[49 spoilers] Miguelito, pindicator and Adrien take Shiva by the hands

[pindicator]

I like Justinian of India. Might have some trouble early on with border pops and the initial turns, but I think the strengths of India and getting SPI lategame can more than make up for the early rough turns.

Vikings are going to be a bit more of an aggressive playstile. However from PB46 i can see how having free amphibious on units would help for warring up through the Rennaisance era.

Really Miguelito it comes down to which civ you think sounds more fun.

[AdrienIer]

True : a fun, 99.9% optimized choice is better than a dull 100% optimized one.

[Miguelito]

True : a fun, 99.9% optimized choice is better than a dull 100% optimized one.

Totally. So tell me,  what do you think would be the most fun choice ?

(I'm having my thoughts, but want to do a sim and have a deep look at the tech tree before deciding)

[AdrienIer]

Vikings can be a LOT of fun

[Miguelito]

So Justin of India it is!

I was really torn until the end, spent a good 20 min with the pick typed in before hitting the button. 

In the end India has so much going for it:
- cheaper granaries should help early building so much, the happy face is just the bonus
- engineering is very strong in our mod version, with trebuchets back and privateers - and India has its strong UU there
- the Mysticism 2nd tech is useful, while I have no idea when Hunting can do anything for us

I also found a way to improve the start quite a bit  (Justinian of India):

Code:

eot 6 fishing + WB, fish hooked t7, grow on WB
t 11 pop 2, change to worker
eot 14 2nd wb, fish hooked t16, start worker
eot 16 BW,
t 17 whip worker (to size 1), grow on warrior
eot 18 warrior from overflow, grow on WB
eot 20
eot 21 WB finishes (with chop), grow to size 2 -> work ph!, start settler
t23 net and work 2nd fish
eot 25 second chop, settler finishes 100/100

That works out beautifully, it is just not yet clear what the 2nd capital citizen is going to do if/when the second city takes one fish. A second worker will probably be needed, if only to chop out more settlers. The second city founding can be timed with poly or meditation to get the religion with a quick border pop (if we don't need one, it might be wiser to go for pottery before. Also we don't know yet which worker techs the 2nd city will require. We can decide until t16). 

Yes, Vikings would have been interesting, what with 3-4 move galleys. I also have to admit I wanted to pick them because I had a nice naming scheme (also had one for Babylon ) and in order to not look like the noob who picks almost the same thing as the other pb46 leader (I even made a really good sim for Izzy of India! Now FT can pick Vicky and we have the poor man's 46er).
But I also found that feeling strong is more fun than being food on the table, so went with India. I feel like in practice, Berserkers often don't really get their moment. And the new Trading Post is fine (the bonus should also apply to WBs, right?), but can't compare to what buffed granaries with a discount promise for the early game. Thansk for your suggestions, I hope I did them justice.

[pindicator]

I like the plan in general and don't really have much for improvements to add. One possible area for improvement: the worker really doesn't have a lot of good stuff to do except for road to the other city. Yes, chopping is a good boost (especially into settlers as IMP), but as far as tile improvements go getting a 3h tile to a 4h tile isn't really that big of a boost for the investment. I think we should keep open a possibility of whipping out a super-early settler on t17 instead of a worker if our initial scout finds that there is a nearby spot that warrants it. With that in mind, I'd recommend our scout gets all the first ring spots (by land) to the west scouted out before it goes to the broader job of finding out where our nearest neighbor is / how the landmass goes.

Because if there is a good spot just outside the fog to the west, then we could whip that settler on 17, overflow to finish a second work boat and then work on getting a worker and a warrior out. Obviously this means 1) finding a 2nd city spot with a second food source available that shares a fish, and 2) that our initial scout stays close enough that it can guard the first settler from early animals.

But more likely your plan is going to be what you go with.

[pindicator]

I think Wheel -> Pottery after BW makes a lot of sense here. Wheel would finish end of t20 and Pottery end of t27. That means after the second settler finishes the next goal could be getting a cheap granary down and then growing to size 4 and whipping out a couple of settlers.

Now that has me wondering how a start where you go early granary ahead of the settler and then whip out settlers to make up the difference looks...

[Miguelito]

I like the plan in general and don't really have much for improvements to add.  One possible area for improvement:  the worker really doesn't have a lot of good stuff to do except for road to the other city.  Yes, chopping is a good boost (especially into settlers as IMP), but as far as tile improvements go getting a 3h tile to a 4h tile isn't really that big of a boost for the investment.  I think we should keep open a possibility of whipping out a super-early settler on t17 instead of a worker if our initial scout finds that there is a nearby spot that warrants it.  With that in mind, I'd recommend our scout gets all the first ring spots (by land) to the west scouted out before it goes to the broader job of finding out where our nearest neighbor is / how the landmass goes.

