[SPOILERS] Xenu Succeeds, BGN Fails! - RB's First Pitboss Succession Game

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Settler, then revolt last turn, now overflow two chops into another worker, then another settler. The new city is down, Aaron Murray --> Warrior. We're either the first or second to a second city, depending on if Gavagai's score increase (3pts) while in game was due to land/border or a new city. It doesn't really matter and I'm not going to spend any mental energy figuring this out. I'm still annoyed that I screwed up my nice little micro plan. 

Tech set to 50%, no loss due to rounding. Don't forget to go back to 100% next turn.



Third in land area. There are 4 CRE civs. Only one of them is likely tohave a settler by now as CRE/EXP (Nauf). That's all I have for you.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T31 - Reading over the micro plan was a bit of a headache (I don't know why you play that way), but I think I figured it out. Two workers chopped, the new worker on the hill put in a turn mining. The Wheel is in, Pottery selected, tech set to 100%. Warrior BOHICA, aka Bend Over Here It Comes Again, whose name I guess is a reference to you getting our previous scout killed, is headed out into the wilderness probably never to return. I hope he finds good lands to settle up north, or at least a new practice field or two for all these Damn Good Dawgs we're eventually going to have.




Novice reading of Civstats shows it is Donovan Zoi completing Stonehenge T31. He was the only player at size 4 as of that turn.

Demographics are middle of the road but as I don't have consistent F9 shots from previous turns to compare against it's hard to read the tea leaves. For example, whoever is on 31 land tiles, is that a CRE civ with two cities or has someone got out a third? I haven't been tracking Civstats, so it's hard to know. It does seem early for three cities, though.




We were holding the turn so I played a double. Incoming....

[spacetyrantxenu]

T32 - The chops came in to Herschel, so the settler for city #3 is due soon.  We'll have to decide a name; I put a few suggestions on the map to argue over.  I don't necessarily think the cities have to be named for the greatest Dawgs, we can just pick favorites but I'm ready to argue in either case.  I threw out suggestions for Matt Stafford, AJ Greene, Nick Chubb, and there's a Todd Gurley sign on the map, too.  If you have a different preference we can talk.  But if we don't have consensus before settling it's going to be named Spurrier, Tebow, or Wuerffel.  


Elsewhere worker #3 (now #5, Terry Godwin) put in another turn on the mine, 1t to go there.  I also renamed #2 to #4 Mecole Hardman since I didn't see #2 or #3 as being as good as #4 or #5 so far.  If that screws your micro sheet you can update it.  




BOHICA (needs a real name!) moved north along the coast to search for a new practice field.  He found a lion in the area, presumably the same you'd seen before, so that will require some caution lest he fulfill his named prophecy.  I want to check the flood plains tile to the NW next turn if the lion doesn't interfere.  I think the tile BOHICA is on now is a good city site, as long as there isn't seafood that can only be reached by settling on the flood plain.  But as that is something Krill would totally do, I wouldn't be surprised if we have to settle on the FP and then figure out how to grab the wheat in another city.




Two other players have grown to size 4 capitals, joining DZ on the top 5 screen.  Civstats this turn shows +3 points for Commodore, Gavagai, and Superdeath, which I guess means on this map pop growths are worth 3 points, and one of those guys has a capital that regrew to size 3, maybe they whipped previously, I'm not keeping track.  The interesting thing is that DZ's capital with Stonehenge isn't listed as the #1 city, which you would expect it to be with the extra culture being generated.  He can't be in revolt since he hasn't played yet this turn, unless he somehow got a 2 turn revolt going already (swap to slavery and choose a religion last turn?)




Anyway I'm at the tail end of useful speculation so that's it for now.  I'm not going back into the micro sheet to figure out what these workers are supposed to be doing for next turn...maybe log in and put signs on the map or post it here.  

[spacetyrantxenu]

Other thoughts, as the less frequent player in the game so far.  We're 32 turns in and haven't met anyone yet, which is a strong indicator that we're on a small landmass by ourselves.  That's discouraging to be honest, as it makes Persia a fairly useless Civ selection.  Yeah, starting techs, ok, but aside from that immortals are the main draw and they're looking unspectacular right now, considering there's nobody nearby to murder with them and also because it's seeming like we can fog bust the whole island/continent/peninsula with just a handful of warriors at this point.  It may end up that the apothecary is the redeeming feature of the civ since I don't see a ton of different food resources yet, and that's pretty bad as we're EXP.  So...not thrilled yet.

Game plan...in the interest of having something fun to do I think we need to prioritize sailing, get some work boats out there and go find someone to interact with.  Whether the interactions are positive, negative, or neutral doesn't really matter as much as gaining the information and then being able to build a plan around it.  As of now I don't find our landmass very interesting, maybe we'll be happier living on someone else's landmass as well.  

