[SPOILERS] Welcome to the Kuro Corporation! (Kuro and BaII)

[Kuro]

Alright, before we get to the overview, here is what our Scout unveiled:



Ice! What a shockprise.

Now then, let us get on to our first quarterly report:

First, surveying our land.

Capital, Standard Oil



Our capital has great prospects both short and long term. In the short term, both Workers will finish chopping in 2T (As can be seen above), which will put 60 H(20 + Imperialistic bonus, then 20 + Imperialistic bonus again) into the Settler, then both will go to work on the Corn. The city will have 4 forests or 20 x 4 = 80 OR 30 x 4 = 120 Hammers left: Recommend they all be chopped for Settlers to help us win spots. Current path will be Settler -> Fishing Boat (Whipped after 1T) -> Warrior, I believe.

Long term, we want to build Fishing Boats, be it either the whip or via overflow (Especially once we get a Granary), so that we can repeateadly 2-pop whip Settlers or sit there and build very fast Workers. Even with just the Corn, Fish and 2 Clams we will be regrowing insane in the membrane and will be able to REX nicely: However, we will want to work cottages to grow after we get some down, in addition to the Corn + Fish (and depending on how many pop we need to regrow/have, a Clam). I think we should put the Moai here, personally: No other city will work as many water tiles as our capital, it will get the Beaucracy bonus and just working the seafood will give 3 hammers. In addition, we have two to-be-Lighthouse fueled lakes, which with Moai are a nice 3/1/2 tile. I think it all trends out to be a nice move.

The South, Future City, Sam Walton



The south will take two pictures. I don't remember how to flying camera and don't wanna stitch screenies together, so yeah.

Here is our soon-to-be-second city of Sam Walton, or where we plan it anyway. This will get Corn, a Clam and a Lighthouse-able Lake for food, in addition to 3 Grasslands and a hill. The land surrounding it isn't great, but it is enough to be a good early city and it'll be a decent contributer later, especially since the plains can at least be irrigated (and we can put a cottage on some thanks to food surplus). This city has only two forests: I, personally, recommend that we use one for a Monument and one for a Granary. Part of why we want this city is because our northern lands suck and the other part is that it has all-important food. I would not be surprised if we used this to 2-pop whip Workers out and supply them to the empire while putting the overflow into military due to our close southern neighbors. That is the other part: Denial value is good.

When it is founded, I would probably try to whip out a WB quickly while the Workers finished the Corn.

The South, Part Two, The Plainslands



This is another planned city that, thanks to it being closer to us than Will.i.am, we could get and may want to push for our fourth to make a solid border against him (Third has got to be copper!).

Unfortunately, despite two food surpluses, it doesn't have a lot of food: With so many plains and Plains Cows only being a +1 food bonus, it doesn't get all that much. Personally, I think we might want to turn this into a small production city, borrowing the capital's grassland hill and working the Plains Cow alongside irrigated plains for decent production early on and pump out what we need. We can still get decent commerce from the city or turn it into one if we want, though: Cottaging the Flood Plains and Grassland seems like a surefire bet for the moment. (If we really wanted to turn it into a production city later, we could watermill the Flood Plains/Riverside Grassland and Workshop the other one, but that seems like a remarkably inferior option). It is, like Sam Walton, not a great city, but would be passable, especially early on.

The North, Part One, The Homeland



This screenshot features two cities to discuss: Our Copper city, which I have christened David Buick, and our Deer/Deer/Wheat city, which I have named John Dodge.

David Buick is basically a crap city founded solely for Copper due to needing copper to survive + William being so close. There is not much more to it than that: Even if we move it 1 to the side so it can share Fish with the capital, it's still pretty shite. It'll basically work the 2 Grasslands the capital doesn't get, any seafood it has and the ocean, turning it into a glorified fishing village. There isn't really anything else to say about David Buick.

John Dodge is a much better city (Despite the fact that the car my mom used for a long time until it broke down was a Buick and I have a special soft spot for them...), with three resources: A 4/0/0 Deer, A 5/1/0 Deer shared with the capital and a 4/1/0 Wheat that can be irrigated later. It's actually a pretty nice city: Tundra Hills are kinda lame, but it can still squeeze out some production there since it has 3 of them and a good food surplus, plus it can nab 1 (2 post-CS) irrigate Plains to boost it, has two Grasslands (Though one will have to be irrigated to irrigate the Wheat) and also a handful of water tiles. It's not the strongest city, but it can still get a lot of bang for it's buck as a production one. We don't have a lot of good commerce cities, do we?

The North, Part Two, The Icelands



The only other stuff we've revealed is the janky Scout stuff I showed off earlier. Horace Dodge will be a nice city for grabbing furs, but it is basically a fishing village: Eat the fish, put it on the Furs, then work Coast until we get to the happiness cap, then switch two over to the Ice Hills and get meh production with meh commerce. It'll pay for itself and the happiness alone makes it worth founding, but it'll be a pretty crap city, especially later on.

Research

With BaII agreeing with me, our research path will be The Wheel, 90% certain to be followed by Pottery. We choose this tech path because, while there were other good techs, we felt that these were what we most needed right now. The Wheel will give us necessary defensive ability for our two southern city plants, will allow us to easily connect resources, will allow us to get to Pottery early and is, in general, a useful technology for us. Getting Pottery early jumpstarts our growth curve usefully with Granaries, allows us to chop out Granaries or whip them, allows us to begin the snowball quicker with cottages and, in general, unlocks some of the best parts of Expansive. I think both are key techs that, since we will not need another food tech until our 4th city, we should get NOW, so we did.

