{SPOILERS} 2metra, Dreylin & OT4E. This is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

[OT4E]

So this is the turn of 28 and here is the short planning.

We will have the wheel in 5 and settler in 6. So exactly when we get the wheel we need to start roading the tiles we have farmed for 1 with beta. So when the settler is done we finish the 2nd tile of road and move settler exactly on the planting spot. Right after this settler I propose to grow cap in 2 turns and start new settler. With 2 workers we make mine and road. Next settler can be done by turn 43 (15 hammers with farm on flood plains) or can be slaved slightly earlier.
If we start working gold mine as soon as possible our tech will rise to 23 beakers.

So we get:
Hunting at T39
Animals at T44
Pottery at T49 (but we can consider delaying pottery even more and go for myst)

I propose to plant 3rd city to the horses if we find them close and accessable.

The main pros of this path is that we cant afford to grow our 2nd city to 2 at least. I am also not sure that we need warrior spam if we dont see much changes at dtay's graph. We'd better start 3rd workers with it since we cant grow it working mine anyway. 2 workers for 3 cities is something I dont like.

[OT4E]

Why do I want to avoid planing on cooper? Our cooper is a bad tile, compared to Dtay's. It consumes more worker turns and turns into almost useless tile. We cant plant on it because it ruins good placement for other cities of ours. I also dont want to hook cooper to save opportunity to build warriors for happy.

City on stone is a good city because it can share corn from cap and have a few coastal tiles and lake. Workers turns are also important on each stage of the game.

About other cities placement it seems that the circle around our capital is pretty good to settle and cottage up and create our commerce core for medieval stage of the game.

Our early goal is to hook as much land as we can, settle near rivers, build granaries and rise production (slavery based). When our production allows us to guarantee security we start working on our commercial core. All we need is to have enough workers to meet the needs of growing cities and provide enough chops to grow them as fast as possible.

That city near furs can be our wonder farm. We must consider religion path. Monotheism is nice if we plant that city on stone.
I think that even with 2 happy resource we need monarchy rather early.

[Dreylin]

Hey OT4E, your thinking is going along the same lines as mine, but has certainly taken it further. A couple of points:

The river interferes with the Settler's movement, so Roading the tile 7 from the Cap will not help. The only one that helps is the Mine 1 from the Cap. I'll leave notes in-game tonight to remind us to get those Worker moves lined up. We also want to Road the Grassland 8 from the FP so that the Workers can move straight onto the Gold.

Growing in 2t is good, but will that also produce us a Warrior? If not, I think we should consider 3t growth to get out the second Warrior - particularly with City#2 set on a Worker. I agree with that build, as it's going to take a lot of Worker turns to get that City up and running with having to Farm the FPs. We might be better Chopping and Farming the Silks before the FPs as that will be faster and give us some extra hammers for something. I would say a Barracks, but #2 is going to be a Commerce city. Need to look at the timings, but if we Farm/Chop at the same time, that might complete around the time we get Pottery and we can put it straight into a Granary - I don't think we'll whip #2 much, but it's going to be a slow grow so the boost will be welcome.

We'll promote Herc to WoodsI and have him heal - he's on a forest hill, so should be safe unless a Bear comes by and even then there's lots of places for him to run. Question is what should we do with unnamed Scout who's North of the Cap? There seems to be 2 choices:

1) back-track towards the Cap and concentrate on fully de-fogging the coast to our North and then East -> South.

2) head up past dtay and follow Herc along the land bridge to find new friends.

I think I favour 2, as will not be prioritising our coastal spots for a while.

Southern Scout should head towards dtay's Cap to de-fog the land around there and then SW to see if there's another outlet.

Initially it looks like dtay has more land to expand into, but on the other hand that should also mean he borders someone else while we have a secure back line (hopefully).

Oh, also:

Mining is 2 turn cheaper than Agri, so dtay got BW earlier.

RtR Mod Korea starts with Agri & Mining, so he probably had a Cow/Pig/Sheep start and went Hunting first. With the Deer that we've seen, he could well have gone AH after BW, so will be a couple of turns away from seeing Horses. He'll still need The Wheel to build Chariots though, so we've got time to catch back up with the current plan.

[OT4E]

Question is what should we do with unnamed Scout who's North of the Cap?

I like giving situational names. If we cant find good name right now the it is not time yet.

The river interferes with the Settler's movement, so Roading the tile 7 from the Cap will not help. The only one that helps is the Mine 1 from the Cap.

We have time to make 2 tiles of road (7 from cap and 44 from cap). I think it is easier than losing a couple of worker turns climbing on the hill. Green farm wont be finished but we dont need it so soon.

Growing in 2t is good, but will that also produce us a Warrior?

We can consider growth to 5. Gold will give us happy.

I would say a Barracks, but #2 is going to be a Commerce city

#2 is productional city. Most of tiles are rivered. Gold will give us early boost, but later we are not obliged to develop this city as commercial. I'd focus on workers/settlers though.

RtR Mod Korea starts with Agri & Mining

He is INCA. He started with Agri&Myst.

[Dreylin]

The river interferes with the Settler's movement, so Roading the tile 7 from the Cap will not help. The only one that helps is the Mine 1 from the Cap.

