[SPOILERS] Team EggHeads: DMOC and TeddyKGB (Now Lurker-Friendly!)

[Dhalphir]

I never like to overlap resources unless it is to feed a strategic resource city that is grabbing iron or something and has no other food.

[Dhalphir]

Won't overlpping the pigs require overlapping even more tiles along with them?

[TeddyKGB]

@Dhalphir
Isn't more overlapping with capital is a good thing for city#2?
Lets see a bit more turns further how our possible capital will look like.
So, our happy cap is sux still, we improved every land tile to cottage or mine, but we cant work them all by just capital alone. And now capital need to work cottages for research and build some infrastructure at the same time. And even if capital works no mines at all, there is some grassland cotages not working, so no growing to towns.
If we plant some city(s) in location to maximum overlap capitals tiles OTOH, this city(s) can grow cottages for capital until CS comes and our happy cap bumped by resouces, civics or infrastructure. And now our beureau capital can work alot of matured cottages and supply our empire with a commerce.

And its so flexible setup for two cities, especially with food resource overlapped.
I would be so happy if we saw food north of the pigs area here, you can't imagine.

There is some nuanceses on every map, but I go with closest possible city#2 like 80% of the time in SP. Maybe I'm wrong tho.
You should try it yourself in SP to see if you like it or not. Its more time consuming maybe, cuz you have to change tiles between cities at the right time.

[Dhalphir]

Sharing tiles restricts how big both cities can grow.

I guess size 25+ megacities are probably pretty rare in MP anyway, though.

[TeddyKGB]

Planing till industrial era is nice, but lets just survive till knights era. And preferably be in a good economic position.

City#2 never will be a good city if we plant it to overlap Pigs, but it not suppose to.
Our goal is expand fast and grab maximum possible land.
And we are short on worker turns for now. So, lets use our improved tiles between 2 cities. I see expansion like the spring in this case. Our goal isnt to grab more land with city#2, our goal is just grab maximum land possible after expansion over. Maybe I'm wrong tho. Want to hear from DMOC.

So, I see city#2 as a filler later in game and booster for our empire expansion early.

EDIT: I don't suggest we play expansion ICS style, cuz it wont work. Just, in my opinion, overlaped city#2 is a good thing pretty much every time. We'll know more after some scouting, and I can change my mind and vote for another city#2 location, tho.

[TeddyKGB]

Just to kill some time and spam the thread:

Question to all team members: what WW(s) we should consider to run for and why?
Same question, if we'll see marble/stone close?

[DMOC]

This is the kind of thing I need to be learning, thanks

That said, finishing in the forest after 8-7 gets us further north sooner, so there's benefits either way

Yes, which is one of the stronger arguments for 8-7. However, if we got 4-7, note that the tile directly north of the scout at that position is grassland, so he can easily move 2 tiles upwards on turn 4. Depending on if there's forest 8-7-7 of the scout, I'm not sure if the scout can easily move 2 spots on turn 4 given that there's also hills (8-7-9) and a forest (8-7-8) from the current scouting position that's visible via tile bleeding.

@Dhalphir
I'll be checking your other game on RB if you start one, maybe do some posting if it'll helps, but, like DMOC, I wanna concentrate on PB14 for some times. As I said, it's first MP expirience for me, so I planning posting much here to reread later and learn from my mistakes.
If you want to learn more about MP, in my opinion, you should also read previous PB/PBEM threads. You can open several threads of one game at the same time and read about game progress from different points of view: team1, team2 and global lurkers.

As for moving scout 8-7 now, in my opinion , 4-7 is a better move because it'll allow us reveil more land West. If we'll see some hill in NW direction, we can consider to move scout there and get back to water signs after. Then continue N and NE.
As we know now, moving scout on deers this turn would be better. But at the time I wasnt sure there is more land West, so I suggest going to current scout position to keep option to move him 8-7 next available for us. And I think it was a correct play still.

One more thing, please post here your suggestion and questions more. The more players take part in current decisions discussion - more chance our team will play PB14 close to optimal. You can always see something other players missed.

Yeah, I definitely want to focus only on this game for the time being.