The Wheel will take 9T. Pottery will also take around 9T, but that is subject to change due to Fish commerce + founding our second city. Our tech path after that will likely be Hunting and Animal Husbandry.

Graphs and Neighbors

We have only met one neighbor, WilliamLP, who is partnered with Plunder.

As this is an AI Diplo game, we have not really had any notable diplomacy, for obvious reasons. We have full Graphs on him. EP suggests he has yet to meet anyone else. We do not know what his lands are like.

Here are the Graphs and Demographics on T25:

Score



GNP



Production



Crop Yield



Power (UUUUUUUUULTIMATE...POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWER!)



Culture



Espionage



Demographics



(Note about Land Area: Pretty sure it is just Molach's Creative border expansion, not another city).

Conclusion

In conclusion, I am very happy with our opening so far and worried about our land. Our opening has given us an extra Worker when most civs have one (Or possibly none!) while we still have a standard Warrior AND we will grow to Size 2 soon. Bronze Working's chops will give us a second Settler long before anyone else as well, I believe. Because of this, I feel we have taken an early lead. However, our surrounding lands are poor, so I think we may need to wage war against WilliamLP in the future...but since that is no time soon I feel, it is not something to ponder for the moment.

With our excellent position, we should be able to push out cities quick enough to be a true Joao.

[BaII]

I don't agree with having the moai statue city in the captial, we should have it in one of our fishing villages, as we will only be working water tiles on them. I want to know Williamlp's land behind his captial, as we want to know how his land fares. We may want to go for AH after pottery to see horses, or we can go for hunting to hook up some of our deer resources.

I agree with the first city plant as Sam Walton, then we need the copper city for copper obv. We will have to kill him soon, as the land to the north is pure garbage, and if we do elimate him we can fully expand to our island and hopefully tech up in peace for a little bit.

[Kuro]

I don't agree with having the moai statue city in the captial, we should have it in one of our fishing villages, as we will only be working water tiles on them. I want to know Williamlp's land behind his captial, as we want to know how his land fares. We may want to go for AH after pottery to see horses, or we can go for hunting to hook up some of our deer resources.

I agree with the first city plant as Sam Walton, then we need the copper city for copper obv. We will have to kill him soon, as the land to the north is pure garbage, and if we do elimate him we can fully expand to our island and hopefully tech up in peace for a little bit.

The real question is how do we kill him? I don't think we will have enough time for an axe rush: he'll have defenses ready by then. Maces vs. Longbows is just a bloody mess. Knights would be ideal to strike with but do we even have enough time to get there?

If we could get Maces before he got Longbows, perhaps...Maces vs. Cats + Axes/Archers is very do-able.

Perhaps I should build a Warrior to see if we can scout his land? Which fishing village do you suggest we put Moai in?

[BaII]

Moai would go to Sam Buck if there is seafood there, otherwise i would put it in John Dodge, also best chance we have of killing him off is him declaring war and then killing off his stack and counterattacking to take cities. We could try and get out Sam Walton and the copper city and then try to rush him with axes. If we do this we have to go all in. AKA do what Commodore did to Scooter in pitboss 8 except we do it with axes instead of archers.

[Kuro]

I'm worried we don't really havd the right timing + resources for an Axe rush. Copper city needs to be third and by that time WilliamLP will surely have his own Axes and possibly Chariots depending on resource path. Equal technology always favors the defender and our land is simply not hammer rich enough to realistically win a war of attrition, especially since Copper city won't really contribute anything. It'd be great if he wardec'd and then we counterconquered, though...

[Kuro]

Turn in! Standard Oil went up a pop, both chops went into it, giving us 6T until the Settler is done. Next turn, both Workers head for the Corn.



Me gusta. Still mostly ice, but even icy Silver is 0/2/5 while Marble is just plain good for wunderbuilding(One could even call it wunderbar!) and Fish is food. Silver's +2 happiness w/ Forge would also be greatly appreciated. If we start getting more resources like this we might be able to live out up here.

Us and Azza went up to 55 score this turn. I also just now noticed everyone got points last turn (From land tiles of firs border expansion) last turn. Also, Fun With Graphs!

Score:



GNP:



Production:



Crop Yield:



Power:



It looks to me like they finished farming something and switched over to it with their Warrior done? That's what I gather. Have a Demos screen.

[Kuro]

My first thought was "Hells yeah!". Then I realized the fish is encased in ice.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME!

Nothing else noteworthy occured.



Demographics.

[Kuro]

You know, here is a weird idea...what if we built The Great Lighthouse?

Pretty much every land of ours is seaside and we will likely be building seaside, plus TGL gives nice bonuses even with domestic only (And we might be able to get OBs for more). It would help us with our sucky land: TGL cares not for the land we get and just gives us yummy TRs. The problem would be building it: 200 Hammers. We could whip overflow and chop into it at our capital, but that would only give us about 100 H. Think we can't get it or?

Thought it might be a way to make up for the land, anyway.

[BaII]

Collosus seems like a better idea here IMO, as it's cheaper however either one would do just fine for us.

[Kuro]

Food plox.

Corn farm in 3T.

No Graph changes, not much to say, soooooooo...



Demographics.

On the subject of Colossus: Easier, but it doesn't provide as big of an advantage, does it? Plus, it is easier to get stolen, due to Oracle slingshotting MC.