Ranamar and Lewwyn, ministers for Bismarck of Mali

[SevenSpirits]

Looking good! Stonehenge and Oracle are nice for sure. Though I dunno if we can really get pottery that quickly while also settling new cities and not roading to them. And ending with 3 cities and only 2 workers is a bit silly - need more workers! So maybe some adjustments are in order but it's a good demonstration of how much we can do.

Guys, what difficulty are you on?

Prince.

[Ranamar]

Borders popped at the end of the turn, and boy do I have some scouting for you!


North with the warrior (mostly)...
We've got incense in the West... Tile bleed suggests that the river keeps going, so if we found 2W of the peak, we could borrow the cow to get going quickly once timbuktu is done growing, and start with a trade route to the capitol because of the river. If the river goes far enough, we could also go NW of that spot, but we'd need to improve it from scratch. Priority? Higher than it would be otherwise due to being on a river and giving us an automatic trade connection.
In the east, we have whales, but (1) that's a bloody obnoxious spot, given we can't settle the hill that gives us sheep, whales, and gems in the same city, and (2) whaling boats don't come in for awhile.


Border pop reveals...
Fish! Gems! Water, which could be nice for Moai statues and/or Colossus. 1W of the peak could be nice, especially with the kickstart available from the sheep. I'd push for farther south, were it SP, but I gather that's not actually a tactically good decision when you want to be working improved tiles all you can. We'd probably be able to get a road there faster than getting to sailing tech, but sailing tech might net us a "trade on coasts" trade route, alternately.
EDIT: oh... and tile bleed south of that peak appears to be water... /EDIT

You guys are encouraged to draw on those pictures. I'd do it right now, myself, but I have other things I want to do right now, like eat lunch and take advantage of Memorial Day weekend. (Maaaan, I want more scouting in the south now.)

[Ranamar]

Turn report; more scouting:


We've got a bunch of calendar resources up there. They're also all jungled.

Also, on a whim, I grabbed demographics again:

I should probably be paying more attention to these...
It appears that everyone else has always been working a riverside commerce-giving tile. Someone appears to be working something like our sheep instead of our wheat, for rival best mfg of 3. (Next turn, we'll go back up to #1 at 5H. )
Anyway, this turn is our second turn of working the wheat; next turn goes back to the plains forest.

I'm wondering about our #1 soldier count... which techs give soldiers? Also, how much is population? Someone seems to have lost their unit, unless scouts are *really* weak in soldier count.

[SevenSpirits]

Some map info:

Vertical world wrap is easily visible in flying camera mode. The map appears to be 32 tiles high.


Furthermore, there is horizontal wrap. Using the already-moved warrior we can count the number of columns: (largest distance - 1) * 2. Turns out the map is 52 wide.

The settings screen:

Notably, high sea level.

P.S. Looking at life expectancy in the demo screen, it seems clear that some people have more and some have fewer forests than us (or otherwise have different health situations). Therefore the starts are not perfectly mirrored.

[Lewwyn]

First, looking good on scouting. We'll get a second warrior with the second build to scout south. As for next turn I say we go NW and then SW and try to get a ring cleared around our capital. The other option is to go up the coast.

Looking good! Stonehenge and Oracle are nice for sure. Though I dunno if we can really get pottery that quickly while also settling new cities and not roading to them. And ending with 3 cities and only 2 workers is a bit silly - need more workers! So maybe some adjustments are in order but it's a good demonstration of how much we can do.

Yeah, I think that going Worker after Stonehenge and then settler will give us a couple more turns to get pottery in on time. Of course we'll see how the first 20 turns go. It's also possible we could slow build the oracle without having the second set of chops. And by slow build, I mean it built in 6 turns without chops.