As I alluded in the previous quote-response in this post, another possible reason in favor of 4-7 is that we can go 8-9 the following turn, so we'll still be on our way to exploring the north. And the tiles the scout would reveal by going 4-7 aren't that far away from the empire; they're possible 5th/6th city cites.

@DMOC
What you think about our city#2 possible location?
Do you like our city#2 overlap Pigs in general or you prefer less overlap with capital for our city#2?
Its early to choose city#2 location without knowing surrounding tiles, I know. Just want to know your opinion on this in general.

I guess, we both agree our city#2 should go W-NW-N direction. It looks more promising, lets hope there is riverside cows there or similar.

Do you agree with 4-7 scout next or you prefer something else?

As mentioned before, I support 4-7 but would be fine with 8-7.

As far as overlap goes, I like the idea of having overlap with the pigs. It just gives us lots of extra flexibility in what we do for our second city, including if we need to whip it for some reason.

I never like to overlap resources unless it is to feed a strategic resource city that is grabbing iron or something and has no other food.

Won't overlpping the pigs require overlapping even more tiles along with them?

Correct, but overlap is a good thing for us. It is often the case that we want to get maximum production in one city and not the other, in which case it's best to share the resource as it's already 6F and improved. In addition, if a city shares the pigs, it's also likely that the city can help work some of the cottages, so the capital can switch to them once it gets better multipliers.

@Dhalphir
Isn't more overlapping with capital is a good thing for city#2?
Lets see a bit more turns further how our possible capital will look like.
So, our happy cap is sux still, we improved every land tile to cottage or mine, but we cant work them all by just capital alone. And now capital need to work cottages for research and build some infrastructure at the same time. And even if capital works no mines at all, there is some grassland cotages not working, so no growing to towns.
If we plant some city(s) in location to maximum overlap capitals tiles OTOH, this city(s) can grow cottages for capital until CS comes and our happy cap bumped by resouces, civics or infrastructure. And now our beureau capital can work alot of matured cottages and supply our empire with a commerce.

And its so flexible setup for two cities, especially with food resource overlapped.
I would be so happy if we saw food north of the pigs area here, you can't imagine.

There is some nuanceses on every map, but I go with closest possible city#2 like 80% of the time in SP. Maybe I'm wrong tho.
You should try it yourself in SP to see if you like it or not. Its more time consuming maybe, cuz you have to change tiles between cities at the right time.

Yes, I agree, I like to have a close second city. I'll sometimes try to get a second city far from the capital, but usually it's for some weird reason, such as if I'm playing single player and need to block a choke point. Close second cities mean that a road network is easier to form (thus getting much-needed commerce from the trade route!) and the 2-city empire is thus easily defensible. Workers can also move back and forth between the cities as needed, possibly without even wasting a turn moving.

Also, this is a bit off topic, but do you agree with (eventually) mining all hill tiles and cottaging all grassland tiles in the capital? That will take care of every single tile. Obviously, I'm not saying cottage all tiles now, since that'd be a huge waste of worker turns, but that's the long-term idea.

Sharing tiles restricts how big both cities can grow.

I guess size 25+ megacities are probably pretty rare in MP anyway, though.

Yes, they are rare in multiplayer. And if you do get one of these somehow in 200 AD, you get dogpiled since others want that population.

Planing till industrial era is nice, but lets just survive till knights era. And preferably be in a good economic position.

City#2 never will be a good city if we plant it to overlap Pigs, but it not suppose to.
Our goal is expand fast and grab maximum possible land.
And we are short on worker turns for now. So, lets use our improved tiles between 2 cities. I see expansion like the spring in this case. Our goal isnt to grab more land with city#2, our goal is just grab maximum land possible after expansion over. Maybe I'm wrong tho. Want to hear from DMOC.

So, I see city#2 as a filler later in game and booster for our empire expansion early.

EDIT: I don't suggest we play expansion ICS style, cuz it wont work. Just, in my opinion, overlaped city#2 is a good thing pretty much every time. We'll know more after some scouting, and I can change my mind and vote for another city#2 location, tho.