We have time to make 2 tiles of road (7 from cap and 44 from cap). I think it is easier than losing a couple of worker turns climbing on the hill. Green farm wont be finished but we dont need it so soon.

We would only need to Road the Mine to allow the Settler to get there in 1t, then could finish the Road on 44 after it's there. But I think your plan is probably better. I'll look at our Worker turns in the game tonight.

I'm assuming that you are thinking of moving both Workers straight onto the Gold to hook it up faster at the cost of 2 Worker turns, rather than a slower connection that only costs 1wt?

Growing in 2t is good, but will that also produce us a Warrior?

We can consider growth to 5. Gold will give us happy.

It's probably not worth growing again until we get one of the Grass Farms online to speed it up (I'll check the micro to see when that would be).

I would say a Barracks, but #2 is going to be a Commerce city

#2 is productional city. Most of tiles are rivered. Gold will give us early boost, but later we are not obliged to develop this city as commercial. I'd focus on workers/settlers though.

The Silks will be 5c tiles post-Calendar so at worst it's going to be a hybrid; prod early then switching to Commerce later once it's not in the front lines.

RtR Mod Korea starts with Agri & Mining

He is INCA. He started with Agri&Myst.

Underlining the fact that I'm and idiot and shouldn't write too much speculative crap when not paying attention!

[Dreylin]

Turns played:

Northern Scout promoted WoodsI and has healed for 2t - 2 more turns before he's fully healed.

Southern Scout has headed towards dtay's Capital; NE Scout has headed SW to stay in safe terrain. I'm actually thinking we should swap these two over to maximise the defogging - Southern Scout should skirt the East of dtay's Capital and then head North, while the Eastern Scout heads SW through the last fog between our caps and then head to the SW.

Alpha & Beta are both on the FP and Farming - complete next turn. Shepherd is sitting on top of them at the moment, but can move off and NW next turn.

I'm thinking that it's worth investing the Worker turn into roading the Mine - roading the tile 7 from Cap will help us get the Settler to the target on time, but it doesn't help a lot of other units until after Construction because of the river. If we Road the Mine, we can get our 1-movers across the river from the cap without losing the extra tile. I haven't done the full sim, but I think we have enough in hand to do that.

As predicted, dtay's Scout found us at the end of his last turn. The only way he can get a view of our Capital tile is to declare War, and we should get a chance to hit him if he does. Graphs say that he produced his first Warrior the same turn we did.

[Dreylin]

dtay's Scout headed back towards his Capital after confirming our location. If we're right that the one he sent North got eaten by a Lion, then he's probably off up the land bridge. Our Scout is crossing paths with him and will defog the rest of the tiles between us. There are quite a few Lions in the area, but hopefully they eat dtay's Scout not ours!

Dolly is heading up the Eastern side of dtay's land to the land bridge as well. Spotted a river grass mine being worked, but no extra resources. I was looking at the tile bleed to the SW of his cap and it's Coast. I'm reasonably sure his Cap itself is not Coastal, but I don't think there's much land that way ... anyway, we'll see soon enough. He does have an extra happy resource on us: Wines & Spices to our Sugar (we both have Silks, Furs, and a precious stone) maybe we have Stone to balance things out...?

Graphs confirmed that he didn't produce a second Warrior, so he is probably working on a Settler as well - though at size2 and without having revolted to Slavery. He also landed a tech this turn (3t ahead of us getting The Wheel), so I'm guessing it's a first-line tech - probably Hunting.

Domestically we finished the Farm on the FP. Next turn the flock will move 1N to put more into the farm there before one of them moves to the Hill ahead of being able to Road.

Will take some more screenies soon to give an overview.

[2metraninja]

Woohoo!! Just as magically and unexplainable the problem appeared, so he went away and I can login just fine again. Will look around in the game.

[2metraninja]

Some observations:

About roading the mine or roading 44-7 the tradeoff is as mentioned 1 workerturn lost in climbing the hill and actually unfinished green farm if we want to start working the gold with 2 workers from the beginning. On the brighter side, we have a road on the hill and this is good thing as mentioned by Dreylin for our 1-movers (2-movers too actually) not losing a move crossing the river. Plus it gives us mobility options south over the hill and easy access to south forests in second ring to enter and chop coming from the capitol direction. We will have time to finish the farm just the turn we are done with the gold mine and road, and we could had been grown our capitol 2 turns earlier as with current configuration growth and producing a warrior both take 3 turns. So we will have 2 turns getting 1 food less each. For me this turns the tables in favor of roading the flat land and not losing worker turn now. We can of course send a worker there after gold is mined to road the mine and get the advantage in movement mentioned.

Seeing where our horses are is a good idea. How likely is Dtay sending strong stack backed up by spears so we have troubles dislodging it with only chariots if we decide to settle third city for horses?

[OT4E]

Seeing where our horses are is a good idea. How likely is Dtay sending strong stack backed up by spears so we have troubles dislodging it with only chariots if we decide to settle third city for horses?

Usually I dont fear spearman stack. He has to plant back to his cooper and send significant number of hammers in desperate attack. I doubt. But hooking horses leaves us vinurable to horse attacks. The best thing we can do is to hook our horses and block enemy's attempts to connect his and force him to settle back to the coast.