree is to that spot (working from the assumption that he's my southern neighbor). By my rough math (~2100 land tiles on the map = ~210/player = ~14x14 grid = ~7 tiles out in each direction from the capital is the sphere of influence) it's probably going to be a border city, even if not explicitly poaching tiles that are "his", but that doesn't take into account the fact that I've got the sea to my almost immediate east.

...man, I shouldn't have typed all this up. Now I'm going to have nothing to say for my empire overview in three more turns .

PS: Suttree's scout appeared to our northwest, wounded to .5, near the spot where we sighted a bear last turn. I don't know whether to be glad the bear picked a fight with him or sad that it apparently didn't have followthrough :P

[Ceiliazul]

...man, I shouldn't have typed all this up. Now I'm going to have nothing to say for my empire overview in three more turns .

In 3 turns you can publish your sim results... I'm harping on it because religion/wonder races depend on this kind of thing. If you can cut 2 turns off the build it may well make a difference between winning the race or a really bad use of chopped trees.

Relevant bit from Pitboss9 lurker thread:

The battle for early game wonders/religions is fraught with the tears of the defeated.

Which is why usually I just say screw it and pick Creative instead

Right. You get what you push for, not what you say: "Oh, this would be nice to have so I'm just going to mosey on over here and here first..."

[Sisu]

Gotcha, boss. I'll have that report on your desk tomorrow.

[Ceiliazul]

Naw, tomorrow is for honoring fallen heroes. games can wait. :-)

[Sisu]

Turn rolled overnight. Veh finished, swapped capital to Warrior + corn, Beh and Veh went to farm corn, Animal Husbandry dialed up. The Merovech Patrol finished healing and moved into position.

Since then, apart from dealing with stuff around the house, I've been tinkering with the sandbox. I ended up throwing out my old sandbox, because editing existing terrain was confusing and annoying, and created a new sandbox entirely. From this post I learned that the default size for a Large map is 104 by 64, which is something like the numbers we acquired from our abortive attempt at gosu goto hax, so I used novice's map editing tool to edit a map to those dimensions, covered it in water, stranded the AIs on tiny spits of ice to the north where they won't get in my way, and edited in the terrain we can see. I then ran the sim forward using the existing micro plan to the current turn. I'm now working on going past that and updating the old/creating a new micro plan, but I decided to post what I already had for now; more to come in a few hours.

Worldbuilder save
Start save
EoT 24 save

[Sisu]

Okay, did lots of simming. My head hurts now Here's the micro spreadsheet and the save.

Conclusion: I think we're doing it wrong!
"Wait, what?" you might say.
"Well," says I, "lacking Wheel this late feels super dangerous. Our copper isn't hooked up, which means all we can build for defense is warriors. Also, we have no trade route income to offset our maintenance, costing us 1cpt/city. Also also, so many wasted worker turns. We end up having to build a ton of extra workers to offset the wasted turns, who then sit around and have nothing to do beyond improving a few tiles per city." We land Meditation eot49, and hopefully that's good enough to found Buddhism, but it'd be incredibly easy for a scouting axe or chariot to ruin our game completely. I think we have to slot in Wheel before religion - if all else fails, we chop a few monuments (uuuugh) and go for Judaism.

I'm heading out for a few hours, but I'll be back around 8ish Eastern to play t25 and post my empire overview.

For Ceil: thoughts on the simming thus far?
For global lurkers: (or Ceil if he knows the answer) How do I edit out an AI's founding of a religion in WB so I can found it myself for sandbox purposes?

[Sisu]

okay my friend is honking outside bye

[Sisu]

It's turn 25! Overview time!

So here's a fancy-schmancy flying camera look at my exploration to date (which I took at a ninety degree angle for a reason I don't really remember), complete with tentative dotmap:




Pink dot will be my first city founded, then yellow. Those I am pretty sure about. Pink dot has a ton of riverland to cottage, claims ivory and wet corn, and even has some hills to produce stuff honestly if need be. Awesome city. Yellow claims bananas and grass cow and can share corn with the capital as well as incubate cottages for it - this is not going to be a heavy hitter long-term, but by the power of whipping and tile-sharing I think it'll be a key city for the early game.

Green dot I'm kind of unsure of, but I don't think I have a better spot for a fourth city. It's close to the capital, can incubate cottages for the capital, has its own cow and lake, and can work roughly one billion grass cottages of its own after that pesky jungle is cleared. Might be my buffer against BXB for some time to come, depending on what else is in the fog.

Grey dot is the one I was talking about last night. Once it claims its second ring, this city will be a hammer powerhouse - farm a bunch of stuff, pasture the sheep, mine everything else, and crank out 20 base hpt at size 12 (without stealing Pink's corn). This might be my fifth city, depending on tech path - it's a slow starter, but I should be able to borrow pink's corn to get it going until its borders expand and it can claim its sheep. The peak is annoying, but does create a natural defense against suttree.

Blue dot is what I'm least sure about. It exists to claim clams and claim some flood plains. Another possibility is to split it into two cities - one on the plains forest three tiles to the right of its current location, which would basically be a pure fishing village (and possible Moai spot) and another on the grass hill two tiles to the left and one up, which claims no resources but does have some flood plains and river grass.

Coming soon: thoughts about the game thus far and where I'm going with it.