[SPOILERS] Isabella of Carthage, starring Ellimist, SleepingMoogle, and Nicolae

[Ellimist]

Good points, SM.

Francisco will finish his mine soon enough to help with one of the final chops(probably the southern one.) I'm thinking Hernan can road a bit while the other two mine the hill they chopped and then work on Sirius. Hernan can do the Ivory when possible.

I think we can plan on putting the Colossus in Canopus and chop the Sirius forests into galleys or settlers. Canopus has the better production for it, after all.
Of course, REXing to the mainland happens before Colossus. Hunting is a priority for scouts as well as the Ivory, I'd like to get a couple of them on the donut before it gets all blocked up with cities.

[SleepingMoogle]

What does our tech plan look like at the moment? We have Hunting and Writing up soon, but in which order (and depending on the order, would we consider placing AH in there to get the Writing discount)?

Anyway, I would caution a bit against Scouts.. we are probably already past the point where they'd be really useful. I mentioned Hunting mostly for hooking up the Ivory, because if we are looking at a donut, exploration for city placement purposes can probably be done by Warriors as well, in combination with Workboats scouting the coastline. For one, they are far more likely to survive barb attacks (Remind me, they are enabled for this game right?). By the time we expand onto the mainland, Barb Warriors should already be spawning, and in pretty high numbers too since most of the land hasn't been defogged yet. They are also cheaper and can be upgraded to Axes if needed later on.

Speaking of which.. with a donut we probably need a naval unit that can traverse ocean tiles to get circumvention. Another reason not to delay Compass -> Optics for too long?

[Ellimist]

By the way, we're back to #1 in postcount, unless you count the tech thread(and let's not.)

(Lack of game progress fuels speculation...)

Kuro and NobleLewwyn have stayed competitive throughout, but the reason I bring it up is Jkioan has posted a TON in the past few days. They're still pretty far below us in total postcount, but I believe they had 20-30 fewer posts 2 days ago. The turn hasn't moved that much since then, so I think it's safe to say they're up to something.

I haven't paid super close attention to these numbers, but I think it's likely they've either met somebody(it's about the right time for it if two teams sent workboats toward each other,) or they're discussing micro/wonders/REXing.

[Ellimist]

What does our tech plan look like at the moment? We have Hunting and Writing up soon, but in which order (and depending on the order, would we consider placing AH in there to get the Writing discount)?

I'm okay with delaying writing as long as it doesn't delay foreign trade routes.
The main reason I want writing soon is open borders. If the person we make contact with already has it, then we don't need it as quickly. I'm not at my PC right now, but I think I remember writing will take us 5 turns. If we can get an extra prereq multiplier we gain nearly an extra turn on research(roughly 7/8 of one turn's research.)

Anyway, I would caution a bit against Scouts.. we are probably already past the point where they'd be really useful. I mentioned Hunting mostly for hooking up the Ivory, because if we are looking at a donut, exploration for city placement purposes can probably be done by Warriors as well, in combination with Workboats scouting the coastline. For one, they are far more likely to survive barb attacks (Remind me, they are enabled for this game right?). By the time we expand onto the mainland, Barb Warriors should already be spawning, and in pretty high numbers too since most of the land hasn't been defogged yet. They are also cheaper and can be upgraded to Axes if needed later on.

I believe barbs are off(I'll check when I get home). So survivability is not really a factor unless we expect other civs to attack us.

Speaking of which.. with a donut we probably need a naval unit that can traverse ocean tiles to get circumvention. Another reason not to delay Compass -> Optics for too long?

As far as circumnavigation goes, we are on a flat map so it's not a factor. I was able to find the northern and western edges of the map a bit back.

I noticed some things about the map when I turned tile yield indicators on. I put the stuff that I noticed in spoilers cause it's a big image:

The tiles I boxed with yellow and pink are ocean tiles. The pink ones, and others like it, have a yield of 1F/1C. The five visible yellow tiles have no yield at all. This is because there is no potential city that could be founded to include those tiles in a BFC. This tells us that we should not expect to find land in those directions for at least that distance.

While messing around with this, I noticed something else. We are apparently on a flat map, and the tile I boxed in with blue is the Northwest corner of the map.

