(SPOILERS) Donovan Zoi Fights in Honor of Japan's Bad Name

[Jabah]

North east of Australia ?

[Charriu]

Interesting start, and good luck. So the initial Archer can't move at all?

Thanks!  And yes, it's just as Charriu has stated.  This is just one of the small details that has left me pretty impressed with the overall preparation of this game so far.

Yeah, they were very afraid of warrior-rushing.

[Jabah]

Or even just northern Japan ; )

In both case you can sail around.....

[Donovan Zoi]

Welcome, mackoti! Great discussion so far, guys. I am going to need all of the help I can in this one.

And thanks for the assessment of our options, Cornflakes. That's where my calculations were leading though I didn't get as far forward as you did. You've both convinced me that 1SE is the best use of the Warrior, along with Jabah's input about Australia (due to map scale, it looks like the south layout is too fat to be Japan). Due to all the surrounding water, we can get a great view of what lies north once our borders pop on T5 or 6.

If I see no Fish with the Warrior move, I'll go ahead and move the Settler/Archer team 1W so we can settle next turn. If we have Fish there, I'll hold off for a bit more discussion since we still have plenty of time to get this right. It's gonna be pretty hard to talk me out of the plains hill though.

I'll get those tech costs, as well as my thoughts on the possible tech paths we can take (or avoid for now).

[Donovan Zoi]

A big ol' nothingburger to the east, and some Crab just out of reach to the west.  Nothing we can really do about capturing the 3 food site further west, as we couldn't have used our Archer for scouting and the Settler would be confined to 1 move with the Archer anyway.  I moved them 1W and ended the turn.

The Crab does allow us to settle a second site 3N for at least 3 food, but that location is light on production and would need culture to pick up the Crab.  Possibility of 3W site sharing food too -- just not sure how tight we want to build.  Keeping a city distance of 3 may net us a 5th city spot, but will be spare on tiles if we make it to later eras.   Since early game optimization is of major importance, short term planning definitely serves us best.  I welcome your thoughts.

And the capital holds at least 6 hills and will be a production powerhouse, so some of that food will need to remain home and borrowed out at planned intervals when we can afford it.

Tech

Here are the costs that Cornflakes requested:
* our starting techs

Column 1
Fishing - 78*
Hunting - 78
Mysticism - 97
Mining - 97
The Wheel - 117*
Agriculture - 117

Column 2
Archery - 117
Pottery - 156
Meditation - 156
Masonry - 156
Sailing - 195
Animal Husbandry - 195
Polytheism - 195

[Donovan Zoi]

Also, I think I have settled on a naming convention.  I was considering the 7 tenets of Bushido but that didn't seem too ambitious for city count, and many of the tenets in Japanese were 3 letters or less.  Going to Wikipedia, I did find a list of 15 people highly associated with Bushido, and these are their last names.  Our capital will be the surname of one Tokugawa himself, with the other names in bold being our first 5.

Naganori
Ryōshun
Kiyomasa
Tamuramaro
Tadakatsu
Ieyasu**
Mototada
Kojirō
Takamori
Sokō
Tsunetomo
Tesshū
Mishima
Toshizō
Musashi

[Jabah]

settling on the rice for crazy idea ?
(should have been for T0)

[Commodore]

settling on the rice for crazy idea ?
(should have been for T0)

Dry rice is a fine deal often, that's 4/0/0 instead becoming 3/1/1. Turning that 5/0/1 riverside rice into a lower-defense city seems like a bad idea.

[Donovan Zoi]

settling on the rice for crazy idea ?
(should have been for T0)

Dry rice is a fine deal often, that's 4/0/0 instead becoming 3/1/1. Turning that 5/0/1 riverside rice into a lower-defense city seems like a bad idea.

I'd have to agree with Commodore here.  The only times I'll settle on a resource is if I am boxed into it by a previous city plant before that bonus tile was visible to me, or if doing so brings a higher yield resource into the new city that I'd miss out on otherwise.  

Back to the game, I'm thinking the Warrior should continue SE along the coast next turn since our city plant will unveil a bit of the west.  It's not like we'll be casting a wide radius, so we'll be able to double back to the west shortly.

Also, while I love the extra hills for production, that does give enemies some nice tiles to sit on as they advance on our capital. So I am pretty sure that's the direction we'll want to send our first cities, even if we find ourselves in Colombia.

[Cornflakes]

Did anything change for our restart?