[SPOILERS] Pindicator Walks With Dinosaurs

[pindicator]

Turn 000

I moved my scout to see if I'd miss out on any seafood by settling in place.



I don't get it. Was the point to make a trade off between a coastal capital and a capital on a plains hill? Cause there really isn't a competition. Anyway, SIP is the way to play it.

Worker first and Hunting first. It takes the same amount of time to move and camp the deer as it does to farm the wheat, so shouldn't we go Agriculture first and gain the extra commerce? Not so fast - doing that wastes worker turns. And I'd rather save the worker turn than get the 3 or 4 commerce that farming the wheat first will bring in. Is that the right choice though? What would you rate a worker-turn as being the equivalent of as far as yields go?

[pindicator]

Turn 001



I think I'll circle around to the west and see what's that direction. No need to scout east of the capital with those peaks and hills getting under culture in a few turns.

[pindicator]

Turn 005

The big excitement of the early going was having the BFC expand and seeing what those peaks in my capital's radius would uncover.



Call me uninspired. Looks like a deliberate attempt to not give a good spot with sharing food. We'll probably put city #2 off to the east where it can share the cow and the wheat. Having 3 food sources for the capital means we can absolutely share, and it'll be nice to have some flexibility in overlapping multiple tiles. I'd put a city to the south to pick up the deer, but it seems likely that we're looking at another coast in the fog to the south, so anything I planted to share the wheat would be 1 tile off. Likewise I could try to share the deer with a spot that picked up the corn and pig in the northwest with a border pop. Oh, to be creative...

Also, my scouting has been pretty haphazard so far:



I think we'll try to circle around south and uncover the stuff near the capital before going off to find our neighbors. The micro plan has 2 warriors coming out before the first settler, so they'll take care of uncovering stuff to the south and east.

[pindicator]

Turn 006



Three things:

1. Gaspar was the only other person to go Hunting first, like me. (Seriously doubt he went Fishing first, but I suppose that's possible.)
2. Animals! Stick to defensive terrain on scout movement now.
3. Future NE city location pictured above.

[pindicator]

Turn 010

The early turns just got a little more boring



I had seen the panther from my capital's culture on turn 7, and intentionally avoided going on the hill on turn 8 because i knew most of the tiles that the panther could have gone to were within range of that hill. And I just knew that if I went on that hill that he would win the battle, odds be damned.

On turn 9 when I thought he had moved on to the hill, he was right beside it, waiting for me.

In brighter news, my worker's done. Camping the deer, woohoo. Warrior due in 5

[pindicator]

Pindicator is Washington of Carthage Dinoland



The combination of Washington and Carthage is one that makes me feel warm and snuggly, and presses all the right kinds of synergy buttons.  And if you've followed any of my games before you know how I get all warm and tingly all over when it comes to synergy.  Expansive is the top trait left after our bans, and in pairing it with CHM I'd rate Washington as the fourth best leader left to pick after the bans were taken into account.*  I'd also put Washington as one of the most under-utilized leaders on RB, at least in relation to his value.  I probably value CHM a little more than the average RBer, though.

Expansive, aside from being its normal awesomeness of half-price granaries and cheap workers, also gives half-price harbors.  So what better civ to pair it with than one with a harbor UB?  With cothons costing 60h I can have a mini TGL in all my coastal cities at the cost of a 2-pop whip.  Now, this isn't nearly as awesome for a couple reasons.  First of all, harbors are not a building that you normally put in your cities.  So me getting all excited about half-priced cothons is like me getting all excited about buying a new Plasma TV because it's on sale at 50% cheaper than a normal TV.  It's a great deal ... if you're in the market for a television.  But if you don't watch a lot of TV (like myself) and weren't looking to buy a TV in the first place then it's spending extra money, not saving extra extra money.  Building Cothons are a lot like this.  You weren't going to build a harbor in that city with any other civ, so you've got to budget for spending more hammers in each city.  Also see: Hammam, Ottomans.

With that said, with foreign trade routes and Currency a classical era city usually has two-2c trade routes for 4c total.  Adding a Cothon will more than double that, increasing the city to three-3c trade routes, or the equivalent of a free village.  So it is still worth building and I'll be adding them where appropriate.  I also will likely head for Compass earlier than most games, possibly right after Currency and HBR.

Trait #2 is Charismatic, and here things get a little more straight-forward.  I plan on building Numidians, which already come with 1 free promotion.  Taking Charismatic as a trait means I will have more free promotions than my neighbors.  And those promotions stick around as I upgrade from Numidian to Knight to Cuir and beyond.  I'm sure at some point this game I won't be able to help myself and will put a GG on a mounted unit and stack Flanking2 with Tactics just to have an absurd level of withdraw.  But really the goal is to gain an advantage by having better promoted units than my opponents, and then saving those promotions by upgrading those units later in the game.

Forgetting about Carthage for a bit here, EXP & CHA both help out early whipping.  EXP will let us get granaries up fast, and CHA will add more to the early happy cap and let us stack whips more often.  If we can land Stonehenge (and quite honestly that's a very big if) then we'll be pseudo-CRE and have an extra happy cap to play with.  Both of our IND leaders have good motivation for building 'Henge, so more likely we'll just be looking to use monuments to pop city borders since they'll be so cheap. 

Finally, the big strike against this pick is it doesn't fit the start.  Fishing is useless, and I have no techs that help hook up the food in the starting BFC.  So after Hunting - Agriculture - AH, the next choice is going to be between plains cottages with Pottery or Bronze Working for chops and whipping.  Either way it looks like a second worker is going to be superfluous until we get one of those next techs.

Maybe I will go back-to-back settlers?    Well, I've put myself into an early pickle with tech choices.  I hope the synergy I'll get later on is worth it!

Washington Rates It:


He might be a little biased...

[Ilios]

I too am a fan of CHA. Although I believe it's a stronger trait in RBmod because of the Slavery nerfs, because those back to back 1 pop whips can really speed up expansion (especially now that CHA has been boosted to +3 happy).

[Ilios]

Double post excitement

[pindicator]

Turn 015

Warrior done, deer camped, and the worker is moving to farm the wheat.



Had a bit of a think about just forgetting about AH and going straight to Bronze Working. I'd farm the cows, mine the hill, and then BW would be in. Going AH and then BW next would mean needing to settle my second city in a spot where the worker would have a tile to improve - probably.

Or I tech Wheel after AH and then can road to my heart's content. oh joy! Yeah, I put myself in a real tough spot with these starting techs...

I too am a fan of CHA. Although I believe it's a stronger trait in RBmod because of the Slavery nerfs, because those back to back 1 pop whips can really speed up expansion (especially now that CHA has been boosted to +3 happy).

Oh absolutely. And I haven't gotten to play CHA since the debacle that was PB7, so that's a plus to getting to see it here.
If I wasn't in such a tech deficit I'd consider Mysticism and Stonehenge, but I don't see how I have the time to tech that.

[Ceiliazul]

He might be a little biased...

+1 for charismatic being underrated.