If you experiment with a "goto" order on a land unit, you get the red "can't go there" circle over fogged tiles, oversea land tiles, and ocean tiles. This is the case for all tiles to the south and east of our position. To the north and west, however, the tiles simply do not exist.

Therefore we are in the Northwest corner of what is probably a square map. All four players are likely in the corners and there is either one major continent in the middle or potentially many islands.

Based on some more speculative fog reading and some known Krill tendencies, I'm going to guess the original map script was a flat world donut, with 4 islands added around the edges for players to start on. Even if this is true, I have no idea what other modifications he might have made to it, but I think a central island such as in Pitboss 2 is likely.
I can't rule out an archipelago, but even if that's what we have now, I think he started with a donut. It's a nice and symmetrical map involving water and it's easy to modify things into or out of to make it balanced. I suspect that each starting island is identical to the others(flipped) and the basic mix of tiles/rivers we can see on the mainland is the same, with no resources on it visible to anyone(yet.)

[SleepingMoogle]

Whoops, that'll teach me to make guesses without having the save at hand. Time to rectify this.

[Ellimist]

Okay I think I can squeeze it out even earlier without a whip.

The Oracle is at 89/150 with 2 forests unchopped. That means the city needs to produce 21 hammers naturally.

Canopus Oracle progress:

Francisco's mine finished this turn. Under the recent plan, I'd work 2 more turns for 4 hammers per turn and then add another citizen for 7 hammers per turn. Under the new plan, I swap from the rice farm to the mine now and work it 3 turns for 7 hammers per turn. This delays our growth by two turns, but that's no big deal with a granary on the way.

But wait... What about the chops? When I refined the plan earlier, I was confident that the worker micro was optimal but i hadn't fully fully figured out the finishing dates for the chops.
Well, Pedro is due to finish his chop in 3 more turns, so that's right on schedule for this plan. Hernán just moved to his forest, but it was pre-chopped for one turn by Pedro a few turns back, so he can finish his chop in 4 turns. Francisco will be available next turn to move to Hernán's forest and he can speed the chop by one turn. So both forests get chopped on T48, and the city gets the necessary unchopped hammers on the same turn.

North chop:

South chop:

[SleepingMoogle]

If you can shave off a turn without needing a whip, go for it. The slight growth delay will be compensated anyway by getting the Granary out earlier, and we kind of ran out on improved tiles to work with. I haven't really kept up with the exact micro though, so go with what you feel is best.

I had a sneak peek at the save.. what do you think about that Fish and Gold near the Copper? We would kind of need another food resource in the first ring to get that city set up quickly.. that or figure out how to expand borders of course.

[Ellimist]

Here are the workboat progress reports.

Unfortunately, Arctic Dawn has found the copper area to be disappointing as a city site.

As you can see, a city here would only have access to gold, copper, and fish. BUT the food resource(fish) is in the second ring. I'm thinking we can go Monotheism to pop the borders, either by landing Judaism in the city or adopting OR and building a hindu missionary.




Aleutian Ballad, on the other hand, is getting closer to our southern neighbor:

Here is the projected path of the workboat, mirrored:

[Ellimist]

If you can shave off a turn without needing a whip, go for it. The slight growth delay will be compensated anyway by getting the Granary out earlier, and we kind of ran out on improved tiles to work with. I haven't really kept up with the exact micro though, so go with what you feel is best.

I had a sneak peek at the save.. what do you think about that Fish and Gold near the Copper? We would kind of need another food resource in the first ring to get that city set up quickly.. that or figure out how to expand borders of course.

Ha, you're too fast for me. I added screenshots to the first post, I think we're looking at T48 with no whips. Whipping wouldn't even help, since the delaying factor is chops.
As far as the copper site, I agree that the first ring is a little weak but it's a powerful looking site regardless. if we get Organized religion soon-ish we can drop a missionary into the city the turn it is founded.

[SleepingMoogle]

Gogo same-time posts hehe.

I woudn't write off the site right away. If there is another food resource north or south of the gold, the hill west of it will make for a good hammer city at least.

Then again, I'm not holding my breath. But we need to plant a city on that tile if we want to utilize that Fish. When we're starting exploration of the continent, we should definitely land someone on the plains hill east of the copper for maximum visibility.