As for tech plan we can talk about this too but it seems to me we're going to want an earlier Metal Casting than you might otherwise get in a standard opening.  The shape of our land is such that most cities will be coastal, which I would normally say great, let's get the Great Lighthouse, but I think we're going to end up working a lot of coast tiles for commerce, which makes the Colossus important.  Given that we're not competing for land (as of yet) I don't think we have to rush break neck speed to settle the entire island/continent/area as it doesn't seem like anyone will beat us to the area.   BOHICA can keep exploring to validate that theory but that's my working assumption until proven otherwise.  In that scenario grabbing wonders seems like a good plan, especially since I can see our economy really struggling on the land we have if we aren't careful.  2/0/3 coast tiles are looking pretty good for this map.  And with the limited happy resources we've seen so far (ivory + jungled gems), forges could  be useful too....jury is still out on that one.  If we find silver or gold, obviously early forges will be great.

That brings up another thought, maybe we want to prioritize Monarchy early instead of going down the typical Writing / Maths / Currency route.  Pick up Archery along the way for cheap city garrison and grow tall with hereditary rule.  I haven't seen any calendar resources yet and just the two aforementioned happy resources, so it's looking thin.  If we're quicker to identify this than other players (assuming they have similar constraints) that could be a boost to get us ahead.  Or it could be wrong and we miss a better opportunity, who knows.  But that's my overall impression playing these turns after having been out of the game for a while

BGN/Wetbandit, what do you guys see as tech priorities from what you've seen so far?  Am I wrong about highly valuing delicious 2/0/3 Colossus coast tiles?  Combined with early HR we can grow large cities pulling in good income from those coasts and keep tech rolling, perhaps to the point we'd be able to get a big fleet built with enough galleys, triremes, and <insert good attack unit of era> to possibly catch someone by surprise and get some more land out of the bargain.  That, or the expedition may just be the most fun thing we can do...either way, it seems like a good idea to me.  Engage the pirate fleet!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I think you're right about Colossus being good. I have considered that. I think tbh it is probably better than GLH given the relative lack of food resources. And that's also a good point about not beign in a settling race for everything on our continent. There's less of rush to settle ASAP which makes wonders less costly in the cost/benefit analysis.

What's the quickest path to 30 frigates, 40 galleons, and 100+ amphibious whatevers?

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

We need to settle on a dotmap too since we have a settler coming for city 3 soon. And keep in mind that we can't be completely defenseless at home because once we get to 3 cities (assuming everyone else has their second city settled) barbs can enter borders. We have whips available as soon as city 2 grows. May not be a bad idea to put a turn into a warrior in the capital, but I think we can avoid that awhile longer as we have at least 4 turns of notice before a barb can get at us at the soonest. That's plenty of time.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I'm going to guess not everyone is pushing for their third city yet. Donovan just built a really early Stonehenge, he may not even have a second city yet although I hope for his sake that he does. These would be the kinds of questions we could answer if we kept close track of Civstats, which probably would have been possible in a game with only eight players, but oh well. I got in the habit during PB38 of glancing at it but not worrying too much about it, since there was no way I'd accurately keep tabs on 25 civs. For all we know we may be first to three. But yeah, need to build more warriors before the copper gets connected. It's actually kind of a bummer that it's on the river, it's going to cost us hammers from cheap warrior MP to get the increased copper tile output, at least until we tech Archery later on.

I don't see an alternative to the city south of Herschel for #3 at this point. It doesn't add much but it does grab food and can work a few grass hill mines to provide production, better than nothing and certainly the most food we'll be getting any time soon. After that it's kind of up to what BOHICA finds in the north, if he doesn't find that lion. The next strongest city location I see is 1W of the cows, but we're going to need Mysticism to chop in a monument/barracks, and we don't really know if that location will work for the dot map until BOHICA checks along the east coast north of Herschel. Everything is waiting on his exploration, so I hope he doesn't die before he finishes his work.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T33




Change of plans. Swapped tech to fishing. Workboat after settler in the capital. I've put down signposts for worker micro. This gets us a road network when the city founds as well as getting two workers over to the bronze when city 2 grows to size 3. This wasted a copule of worker turns but since we don't know where we're settling up north I don't mind not getting a road onto the hill that we won't use for 15 turns at least.

BOHICA is offering a fight against the lion. Lion moved up, preventing us from scouting the jutting flood plains tile on the coast. BOHICA is sitting on a forested hill across a river and gets a 20% boost against animals. So this is the best odds fight we can get and, as is tradition, I'm sure we'll die.

I'll play tomorrow morning if the worker instructions are confusing.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T34

BOHICA survived without a scratch so we have a promo available now. Combat odds were .5%. That's the good news. And in not quite bad news but, well, it ain't fucking great either, we have to settle on the flood plains if we want to get the fish in the second ring.   And this forces the wheat city into a less than perfect placement too. I guess the silver lining there is that it can work a lot of cottages for the capital. 



Workers are getting things set up for city #3 incoming in a few turns. 




Is it me, or are jungles growing fast down there? I haven't compared to earlier screenshots but it looks a little more lush down there now, and not in a good way.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I compared my map screenshot from T13, the jungle isn't spreading, it's your imagination. You're just seeing it more acutely now that you're trying to plan worker micro and the jungle is annoying.

That's just about perfect on the fish. It figures we'd have to settle on food to get food. How long until borders pop at the cap and we get the forced city site in culture for that forest chop (and the wheat in culture for immediate improvement)?

Gators up 49-0, wish we played Idaho every week. Back to the game.