[PB59] Charriu welcomes all the townfolk

[Charriu]

I have thrown together some plans for the scout position and the sugar position:




To give a little bit more detail about those plans:

Plains Hill Deer: Going Agri->Mining->Bronze Working, worker first, improving deer and ivory while building a workboat. Later improving the wheat. Lastly double whip the settler thanks to no anarchy from SPI
Plains Hill Deer Early Boat: Going Mining->Bronze Working->Agri, workboat first then worker, improving the deer and ivory. Later building a mine on the grasland river hill and then the wheat. Double whip the settler
Plains Hill Deer Early Boat early whip: A variant of above
Sugar plan: Going Agri->Mining->Bronze Working, worker first, improving corn, deer and then ivory, while building a workboat. Double whip the settler.
Sugar plan late corn: Same as above, but improve in this order: deer, ivory and then corn

Both city spots look good and I have a slight preference for the plains hill spot. If I will go to that spot it will be important to move the scout SW-SW to ensure that no resources are orphaned down south.

So far Ramesses of Greece looks very solid too me. But I don't want to decide yet. I think as of now I still have the time to think a bit more about it, right?

[Lewwyn]

So far Ramesses of Greece looks very solid too me. But I don't want to decide yet. I think as of now I still have the time to think a bit more about it, right?

I didn't put a hard time limit on it but 2 days at least. I'm not sure everyone is checking their threads right away and I want give people some time to think and talk if they have dedlurkers. Besides the map is still in production.

[Charriu]

Just wanted to give Lewwyn a quick feedback about the rivers:




I changed two things. I changed the river mouth into a source and I removed the river tile on the 'S5' tile. That way nothing changes for commerce and trade routes and the river looks nicer.

[Coeurva]

I've thought about it and I'm going to post my thoughts here after all. I'm the non-playing DL. Surprise (except to Charriu)

So I've wavered on Greece after initially thinking it was great, but now I like keeping it if we go sugar city, e.g. t10 wb @20/22f, t11 grow to 2/24, t12-19 worker 64/60h, irrigate corn while growing to size3, produce settler, t26-28 chop the ~10h warrior to OF into settler and whip, finishing it T30 with OF into another warrior. The bottleneck is BW by t26 but I think we can manage that, since the workboat openings for plains hill also do. All this is contingent on me not having screwed up the head-micro (odds are low).

I don't like plains hill as the cap, I think corn at the capital is too good to pass up (and so is sugar; to take credit for a bad idea, settling on S5 was something I had suggested as an option)

I wish we had Fishing/Wheel (because early Pottery looks strong) or Fishing/Mining for wb -> worker whip and a T28 2-whipped settler (?), but I doubt those tech pairs are likely to enter the re-rolling pool when there's only one civ being rolled (if not, I could see e.g. England or Japan getting dropped in favour of civs with earlier UU/UB). This is assuming somewhat similar starts, but you've already pointed out what a long-term potential weakness a coastal capital is. I think it's unlikely that some players will have substantially more incentive to move inland than us.

Likewise I was enthusiastic for Ramesses and particularly SPI, thinking about xenu's good position in pb38 with SPI/CRE Pyramids, and I don't want us to lose SPI, but I think the capital is rather weak for IND and that CHA or CRE could help us a lot. CHA for 7->4 whip cycles keeping all the resource tiles worked and faster odeons (right? edit: twice wrong is right, yes they are colosseums), CRE just because I expect worker actions will be tight with the wb-wk-settler opening and no early granary. And due to the pick system, we'll have good chances not to get IND again, for better or worse

[Coeurva]

Charriu informed me that T26 BW won't be possible since we can only reach T25 BW by skipping Agri. I think it will still be possible to execute roughly this plan camping on deer instead of irrigating. Or we re-roll hoping for Fishing/Agri or Fishing/Mining, but I think that Fishing will be seen as a keeper by many here.

[Charriu]

I've thought about it and I'm going to post my thoughts here after all. I'm the non-playing DL. Surprise (except to Charriu)

So I've wavered on Greece after initially thinking it was great, but now I like keeping it if we go sugar city, e.g. t10 wb @20/22f, t11 grow to 2/24, t12-19 worker 64/60h, irrigate corn while growing to size3, produce settler, t26-28 chop the ~10h warrior to OF into settler and whip, finishing it T30 with OF into another warrior. The bottleneck is BW by t26 but I think we can manage that, since the workboat openings for plains hill also do. All this is contingent on me not having screwed up the head-micro (odds are low).

I don't like plains hill as the cap, I think corn at the capital is too good to pass up (and so is sugar; to take credit for a bad idea, settling on S5 was something I had suggested as an option)

I wish we had Fishing/Wheel (because early Pottery looks strong) or Fishing/Mining for wb -> worker whip and a T28 2-whipped settler (?), but I doubt those tech pairs are likely to enter the re-rolling pool when there's only one civ being rolled (if not, I could see e.g. England or Japan getting dropped in favour of civs with earlier UU/UB). This is assuming somewhat similar starts, but you've already pointed out what a long-term potential weakness a coastal capital is. I think it's unlikely that some players will have substantially more incentive to move inland than us.

