RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Speaker]

FYI, worker first is a pretty standard opening in multiplayer, especially in an FFA setting. In a team game, pretty much the only time you wouldn't go worker first is if you have a one-hammer capital (where it becomes more efficient to build a warrior as you grow to size 2 and then slave the worker) or you have a scout start and are up against a warrior start.

As for chopping, as I have mentioned several times, hammers are much more valuable in the early game. Chops get less valuable every turn. Just wait and see how far ahead we are by turn 50 or 75 because we got ahead on turn 25.

[Sullla]

Worker first is a very standard opening for Single Player. Opening with two is less common, but still not exactly unheard of. If you have a lot of forests to chop, or if you're playing as India, it can be very powerful.

Thanks for taking the early turn today, Speaker. I'll try to post a picture or two later today (I still haven't had time to log into the game yet this morning). Also have to update our table for the current turn.

For the other commentors, I wouldn't really say that we're engaging in subterfuge; more like not giving away anything that we don't have to. Information is very powerful in these games - why should you give it away for free? But that's not to say that you should be cruel or abrasive with the other teams either (we're making a real effort to be friendly with our neighbors), just that you don't give them any freebies unnecessarily. Telling someone the exact location of your capital is silly. It would be like us contacting Dantski and telling him that we only have a single warrior - you can be friendly without giving away your weaknesses!

[Speaker]

This is basically our equivelent of what Greece did:

Dear Dantski,

For the purposes of full disclosure, we wanted to make you aware that our single warrior is 5 tiles away from our capital, and the only way we can get another is to chop one, and we *really* don't want to do that. So, if you were to declare war and move your warrior into our land, you would completely wreck our opening play. Just thought you might want to know, and we look forward to working with you in the future.

Sincerely,
Sullla and Speaker

Thanks for taking the early turn today, Speaker. I'll try to post a picture or two later today (I still haven't had time to log into the game yet this morning). Also have to update our table for the current turn.

No problem. I usually check Civstats when I wake up at 6:30 EST (bleh), but depending on how many times I hit the snooze, I often don't have time to crop and upload a screenshot. I have been putting a picture of the demographics into the folder because I don't bother to crop it, so it doesn't take more than a few seconds to rename the picture.

[Sullla]

LOL on the phoney message above. I went ahead and sent our response to Jowy from yesterday. Should have done that last night probably.

Lumberjacks at work:



I think that the techs dicovered this turn are Bronze Working for Broker/plako and Hunting for sunrise's team. But for the first time, everything doesn't add up quite correctly in the Soldier count - get used to this! It's impossible to extropolate everything correctly, and the longer the game goes on the messier it gets. The best you can hope to do outside the early turns is to get a general sense of where you stand with the other teams, and we can probably keep doing that. For the moment, the population figures are still good... at least until the other teams start founding more cities (urp!)

Animal Husbandry dropped from 8t to 6t as predicted, due to us getting to size 2 and picking up one extra commerce. Glad to see that that math was indeed correct! Settler is due in 5 more turns.

Jowy's worker still appears due on T29, since there have been no changes in Food or Production in many turns. They got a boost in GNP, but that was actually just them swapping off Agriculture (a tech with no prereqs) and onto... something that does have a dicount. Could be Archery, could be AH, could even be Sailing.

We'll have Demographics with Dantski in 3-4 more turns, and that will shed much more light on what he's doing.

[Speaker]

T29 complete.

(T29) AH 5t (80/149), Gettysburg 2/24 food, Warrior 13/15 [Settler 48/100], Worker A move 1E busywork mine (4t), Worker B move S-S-SE

The only difference was that I moved worker B S-S-SW instead. It doesn't change what we'll do next turn, but keeps him closer to the center of our land, which gives us more flexibility. If we wanted to, we could double mine or double chop next turn.

I also moved Chamberlain NE. Another Warrior completes next turn.

[Sullla]

Nice work on the turn, everything looks good. I barely managed to login this morning and grab some extra screenshots before the turn rolled over. After nothing happening all day yesterday, this turn practically finished before I even woke up this morning!

We have our first whipping of the game, as Broker/plako whip their capital from size 2 down to size 1. (This clears up any uncertainty over them discovering Bronze Working last turn.) They went worker first there, and presumably built a work boat second, so I really have no idea what they whipped. Seems too soon to be a settler whip... your guess is as good as mine!

Our score leader athlete knocked out a cheap tech, which appears to be Hunting. They've researched four techs already, but keep in mind three of them (Hunting, Fishing, Mining) are extremely cheap. Score can be misleading in the early game.

That's it, not much else happened. Get ready for another turn shortly!

[Speaker]

Wow, T30 is halfway complete already! What did you do, Sulla? Did you double mine, double chop, or single chop x2?

[Sullla]

I stuck with our development plan, which has us doing two separate forest chops. (Technically, I guess it doesn't really matter, since Gettysburg is putting shields into a settler right now anyway. But easier to stick with what we wrote out earlier.) Picture:



Speaker, I think we should have warrior #2 be the one to guard our new city. We will have a third warrior to defend the capital in a mere 5 turns, and I really doubt we're going to be invaded in that short span! Chamberlain should head out and continue scouting, trying to find other teams. Going south would be preferable, but he's already on a northern trajectory, so let's send him northeast for a while, past the outskirts of Jowy's capital, and then push east towards where we suspect other teams are located. Everyone should theoretically be on the outer coast of the "donut", so that's probably where we should aim to scout.

The only score change was Broker/plako growing back their whipped pop, but then athlete logged in as I was logging out and double-whipped his capital from size 4 to size 2. That's a worker whip for sure, and I logged in again to get the updated Demographics. Everything matched up as expected before and after the whip, so that's all good. (I have the updated Excel file already uploaded.) Jowy looks like he's also completed his worker:

(T25) Athens 0/26 food, Worker 35/60 [4 food, 3 shields]

(T26) Athens 0/26 food, Worker 42/60 [4 food, 3 shields]

(T27) Athens 0/26 food, Worker 49/60 [4 food, 3 shields]

(T28 ) Athens 0/26 food, Worker 56/60 [4 food, 3 shields]

(T29) Athens 0/26 food, Warrior (?) 3/15 [Worker done] [5 food, 2 shields]

Since their Food/Production finally changed after many turns of inactivity. (Basically they traded one shield/turn for one food/turn.) For a size 3 capital, their Food/Production splits are quite food, which reflects the fact that they've been working a lot of unimproved tiles.

I'm not sure why the game has suddenly begun moving at hyper speed, but it's a lot more fun this way.

[Speaker]

Sounds good with Chamberlain. Hopefully he'll win a Barbarian battle or two and get that 2nd woodsman promotion.

Growing to size 4 and then double whipping a worker is pure . I would much rather wait a turn, whip the worker for 1 population, and then wait another couple turns and whip a second worker. Perhaps they double whipped a settler?

[T-hawk]

Growing to size 4 and then double whipping a worker is pure . I would much rather wait a turn, whip the worker for 1 population, and then wait another couple turns and whip a second worker.

Hmm? Workers cost 60 hammers, it's a double-whip even with a turn invested. Need to invest enough turns to fill the box with 30 food+hammers to get it down to a single whip.