[Spoilers] Shallow Thought and Hitru's series of (unfortunate?) events

[JR4]

I`m going global in this one but definitely rooting for you.

I'll follow along, but don't expect me to do any simming.

Hey, maybe you could hire Fintourist? Surely he won`t mind working double shifts for a few months.

Anyway, looks like KHAAAAAN for us.

Good old Gengis Khan. When will you be ready to attack your first victim?

[shallow_thought]

I`m going global in this one but definitely rooting for you.

I'll follow along, but don't expect me to do any simming.

Hey, maybe you could hire Fintourist? Surely he won`t mind working double shifts for a few months.

Anyway, looks like KHAAAAAN for us.

Good old Gengis Khan. When will you be ready to attack your first victim?

Glad to have the moral support!

As for victims, first concern is not to be one! with Shaka/Rome and Boudicca/Zulu out there it could be a tough, violent world. I do feel that RFS-81 has painted at least a small target on himself with his leader pick...

[shallow_thought]

Well, this game has started very much in line with my naming theme, and we haven't actually begun the first turn .

My initial sandbox for comparing different tech combos had two small errors, but while fixing them and actually setting the correct leader I somehow managed to generate the revised first save in a non-modded form and send it off to Hitru. Luckily he didn't waste any time on it, and I spotted it this morning.

I've been looking at possible starting micro, and there seem to be a bunch of key choices, some of which will have to be informed with later scouting. Unless the first scout move reveals something amazing, it will be SIP, worker first, Mining. I've been trying to compare various approaches:
- Farm wheat or pasture pigs first; the first avoids a wasted worker turn, but leaves the worker down by the coast. I think it's likely we'll want him further north.
- Fish before wheel and grow cap on workboat, or straight for Pottery? The former feels quite smooth, with a chop into the second worker, and fairly decent tiles being worked (the odd forested hill or dyes, but mostly improved). But it was t38 before I had a second warrior out (on a rough try), which makes me nervous.
- One or two workers before first settler (haven't even got round to trying this one yet).

However, my notes are a mess of comments such as "forgot to work sugar with second city here", "NO! work hammer tile because IMP" and "oops - lost overflow, I think?", so any detailed comparisons will have to be redone from scratch.

Still, I'm having fun.

Anyway, first decision is actually the scout move. I'm going to wait for Hitru to check he can log in and to have a look around before playing (unless I end up being the one holding up the turn - people may want to get a fast start given it's the weekend). I fancy checking out what is beyond the pigs (BTW, technical feedback on e.g. image sizes is welcome - I find even big ones are OK so long as they are in screenshot tags, but YMMV).

[shallow_thought]

Hitru wisely suggested keeping the scout 1N of pigs so as to be able to move more freely on the next turn. Fog gazing from that hill suggested that there probably wasn't anything too exciting further along the coast, so I moved the scout north (although I'm probably going to have to double-check with an early warrior). The mapmaker continues to taunt us with happiness we can't use without significantly more technology. Also, it definitely looks as if we're on the southern edge of the map, and that is a peninsula, not a land-bridge.




I won't be doing a whole lot of C&D, but if I understand these demos correctly, everyone got a water tile in their starting ring. I think everything else is explained by traits, with the EXP leaders working a forested plains hill. Looks very much like mirrored starts.




EDIT: and renamed capital after looking at the screenshot - Bad Beginning it is!

[shallow_thought]

Well, turns are rolling around nicely, but the same can't be said for the food resources. It's a jungle out there, except where it's a desert. I may have left some resources uncovered to the SW - the first warrior is likely to just double check there before heading towards the best city site I can come up with so far (shares ... riverside, flatland sugar and a cottage - I need to do better). However, the best reasoning I can come up with so far for the initial food surplus followed by the fallow times is that an someone has forced Commodore to go on a diet he didn't want, and this is the psychological fallout.




I still need to sim more, but two workers and getting the cap to size three (mining the PH gets an extra IMP hammer over the forested hill, making it a 6h1c tile when pumping settlers) feels like a better setup than rushing that first settler. A better city site could change my mind though...

[Old Harry]

Hopefully you'll find a non-jungle ivory on your travels, but if not you could settle on that one for +1 happy without having to tech iron working... Terrible city though, so probably not worth it.

[shallow_thought]

Hopefully you'll find a non-jungle ivory on your travels, but if not you could settle on that one for +1 happy without having to tech iron working... Terrible city though, so probably not worth it.

Yep, I have no idea how I'm going to manage happiness once my cities start to grow, but that's no different from my usual games, so at least it wont come as a surprise. However, planning growing my potential cities to the happy cap continues to be an issue...

Turns are flying round fast. It's T6 now, and I've been violating my "no civ before coffee" rule regularly doing my part to keep things moving. I may need to slow things down a little in the next couple of days. Our scout has found - not much. In ideal, rather buildery world I would have gone Min->BW->Wheel->Granary->AH and then beelined Currency, using cheap barracks to ignore mysticism. However, this map is going to need Fishing, Iron Working and quite probably an early Calendar (Masonry would have had to have been in there for walls anyway, I guess).




The border pop at BB a turn or two back did reveal some more food - another crabs. At the moment it looks like three of my first four cities could be coastal .




The isolated ice floes are a bit weird. It's just possible that there is land down there. I did go and double-check that Commodore said that the map was a cylinder, but that was foolish - his hatred of toroids is well known.

At some point I guess I'll have to bite the bullet and dotmap, but not tonight.

[Rusten]

Hopefully you'll find a non-jungle ivory on your travels, but if not you could settle on that one for +1 happy without having to tech iron working... Terrible city though, so probably not worth it.

Is this a RtR change I don't know about?
In base BtS you can camp ivory without IW. The yield is obviously worse, but you get the resource. The jungle remains.

[Commodore]

No change, jungle can still absolutely be encamped. I don't know how you'd code it to be unable to camp jungle but be fine with forests.

[Old Harry]