Likewise I was enthusiastic for Ramesses and particularly SPI/IND, thinking about xenu's good position in pb38 with SPI/CRE Pyramids, and I don't want us to lose SPI, but I think the capital is rather weak for IND and that CHA or CRE could help us a lot. CHA for 7->4 whip cycles keeping all the resource tiles worked and faster odeons (right?), CRE just because I expect worker actions will be tight with the wb-wk-settler opening and no early granary. And due to the pick system, we'll have good chances not to get IND again, for better or worse

Well first of all welcome in the thread. I'm happy to have you as a dedlurker. The worker turns and city production in your first plan do work. But BW can only be researched at T30. That's because we would have to tech Agriculture->Mining->BW. The BW at T25 was only possible by teching Mining->BW->Agriculture and going for an early workboat.

Yes, the plains hill gives up the corn, but it does not give up sugar, if that is what you suggested.

Like you already said there are better civs for this start, but there are a lot of civs that are worse. The civs that I found a little bit better then Greece are:

• Viking
  
• Carthage
  
• England
  
• Portugal
  
• Rome
  
• China
  
• Ethiopia
  
• Germany
  
• Russia
  

Now I do believe that nobody would give up Rome, China and maybe Carthage and Vikings. So that leaves only 5 potentially better civs. The odds of getting one of those is a lot lower then getting a worse civ then Greece.

I'm still up for Ramsses, mainly because I never played IND and SPI and this would be a nice way to do those traits. Yes CHM would be great for the synergy with Odeon and easier promotion. I'm not that concerned about happiness as we will most likely go for calendar earlier with 2 luxuries already available and we have the ivory from the very beginning. I don't see the immediate need for CRE. I agree that the capitol will be weaker for IND, but with IND we will go for Metal Casting sooner, which now also unlocks lumbermills. We can build one or two of those for example 2N of the scout. That way we generate some more hammers and we can still use the chop for a later wonder.

[Charriu]

Charriu informed me that T26 BW won't be possible since we can only reach T25 BW by skipping Agri. I think it will still be possible to execute roughly this plan camping on deer instead of irrigating. Or we re-roll hoping for Fishing/Agri or Fishing/Mining, but I think that Fishing will be seen as a keeper by many here.

Yes, skipping Agri and camping the deer makes it possible to get the settler on T30. The downside with this plan is that we loose a forest and there is one resource less improved (corn), but this plan has 1 more pop on T32.

[Coeurva]

I agree with keeping Greece / your analysis on what's going to be in the civ pool. I still think you should try risking the re-roll for CHA, though. People locking in a leader will put the other back in the pool, right? That gives me hope that there's going to be some CHA floating around. I think happiness resources only make CHA stronger -- fewer constraints on the whip, and food won't be a problem. You kind of don't want to whip off a cottage cap, which I think this will be, but Greece necessarily has to delay Pottery compared to the Agri/Hunting + Wheel civs that will be around. With EXP no longer speeding up workers, I think that tech pair will be "the new EXP". Particularly when paired with actual EXP to complete the stupid-early granary even faster.

Edit: some nonsense in there, Hunting doesn't lead to Pottery, whereas Fishing does. I've forgotten everything. But Agri/Wheel worker first will still get granaries 20t before us if so inclined.

And CtH CHA seems like such a do-everything trait (happiness uses more land, cheaper promos defend more land, cheaper monuments do both) that I'd love to have it.

That said. If you want to play the Rams, then you play the Rams.

Seeing the immediate need for CRE is impossible unless you can bribe Lewwyn. But closer cities (that still pick up new resources swiftly) convert to fewer worker turns lost roading / moving.

1 pop + settling 1t faster will probably make up for 1 forest.

[Charriu]

Well Ichabod just changed his thread title and was so nice to tell us what he got and will play. Should he have changed it by know his new thread title was:

"Ichabod, Darrell and Serdoa try not to waste Julius Caesar of Incas"

That's one leader and civ, which we were not interested in. But hey I'm very happy that someone will try the new Inca.

[Coeurva]

Concerning. At least it's not Catherine of Inca for maximal trolling your neighbour into a corner. (They're likely too good to overdo that anyway.) And they might be putting something we want into the pool, yeah.

They might be a Henge/Oracle candidate. They know they don't have to play IMP as a settler frenzy, they know that it's a means to reach the point where building Henge/Oracle is feasible without killing your settler/worker output x turns earlier than IND, where IND has to catch up on the hammers from behind. Think it can do that with this cap? They're also not going to build both of them, so it's not like IND is totally screwed on the earliest wonders just by their presence (I might be mispredicting anyway, of course).

By contrast I don't think we'd have to worry about Myst starts being faster to Henge/Oracle. Those will be one food tech in the hole compared to us, and they probably need all three.

Still pushing for a leader re-roll, I admit, because compared to something like IMP Inca, our early game will be so bland.