[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[Sullla]

Oh, one other request for those involved in the map making process: could we get the map dimensions for the purpose of creating a sandbox with the correct maintenance costs? If that's a spoiler piece of information that you don't want to give out, that's fine too. Just thought I would ask before doing any more work on our current rough sandbox.

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 188–189: THE FIRST POP

Pending the grand renomination of the Aztecs' cities messages arrive from the frontiers, messages of new possible sites for future settlement. Sites containing such magnificent and peculiar lands as irrigated corn and wheat, iron hills, and icy floodplains, lands which will summon the silos and foundries of the future core of the Aztec nation. On the foreign front there are rumours of the first border expansion, an odd priority for any country so early in the game. An attempt to grasp a far-flung resource just out of reach? The analysts are puzzled at the need of this inefficient expense of production. How long will it be before contact between nations is made and lines are drawn? Any turn now.

[GermanJoey]

Oh, one other request for those involved in the map making process: could we get the map dimensions for the purpose of creating a sandbox with the correct maintenance costs? If that's a spoiler piece of information that you don't want to give out, that's fine too. Just thought I would ask before doing any more work on our current rough sandbox.

57x37

I could give you a sandbox worldbuilder file, if you'd like.

[scooter]

Turn 190

Turn pace is a cool 2T/day right now.



Some nice dyes up here. I'll either go NW or SW next turn. Probably NW. Might as well see what's up there. The stuff to the east we can get with the upcoming Explorer.



Deer, Rice, and Banana are what's for dinner. Seems like you can manage some solid, balanced meals out of that. The mythical grassland gold down to the southeast too.



I finally renamed our cities after forgetting about it last turn. Explorer comes out this turn, and I think we should send him northeast.

It looks very likely that there's a neighbor that way via land. The other thing is we do have to think about circumnavigation a little bit. The winner of circumnav will probably be the winner of a coin flip after a map trade, but we can at least put ourselves in position to be in on that coin flip if we can hurry up and meet people from far away. I guess it's possible people will be more guarded with maps, but usually the curiosity is too much for people to care.

The biggest shock of the turn: RMoG whipped both of their cities! What in the world is going on there? They definitely didn't go with Serfdom. At this point they probably could have slow built the workers, so I'm especially confused as to what's going on. The only thing I'm reasonably confident about is that they've harmed their start to some degree. Time will tell how severely they've hurt themselves. Maybe they didn't go straight onto workers? I really don't know.



I'm slightly puzzled about the 45GNP since we're getting double prereq bonuses too. The low GNP seems likely to be someone researching Education (single prereq bonus).

[scooter]

The build culture thing likely means someone wanted to get onto the iron first rather than the pigs. I remember having to do that when I tested that option.

Oh, one other request for those involved in the map making process: could we get the map dimensions for the purpose of creating a sandbox with the correct maintenance costs? If that's a spoiler piece of information that you don't want to give out, that's fine too. Just thought I would ask before doing any more work on our current rough sandbox.

57x37

I could give you a sandbox worldbuilder file, if you'd like.

That would be great.

[Sullla]

I echo the same thoughts about a sandbox file. That would be really nice.

Looks like NW for the northern longbow, SW for the southern longbow along the coast, and the explorer going SE first the first move. Then somewhere else after that, maybe another tile south? I also think we’ve found the location of our third city: SW-SW-S of the capital, in the middle of that trio of deer resources. We can whip an immediate worker then regrow on the borrowed deer tile from the capital. There’s another deer tile in first ring that we’ll be able to improve almost immediately, it’s close enough to require minimal roading and defense, it’s on a river for future levee, there’s a gazillion riverside tiles for cottages, etc. Looks like an easy call. Once we have a sandbox ready I’ll see what we can do to optimize things. Assuming we don’t find another better spot in the next few turns, of course!

At this point, I’m totally lost on what RMOG are doing. Not even going to speculate. And we’re up for another turn already, excellent. This turn pace is outstanding

[GermanJoey]

ok, here ya go. I let it extract a much bigger chunk from the map since y'all already revealed a lot beyond your starting screenshot, but you'll still have to fill in a bit more around the edges since I wanted to make sure I wasn't accidentally revealing any unexplored tiles.

http://media.rhizzone.net/civ/pb35.start...wordWBSave

[scooter]

Turn 191



Another luxury up here. I'm pretty sure that's a floodplains I see in the fog southwest of here, so the whole of the north is pretty lush. There seems to be a bit of a conscious mapmaker decision to make the backlines a little easier to settle and get off the ground versus settling towards opponents.



More scouting info. I'm inclined to send the Explorer west due to the existence of circumnavigation (even if our chances of getting it are fairly low), but we could send him south via this desert land bridge. Any strong feelings? The longbow may as well head home at this point.

I've also marked the spot Sullla suggested as a city, and yeah it looks pretty obvious at this point primarily for how ridiculously fast it can get off the ground. I'm actually considering taking another look at our plan to see if speeding this city a few turns at the cost of a worker or two could be worthwhile. If there's a time where it would be worthwhile, it's here where it can whip out a couple workers of its own pretty quickly.



I stared at this area for awhile, and it's really awkward because of how far north the food is, but here's some idle thought for a future spot. I think it's simply too far away for a first city, but this hypothetical city could be a serious whipping post rather quickly. The main problems here are that 1) the corn and wheat present odd dilemmas where you need to invest in an extra farm to get them upgraded to 6F unless you settle between them and the river, and 2) it's in the total opposite direction of our first plant making worker turns more difficult logistically. It misses a levee, but the city could easily be phased out of its tiles further down the road in favor of river plants north and west of it, so I'm less concerned about that.



We popped Christianity in Pocketbeetle, so the borders will pop there end of turn as expected. We completed our first chop and began two more with our workers. The new explorer I've sent east, but it'll be a couple more turns before he's got anything to report.



Finally, Alhazard was the first to regrow a city post-whipping this past turn. Mistoltin is Alhazard, and I'm only just now starting to make that connection reliably.

[scooter]

Thanks Joey.

Updated the map in the sandbox. Or at least the relevant portion. Also played ANOTHER turn, report forthcoming in a bit. Sandbox here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5826...wordWBSave

[Sullla]

Wow, these turns are fast and furious right now. Thank you very much for the sandbox GermanJoey, I'm going to play around with this some more tomorrow.