[Spoilers] Louis XIV of Babylon

[SleepingMoogle]

The Zulu's settled their capital on the second turn, so I'm guessing that their scouting revealed a superior starting position. According to the demographics their capital is coastal so perhaps they spotted a seafood resource? Food for thought.

My own scouting revealed some tiles as well:



No floodplains yet (boo!), but there's a fairly good indication that the coastline does in fact continue south. It's really hard to see in the screenshot, but the tile west of that desert hill is water. For now that is enough for me to direct further scouting to the south/southeast. The screenshot doesn't include this, but the tile S-SE from the Warrior is a grass hill, and might make for a good location to plant a city. The abundance of grassland and the river would make for a good commerce city, so hopefully a second food resource can be found underneath the fog.

I'll try to work on some turnplans this weekend to determine what the best tech and build paths are (the current plans are a bit rudimentary), so there's not too much else to report on for now.

Here's a screenshot of the demographics for reference:

[SleepingMoogle]

Insomnia's borders expanded at the beginning of the turn, blocking passage for anyone trying to pass and revealing more tiles in the immediate area (I decided to downsize them a little to prevent the picturer from dominating the posts):





Fortunately, it looks like I didn't really lose anything by planting two tiles from the coast, and there's Carb close by. The left one is positioned rather awkwardly though. Unless there is land on the other side, there's only one tile where I can plant a city that can work them, and that would be a plant very close to the capital. It might be interesting as a fishing village later on, but that's hardly a priority right now.

The inland sea to the southeast doesn't appear to be very large. There will be at least 3 more tiles to the south, but unless the sea is very oddly shaped there probably won't be many more.

Aristotle continued on scouting:



That should make the western coast all but a guarantee, and I may have a coast to myself as well. Perhaps both seas are joined then? Scouting further SE sounds like the best idea for now.


Demographics at the end of the turn:

[SleepingMoogle]

The new turn has rolled around, and the game is picking up speed. This will be a short report as I'm rather tired, and not too much has happened anyway. First the scouting:



Hmm, this was what I did not want to find. No food resources, and hills instead of grassland. I'll have to rethink that commerce city now. Too tired to do this right now, but I'll make a stab it a first dotmap tomorrow.

It also looks like the two seas are not joined. In fact, the SE one might very well be the bare 9 tiles that makes it salt water rather than fresh. Ugh.. not too lucky a start so far. But I will plan to make the best of it regardless.

The demographics haven't really moved, which at this point just means no one has fast-built a Warrior. They may be building one while focussing on food, but something tells me all Expansive Civs will be the ones with the hammer focus right now to get out a Worker.

[SleepingMoogle]

More that I don't want to see.



What started off as a potential commerce site now looks better as a hammer city. Except that there's barely any food in sight. Ugh.. perhaps I should focus the capital on commerce instead, and make this a production site. Hopefully the east won't have so many darn hills.

So a first stab at a Dotmap. Probably nowhere near what it will look like in the end, but in can't hurt to theorize.



Red dot is the only place that I can plant a city which can work the Crabs, barring any islands on the other side. It'll not be much of a city though, especially if there's no other food resources underneath the fog, so this will be a low-priority filler city. Once Insomnia's borders have expanded again, we'll know how beneficial that plant will be.

Blue dot is an attempt to make something out of the tiles SW of the capital. The land is relatively flat, so this might make for a decent commerce city. I'll need to defog the water tiles pretty soon to see if there's any presents hiding underneath.

Green dot will have 10(!) hills to work, but without food resources it will probably be limited until Windmills become available. Being coastal, it can also plop down a Lighthouse and do something useful with the water tiles.

The black dots are potential cities if the current dotmap were to work. It depends a lot on further scouting though.

Demographics for this turn:

[SleepingMoogle]

Stuff happened, and the Worker plan will have to wait until tomorrow. Aristotle did find some additional food though.

[Man Behind the Mask]

I know that the dotmap is very preliminary, but it looks like you value a well organised grid more than planting for resources. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts?

[SleepingMoogle]

I know that the dotmap is very preliminary, but it looks like you value a well organised grid more than planting for resources. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts?

