[SPOILERS] Team SsS

[Sandover]

No comment on checking out those desert tiles? That river to our west could easily be heading eastwards further south, turning those tiles into flood plains. Though it would seem like incorporating those tiles into the capitals BFC causes the loss of a whole bunch of forests, which isn't ideal either.

I do think BW first is viable if we stay put or move 1E since that keep those northern forests within our grasp. It enables us to locate a strategic resource as soon as we possibly can, which could turn out to be vital if one of our neighbours get frisky. With copper we'll be relatively safe against anything - while horses on the other hand takes longer to locate and chariots will be inferior to War Chariots and Holkans (the two units we're most likely to get rushed by).

If no one says anything else within the next hours I'll move the settler SE then N once I'm back from my lecture. Definitly going to keep the warrior close at home as we said in our email discussions earlier. Which turn do you reckon is the earliest an exploring warrior could walk up to our border?

[Sandover]

Right, I thought about it some more and changed my mind. That jungle tile 2E is a potential headache, defensively speaking, since we won't be able to remove it for quite some time despite our IW beeline. Also, jungle tiles don't just randomly show up in singles, so I expect there to be more of them further east. In a SP game I wouldn't hesitate to check out the area before settling (namely moving the settler south to those hills as I suggested) but time is of the essence here. Any move we make before settling will delay the ETA of praetorians, so I'm going to log in and settle in place. Expect a screenshot shortly.

[Square Leg]

If they are floodplains we can look at using them for city 2, like you say - missing out on all the forests would be silly and we would gain a lot of plains tiles.

BW first is a stong play as it will allow us to chop another worker, we could then go for a warrior, grow to size 2 and use a chop/whip stategy to get the first settler out pronto.

[Sandover]

Founded in place and named the city Sandograd after myself, so that you may all bask in the glory that is me.

"Modesty"? What's that? Never heard of it!

Our new cultural borders revieled some interesting tidbits of information:



That jungle tile actually contain silver. It's pretty clear that "someone" has been messing around with our starting position. That "someone" also managed to get me scared into thinking we had an immense jungle east of us. Oh well, guess I just got to check whether there's actually any fire next time I see smoke!

Sandograd is going to serve us well as capital city. We could have been slightly better off in the long run by moving 1E, or 1S if those tiles down there are actually flood plains, but I'm happy as it is. As you can see we've started a worker and can finish BW in 17 turns with the help of the bonus commerce(1) we get from working the sheep tile.

Imo we should move the warrior NW and then NW again during the next two turns. After that we can initiate a circular movement around Sandograd by moving NE.

[scooter]

Well that's nice about the silver. I'm guessing everyone has one.

Proposed warrior movement sounds good to me...

[scooter]

For the lurkers, here's an email that Sandover sent Square Leg and I that is the best summary of our pre-game planning. There was more that was said by all of us in other emails, but rather than paste in tons and tons of text, this one sums it all up quite nicely:

First of all, scooter and I agreed that we'd go for a worker first and keep
our starting warrior close at home to defend. Now, having "rolled" Rome, it
actually makes some sense to not rush exploration a whole lot. The fewer units
we have running around the lower the chance of being discovered early is, and
I figure we'd like to fly under the radar as long as possible. There's only
three goals we need to achieve in terms of exploration: 1) locate a few city
spots 2) locate iron 3) locate a suitable target. There's plenty of time to
achieve all of those goals in due time so at this point I see nothing wrong in
going for a growth oriented start.

The diplomacy game will of course be an interesting challenge. There's a few
civs out there we will have to especially weary of. Egyptian War Chariots,
especially considering they'll be in the capable hands of Krill, could cause
some serious trouble. Mali Skirmishers comes to mind to. One thing we should
consider if we end up close to a civ with a pre-praetorian UU is to sign some
sort of deal preventing either team to use it's UU in offensive action against
the other team, and send our praetiorians some other way. This will of course
be heavily dependant on how soon we can hook up whatever resource is needed to
deter aggression.

Why not sign a NAP in the above case? you may wonder. Well, I just don't like
them. I'd very much prefer something more inventive like what I suggested
above. You guys in on not using them (NAPs) in this game? They make whatever
intent one might have way too obvious and I think we can work our way around
them. No worker steal deals and extended enforced peace periods after wars
comes to mind as different ways to handle things. Let me know what you think.

The initial diplomacy is going to be very interesting. I figure we need to try
hard to ally with someone to make sure our back is clear once we go about our
business. The period prior to hooking up a strategic resource is going to be
critical, and I very much hope we can grab copper with our second city the
latest. No one is going to go on the offense against aggressive Rome if
they're facing axemens and spears, right? Prior to having copper I think the
key in dimplomacy will be to make sure no one feels like the obvious target of
our aggression. That should hopefully keep them from getting frisky.

We'll start with fishing/mining, which means that a start with either seafood
or grain would be a nice advantage. Having to get both agriculture and animal
husbandry before going bronze working would prolong that initial scare period
where we'll be the most vulnerable. Ideal tech path would be agriculture ->
BW -> the wheel -> pottery -> iron working. If we can follow that path and
have copper in the right place, we'll be able to have two nicely developed
cities (I'm talking granaries, barracks, cottages, mines, population here), a
bunch of workers, some axes/spears for protection and a settler ready once IW
comes in. If a decent amount of forests are available we can have 4-8 praets
out in no time. Having to grab animal husbandry will delay us by 10+ turns
though. If we have to go that first we should aim to have three cities + a
settler ready when we get IW.

Oh and lastly. Since no one complained about my theme suggestion earlier I
guess we're set in that department. Team SsS will be leading the SsS Empire
where every name starts with an "s"! Captured cities will keep their name with
slight modification (Athens -> Sathens, for example) and our three first
cities will be named Sandograd, scooterville and Square Leg City! Or well,
something along those lines at least.

Obviously though, the tech path has already altered a little bit because of our circumstances. Our biggest obstacle this game will be avoiding having a neighbor chariot-rush us or choke us, which would probably be in their best interest to be honest. If we can avoid either of those two things from happening, I think we'll be in good shape.

[Sandover]

The alteration in tech path should be worth it as long we have copper nearby. Getting both Agriculture and Animal Husbandry before going BW is far from ideal since we really want those spearmen! Hopefully this approach will let us found our second city quite rapidly at a copper location.

Turn 2 played:

Found nothing exciting. There seem to be a lot of lowland to our west so it might be a good idea to check that area out before it becomes more dangerous due to barbarian spawns. Moving NW on top of that forest next turn though to clear the diagonal a bit.

[Sandover]

Turn 3:

Score! Found some (irrigated) wheat right next to that river. Potential site for our second city. Lets hope there's copper in the area.

Will probably move 2SW during the following turns before turning back towards the capital, in order to scout the river a bit more. We'll get our first border pop next turn which will give us some nice extra visibility, especially in the south thanks to those hills.

[Sandover]

Here's a question: Do we want to mine the grassland hill before choping any forests? I can think of both positives and negatives without really knowing what would benefit us the most.

[Sandover]

I just had a second look at my last screenshot and realised something had changed since the previous one. The first lurker to spot what I'm referring to gets an imaginary cookie!