Because if there is a good spot just outside the fog to the west, then we could whip that settler on 17, overflow to finish a second work boat and then work on getting a worker and a warrior out.  Obviously this means 1) finding a 2nd city spot with a second food source available that shares a fish, and 2) that our initial scout stays close enough that it can guard the first settler from early animals.

But more likely your plan is going to be what you go with.

This sounds very good. I tried it and it's clearly better, provided there's a good second city spot that can share the fish; ideally 3W from capital to also share the flood plains. In my sim, where I built the second WB with natural hammers while splitting the fish to the second city we got the worker on t28, which in the previous plan was the turn the second city was founded. Comparing both variants at that turn, the early settler has the 2nd city at size 2, and 25h into a second worker or whatever, while the capital has 1 less citizen. About equal. But we preserved two forests, and that's very nice. In the second variant we do not yet have a warrior at that point, but could whip one at the 2nd city when needed. now during the first 5 turns of the second city (20-25, before it grows to size 2), a roaming warrior could walk in. People with simple worker openings will have a warrior at that point, but will they be wandering around? I think possibly yes, although I understand that warriors ar e very much in danger of getting eaten in this mod version?
The capital can instead overflow into a warrior, so the 2nd city is safe after 2 turns (which the scout should help to advert before founding), but that delays the second workboat and hence first worker significantly.
I also didn't manage to overflow the settler whip to finish the second WB. On t17, I have the settler at 58/100, so it gets almost no overflow, and the WB gets just 10h t6-11.
Important to take note that by t11 we'll have to have scouted the relevant city spots. That's the turn where we have to choose one of the variants.
Tech wise I see three options aft BW
1) Polytheism/Meditation if the second city really wants a border pop, also to secure that religion. A first column food tech or wheel could still be included before the first worker for the early settler variant
2) Wheel/Pottery, as you said. It would surely be nice to have the granaries as option for city growth, although eg a scouting workboat is surely a good investion as well.
3) as 2), but with Agri/Hunting fitted in if the second city needs it (valid for the slow settler variant, as with the rushed settler we want we don't have workers to care anyways

[pindicator]

Yeah, I agree that everything past the first workboat / worker is going to depend on where we find our second city location and if it can share food. It may be we want to go for a quick religion ahead of BW and just slow build the settler at size 2.

[Miguelito]

it's started!

I put connection info and the password in the first post, feel free to have a look whenever you want.

Capital borders and the scout move brought some interesting discoveries:

• the preferred for (capital tile sharing) 2nd city site A would be on top of sugar (but we don't see anything useful yet that it would claim)
  
• it's pretty jungly to the west (there's also a lot of jungle visible by foggazing)
  
• city site B can be founded a turn earlier, claims a jungled rice and an FP
  
• gems by the cows - looks like this could be the Island of Plenty that is meant to induce us to go for sailing early. My other speculation is that the coastline bends somehow as sketched in green and it's actually connected to the mainland. Capital border pop may bring some clarity
  

In red I put the scout movement for the coming turns assuming there's no jungles or hills in the way. The terrain will probably make me readjust this, but this is a route that would uncover all the BFCs of potential second city sites to the west, together with the capital border pop.

I'm not too enthusiastic about all that jungle but I'll just hope Ref has given all the others ice and desert.

It may be we want to go for a quick religion ahead of BW and just slow build the settler at size 2.

Here I can't follow you, what would this achieve that would be worth it to delay the settler as much? I was thinking about getting a religion the turn we found the second city, to have the culture there. That would still be a considerable investment, as it means delaying pottery (or agri/hunting, if we need that).
Getting a religion should not be too much trouble (compared to 46, for example ). Besides ourselves, only FT starts with mysticism. Now he's SPI as well, so will want one, we just have to make sure we don't go for the same (yeah that can go pretty wrong). Still I feel pre t30 would be pretty early? Now Hinduism is of course very attractive to SPI, as it leads to Mono with OR. Would we instead go for Buddhism in order to avoid conflict? Nah, doubt that. But if Hindu fails, we'd still have a pretty good shot at Buddhism (after some worker techs) and moreso Judaism. But yeah, I hope Hinduism on t28 or so should be safe.