Actually, city placement is something I wished to improve from my previous games. Some of the cities planted there were, in hindsight, not placed to make optimal use of the map and in some cases even resources. Generally speaking I don't mind planting city in a position that grabs resources first and worries about the map after (although I have a strange aversion to placing cities on top of them). So far though, the options in this Pitboss are rather limited. The explored tiles so far seem rather resource poor, and there's a lot of water and hills. Rather than placing a few good resource grabs and have the rest of my cities in locations that are at best average, it makes more sense to me to try and maximize the potential of the available land instead. A compact empire that with solid city placement to ensure no tiles go to waste would counter the relative scarcity of resources pretty well.

As you mentioned though, this is all very preliminary. Perhaps there's more seafood to be found off the western coast. Perhaps early strategic resources turn out to be in locations that don't mesh well with the dotmap. Or maybe I'll need to rush east rather than south in a bid to secure land before my neighbour claims it. But in the end, unless scouting reveals more fertile land in the near future, the well-planned city placement has my serious consideration.



In any case, 7 out of the 10 Civs finished a tech at the end of turn 6. Strangely enough, they were all the Civs that didn't start with Hunting. I think it's a safe bet that everyone started with at least Deer near their capital.

Research was set to Animal Husbandry next for me (13 turns). It will enable the Cows to be pastured, and reveal Horses. As we are quite hammer rich, Bronze Working can be postponed until after (as a rough plan, I'll see about letting the city grow to size 4 and then 2-pop whip the first Settler. No idea yet whether or that is efficient, other stuff keeps getting in the way of sims).

The south at least seems to provide more riches in the first happiness resource:



It will take a while for wine to be hooked up. More reason to beeline Monarchy though.

More demographics. The increase in average soldier counts are almost certainly due to 7 Civs researching hunting:



Also of note is that I'm currently the GNP leader(!). I'm not quite sure what to make of that since I'm not working a tile that generates commerce. Shouldn't at least plako be equal to me, or am I missing something?

[novice]

In the early game, with no expenses and 100% science slider:

GNP = culture + ep + [(commerce + 1*) x research modifier]

* you always get 1 free beaker
[] signifies rounding down.

so in your case 4+4+[10*1.4] = 22.

You get 8 commerce from the palace and 1 from the city square, and you get a 1.4 modifier on Animal Husbandry since you know both Agriculture and Hunting.

[SleepingMoogle]

In the early game, with no expenses and 100% science slider:

GNP = culture + ep + [(commerce + 1*) x research modifier]

* you always get 1 free beaker
[] signifies rounding down.

so in your case 4+4+[10*1.4] = 22.

You get 8 commerce from the palace and 1 from the city square, and you get a 1.4 modifier on Animal Husbandry since you know both Agriculture and Hunting.

Aha, that would explain it. Thanks for that Novice.

Using that formula, we can reasonably deduce that plako isn't researching Animal Husbandry at present. China starts with Agriculture and likely has researched Hunting as their first tech. If he followed that up with AH, his GNP would be equal to mine. Given that Mining is his second starting tech, my guess is that he went for Bronze Working instead.

[SleepingMoogle]

It's been quiet, but there hasn't been too much to report on. Unless you're looking for a post with two lines worth of text and a scouting screenshot or two. Now that the first Worker has finished though, I effectively have twice as much to report on.

As we don't have Mining yet, the Worker (whom I realized I have yet to name.. perhaps I should think of a separate naming theme for them. Hmm.. ) is currently limited to building Camps, Farms, and Pastures once Animal Husbandry finishes. He can also place roads, but I'm not in any real hurry to hook up health resources at this point. For now happiness appears to be a far bigger issue once the Insomnia has grown a little.

Anyway, this is what I came up with so far:



It works out like this:
T10: Move SW onto the Deer
T11: Start building a camp (finishes T14)
T15: Move E-NE onto the second deer
T16: Build another camp (finishes T19)
Animal Husbandry finishes T17
T20: Move NW and put one turn into a farm
T21: Move N and build a Pasture on the Cows (finishes T24)

At the same time, I'm training a Warrior while working the grassland deer. I'll switch to the other Deer tile once it is improved and train some more early scouting and defense units, then switch to another Worker when Insomnia grows to size 2.

For now, I'm looking to expand to the south as it looks pretty fertile down there:



If I leave coastal cities alone for a while, I can ignore Fishing and make a push for Writing for cheap Libraries. It probably does make sense to ensure that southern city has access to the Corn for that, so that early dotmap is effectively obsolete already.

Other than that, Warlord and Sunrise have finished their first techs now, and I'm guessing it's mining for both. The Vikings were tech-less last I saw.. maybe they went for AH first?