The other option is, of course, TGLH. If we go for TGLH we will not get the oracle and MC. The techs required will exclude going for both in a timely fashion. So I guess we have to choose between early, cheap mints + colossus and TGLH. Personally I feel that MC+mints+Colossus puts us further ahead then TGLH, but I do understand the power of those trade routes. And if this map is as water based as its appearing right now, it could be broken the way it was in PBEM 6. Luckily we won't have to choose until we finish BW. That will give us time to scout with 2 warriors.

[Ranamar]

Regular scouting report:

Corn! Sadly, it's dry.

I decided to draw a preliminary dotmap on. Lewwyn suggested this site, and it's a better first city than the aggressive plant I was suggesting up the river approximately NW of the warrior. (The only advantage to that is the immediate trade connection.) It's on a desert, which means it uses up one of the more relatively useless tiles in its plot.
It'll never be great, because of somewhat of a lack of food, but... it's coastal, so we could use it to get the Colossus or GLH, and it has a lot of hills which we could initially use for mines, assuming we can feed them. (Later, if we're doing the colossus, I could be inclined to windmill them to get more commerce and mitigate, somewhat the unfortunate food situation... maybe after windmills get a hammer, though that's waaay out at replaceable parts.)

Speaking of Colossus vs. GLH... Assuming we find copper easily, I'd say we should go for the Colossus, possibly as much for denial value as anything. Sure, we're not financial... but everyone else is. It'd be that much more powerful in the hands of a financial civ like HC, and I don't really want to let us in for that. Also, the plan was originally to go for early mints, and it's right on the way, if we stick to that plan. Admittedly, this does mean we're probably going to cede the GLH to HC & company, but... I can get myself kind of worried about the implications of them being able to use their financial bonus on ocean tiles as well as coastal ones. (If the shoe were on the other foot, of course, I'd be advocating going for it because of that, and you'd still be trying to talk me out of using the sea for our economy instead of traditional cottages. )

[Ranamar]

Agriculture came in on schedule. I moved warrior SW onto the hill, after much deliberation. There are gems 2W of the spices, and another flood plain SW of the spices. I don't know why I don't feel like putting up pictures right now, because it's silly and doesn't really take less time, since I have them.

Also, we and Com of Modor gained 6 points this turn. I'm going to say we both got Agriculture this turn. GES, yuris, and Mr. Nice Guy have not finished a tech. At 88 beakers, I'm going to say the AH people will get it in another couple turns. Then, we'll know whether anyone went for BW or something else first.

Edit: yeah, that was silly; here's a picture:

[Ranamar]

Got a turn this morning, so I played it. I have to admit that one "problem" with having all the micro figured out by T3 is that the turns are really boring now. I suppose that's not a bad thing, though.

Moved the warrior NW. There's literally nothing interesting revealed this turn, aside from the fact that every jungle I've seen so far has had a resource in it, and the rest of this land seems to be forested. There's another jungle tile I'll unfog next turn, so I'll be curious to see if the trend continues. I'm moving west to see if I can definitively find the other coast.

Since the scouting is so boring, have some demographics:

Oh... Mr. Nice Guy got 6 points this turn. I'm going to say it's a tech. Since France starts with Agriculture and The Wheel, I'm going to say that he researched Pottery (70B) as opposed to Animal Husbandry (88B; couldn't have finished yet).

Worker finished EOT. Will start on a warrior to grow, next turn.

[SevenSpirits]

AH is actually doable in 7 turns, for someone who's working the corn. 8 from palace + 2 from tiles + 1 free = 11 beakers, + 2 for prerequisites, is 13. 13 * 7 = 91.

I expect when the turn comes back, our other opponents will have had a score increase from AH too.

[Ranamar]

AH is actually doable in 7 turns, for someone who's working the corn. 8 from palace + 2 from tiles + 1 free = 11 beakers, + 2 for prerequisites, is 13. 13 * 7 = 91.

I expect when the turn comes back, our other opponents will have had a score increase from AH too.

You're right. That's what I get for not actually doing the math, instead of guestimating.
Yeah, everyone will have it when the turn comes back around, then, because they've all been getting 13bpt except the other one who researched agriculture.