I respectfully disagree -- city 2 can be a good city even if we overlap it with the pigs, and in fact we will want it to be good. Even if it doesn't have another food resource, the fact that we can share the pigs with the capital means we can make the city grow as far as it can support without the pigs (which might otherwise be slow) and as long as there are enough mines we can work, we can get a nice secondary production city going that emphasizes worker and settler production.

Just to kill some time and spam the thread:

Question to all team members: what WW(s) we should consider to run for and why?
Same question, if we'll see marble/stone close?

Right now, zero. Let's focus on expansion first. Let Lord Parkin get the wonders, hopefully that will make others attack him and not us.

If we do get stone close, the Hanging Gardens would be nice to aim for, but we'd do it for the population boost, as the +1 health is rather unnecessary with Expansive.

If we decide to aim for the Hippodromes, The Great Library would be nice with marble.

What wonders are on the way to Guilds? Not sure if there are many...there's The Colossus, but if water is going to play a huge role in this map, we need Astronomy for Galleons.

[TeddyKGB]

And another one:
How we should named our most powerfull unit so far, our mighty scout?

I was thinking some like "GreatAmbassador" for scout, cuz I can't think of any math name for him suited for our general theme.

[DMOC]

General Einstein?

Another thing we might do is hold off naming our units, and only name them if they do something awesome. For the scout, that might mean killing a barbarian bear.

Just for fun, I decided to compile a list of benefits for having a close second city with overlap:

1. Trade routes easier to form, meaning more commerce.
   
2. Possibility to share food tiles and for the secondary city to work the capital's commerce (requires micromanagement planning)
   
3. Easily defensible, as we can have military play "zone defense"
   
4. Less maintenance costs
   
5. We would have a continuous cultural border. If we did not, for instance, a human player could pillage the roads between our cities.
   

The downside mainly has to do with long-term effects.

By the way, anyone want to take bets? I'm going to say that Team Orgynized gets Stonehenge by turn 50.

[TeddyKGB]

As I alluded in the previous quote-response in this post, another possible reason in favor of 4-7 is that we can go 8-9 the following turn, so we'll still be on our way to exploring the north. And the tiles the scout would reveal by going 4-7 aren't that far away from the empire; they're possible 5th/6th city cites.

I agree, keep our options open is important. Even with scout moves (not important thing, as someone could say) you had to think 2 or 3 turns further, imo.
So 4-7 next is decided, I guess.

Also, this is a bit off topic, but do you agree with (eventually) mining all hill tiles and cottaging all grassland tiles in the capital? That will take care of every single tile. Obviously, I'm not saying cottage all tiles now, since that'd be a huge waste of worker turns, but that's the long-term idea.

Sure, I agree with you.
To tell the truth, I dont like cottages that much. Obv, cottages awesome, but I tend to build Mids and farms a lot in SP, so I kinda dont like FIN trait that much (in SP I prefer EXP over every other traits).
It's not the case in this game obv, so we wanna alot of matured cottages in capital asap. And mining grass hills is obv too, imo. We can decide later if we need some changes.

I respectfully disagree -- city 2 can be a good city even if we overlap it with the pigs, and in fact we will want it to be good. Even if it doesn't have another food resource, the fact that we can share the pigs with the capital means we can make the city grow as far as it can support without the pigs (which might otherwise be slow) and as long as there are enough mines we can work, we can get a nice secondary production city going that emphasizes worker and settler production.

I didn't mean city#2 will suck right after we plant city#3. For a long time (maybe till the end of this game) it could be awesome/good city. But Dhalphir was worried about city#2 cant work 20 tiles because overlap, so I answer it, as I see it in the very long run.
As I said, overlap is a good thing, imo. Especially with Pigs shared.

hopefully that will make others attack him and not us.

If I played in MP and get Byz as a neighbour, I would try to rush Byz before knights.
Its not like our neighbours dont know what we up to, I'd guess. We can try use diplo ofc, but FYI I expect us to be dogpiled before knights. If we are stay low on demo screen, and we will obv, then we probably could limp to knights without being rushed or dogpiled, but full AI game is crazy and full of possibilities, imo. We can discuss diplo after 1st contact, I guess.

but if water is going to play a huge role in this map

Thats in the rules. Too lazy to post a link, but it in the 1st post on tech thread.