Astronaut without sin confounds press, invites trio to control civilization

[novice]

Btw, Seven, do you have an updated sandbox?

EDIT: Here's the last sandbox, played up to T20:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/PBEM23/...dSwordSave

[novice]

Okay, this may be crazy, but what do you guys think about going Mysticism->Polytheism after Pottery? We wanted to go outside the box, surely researching 6 techs before Mining counts?



Our capital can build a granary and a warrior while growing to size 5. Our workers will just have time to road the forest 1N of Ganymede, cottage both flood plains, and road the northern one. Ganymede builds a granary and warrior and grows to size 2, works the lake to get the final beakers for Polytheism, and when the borders expand next turn our workers can improve the rice and/or road towards city #3.

In short, we can keep our workers and cities productive without Bronze Working.

Tiles worked by Titan in this sim:

T20: Deer, furs
T21: Deer, furs
T22: Deer, fish
T23: Deer, fish
T24: Deer, fish, furs
T25: Deer, fish, flood plain cottage, Granary->Warrior
T26: Deer, fish, flood plain cottage, furs
T27: Deer, fish, 2 x flood plain cottage, furs, Warrior->Settler

[novice]

Got it. And played T20.

[novice]

Mackoti's warrior is severely injured:



Back home, after end of turn:



We now have Mackoti's graphs:

Demographics:


Top five cities shows one size 3 city and four size 2 cities.

[SevenSpirits]

Lucky he's that wounded, even so he can get ~31% odds on the scout after promoting. It looks from power graph like Mackoti hasn't built another warrior yet. What do you think about declaring war and scouting out his cap? I guess next turn we can just move NW-NW, no need to declare. I'm assuming his warrior moves onto the plains forest hill next turn, sadly ruling out us going there and maybe blocking his second city.

Why do you think we should road that forest? I was thinking just build two cottages on the FPs next. We use them right away.

I like the idea of Myst/Poly too actually; BW does speed up the next settler by 2t or so but we really need border popping for our 2nd/3rd cities, so... let me see if I can recreate what I'd tried, and post it for comparison.

[SevenSpirits]

Here is what I tried:

t21: Research 0% to gather 12g, work deer + FP, titan starts granary.
t22: work deer + fish. worker(s) start northern FP cottage. research 100%, path is myst->poly.
t23: ganymede starts another worker. titan adds fur with 3rd pop.
t24: titan works now-finished cottage over fur. one worker starts southern cottage.
t25: titan starts warrior, second worker helps cottage.
t26: titan 4th pop works second cottage. Avarice roads S FP.
t27: titan 5th pop works fur. (NOTE: sim is now wrong, maintenance should still be 2 not 3. I add a 2g to the sim for this turn and next.) Belligerence puts a turn into cottage S of furs, then cancels.
Cowardice moves to forest (not in sim) 2W of Ganymede (needs warrior cover). Ganymede starts granary, titan starts warrior.
t28: titan 6th pop temporarily works grass forest. titan switches to settler (with warrior half done). Avarice moves to cow, builds road. Belligerence moves to riverside grass E of fur, builds cottage. Cowardice roads his forest. research to 90%, barely finish polytheism with 0g left.
t29: research to 0% on mining.
t30: Avarice/Cowardice start rice farm. research to 100%. Belligerence continues the cottage S of fur. titan works river cottage over forest.
t31: Ganymede has finished granary, works rice and starts warrior.
t32: Ganymede 2nd citizen works cow. Avarice/Cowardice road rice. Start Bronze Working.
t33: Belligerence moves to grass hill. A/C road 2N of rice. Settler moves to Ganymede. Titan starts another settler. (?)
t34: Belligerence mines the hill. Settler to city site 2s of horses (with warrior). Ganymede 3rd citizen works fur; Titan works grass cottage instead. Titan builds warrior and grows in 1t exactly. A/C build half a lakeside farm on their tile. Ganymede starts another warrior.
t35: Settle City3. A/C start rice farm there. Ganymede works Rice/Cow/2xFP. Titan works all other improved tiles while building settler, plus a forest. (Mine is sadly 1t from completion.)
t36: BW in, whip settler, ...?

City4 can go 4S of Titan and have Oasis + Cow first ring, while Ganymede's second border pop on t37 puts the gold in culture too.

Thoughts?

[novice]

Lucky he's that wounded, even so he can get ~31% odds on the scout after promoting. It looks from power graph like Mackoti hasn't built another warrior yet. What do you think about declaring war and scouting out his cap? I guess next turn we can just move NW-NW, no need to declare. I'm assuming his warrior moves onto the plains forest hill next turn, sadly ruling out us going there and maybe blocking his second city.

I don't think we should act aggressively towards Mackoti. In a no diplo setting, reconciliation after hostilities is hard to achieve (See Turkey vs. Russia in rbnopress01), and even if we slow down Mackoti initially, he'll be a thorn in our side and will ultimately slow down us as well.

Why do you think we should road that forest? I was thinking just build two cottages on the FPs next. We use them right away.

Even if we stop to road that forest, we'll get the FPs cottaged in time. Having a road there means we can get our workers back to the cow later without losing worker turns. When we have BW we'll want to 5t cottage the forest, so the road will come in useful then. In short, without a road across that vertical line, I foresee a lot of wasted worker turns down the line.

[SevenSpirits]

Note (not going to edit it in since that might be confusing): Using that path, we end with 5 or 6 warriors (depending on what Ganymede does t36), 3 cities size 1/5/5 with the latter two having granaries, a settler for city 4, 3 workers, the ability to make another 1t worker in Titan from overflow, Slavery, Hinduism*.

* We hope, obviously.

[novice]

Thoughts?

Good plan. I only grew Titan to size 5 and then started the settler. That gave my workers time to build other improvements too. (And also meant that working an unimproved FP for a turn for enough food to reach size 6 was unnecessary.) These lists get tedious (but tiles worked in Titan are posted upthread), so I'll just show a screenshot:



Polytheism EOT28. Bronze Working EOT37. City 3 on T34. Settler 4 coming EOT35.

I like city 4 four tiles south of Titan. Shall we build an obelisk in city 3 to get the horses? Possibly run a priest or two there too, then?

[SevenSpirits]

In your run did Ganymede do Worker-Worker-Granary?

The advantage of working a FP one turn (and improving both of them ASAP) is you grow to size 3 a turn sooner which means one extra turn of working both the FP cottage and camp instead of just one of the two. That is a gain of at least +1f+1c, possibly more if working the FP cottage earlier over the fur is worth something. It also lets you reach size 6 and 7 a turn sooner contingent on certain tiles being worked which is of nebulous benefit. And I'm not sure how the relative granary timings are affecting things. I'll try your way.

I do think city 3 should build an obelisk.