[SPOILERS] Cornflakes and giraflorens PB49 - any stock traders out there?

[Cornflakes]

T3 brings contact already! We met ...

   

Elkad! Playing Joao (EXP/IMP) of KHMER (Mining/Hunting). Elkad has not yet logged in for T3 so his scout has had 3 turns of movement to reach its present tile. It's latest movement was 1E so that movement at least wasn't towards us. His scout is currently 9 tiles away from our capital so he could be at most 9+5 = 14 tiles away. His river peeking out of the fog to the east does not appear to be encumbered with jungle. My scout will continue deeper for now since I have 25 turns before it needs to return and play a part in fogbusting ahead of the settler.

Elkad claimed the first leader, and as a result the last civ. Khmer I'm not all that thrilled about. Assuming Hunting was a necessary tech, what other options were available? I actually like Aztecs now with their cheaper and earlier Sacrificial Alter to help pull Joao out of the economic expansion hole. Ballistaphant will however counter a knight attack which seems to be Elkad's kryptonite. Elkad is a self-labeled casual player who plays a decent game until the inevitable hungry neighbor comes knocking. Typically a stout defender, I was fortunate enough to take advantage of a tactical blunder in PB43 to wipe out his defensive stack ... but even still he slowed down the conquest enough to do some real damage to my momentum. Overall he seems a competent general and not a pushover. Maybe Ballistaphants will provide enough of a deterrent this time around for him to break above the fray?

I am quite pleased to have Elkad as a neighbor. For one thing we can play the long game with a decent chance of outpacing. But more importantly Elkad's is a known player which means we can draw from past experience and have a more predictable neighbor. As long as we establish a decent and respectful border and don't overreach in the expansion phase I think that we can count on Elkad to remain friendly in the near-to-intermediate term. If we poke him in the eye we can certainly expect to be punished for it.

[suboptimal]

Ah yes...I used to be into small scale stock trading for a little while. Just about broke even through it all. Dug into technical analysis wholeheartedly (BB, candlesticks, P&F charts, RSI, Stochastics, Wilder's Directional Movement, Pivot Points, Fibonaccis, etc). After a while I went down the rabbit hole and started messing around with the R statistical programming language and reading quant blogs.

Regarding your missing candlestick on 04/07, stockcharts.com is showing the candlestick on the dailies but it's also 04/09 so the other sites may have corrected the charts by now. Strictly speaking, the short term trend on the QQQ is also no longer down from the looks of it. The line through the 02/16 high and the 03/02-03/03 counter rally was broken in late April and acted as resistance on the early April retrace. IF I were still short term trading I'd likely be playing for a short term up, not a short term down.

Looks like I'll be lurking here, both to try to learn more Civ IV basics and banter about the markets.

[Cornflakes]

Welcome aboard Suboptimal!

We found the Khmer capital this turn:

   

12S of us. The gems and dye are at the exact mid-point. I don't mind it this tight (in fact I was voting for smaller being better). I'm just more and more happy to have an early cheap UU that will help secure territory.

[giraflorens]

Here's a screenshot from the sim showing where we can be with a T30 settler:



Stats for the first 30 turns
Total pop grown: 5
Number of whips: 3 (4 pop whipped)
Number of chops: 1
Builds: Worker (T11), Garden (T23), Warrior (T25), Bowman (T28), Settler (T30)

Note the overflow from the settler is enough to bring a worker into 1-pop whip range at 30/60. This requires a couple tile swaps between floodplains and plains forest hill from T26-30 to ensure I get exactly the correct amount of food to grow, while the rest of the foodhammers go to production. This will allow me to whip down to size 1 for a turn when the 2nd city is settled and steals the pigs away. A little more testing shows that the first worker is probably better off heading straight for the deer to camp as soon as Animal Husbandry completed, rather than chopping first as shown in the screenshot.

I marked a couple tile locations: A, B, C, and the as-yet-unexplored D that may be a valid alternative if there is food lurking in the fog. What do you think are the advantages/disadvantages of A/B/C? I have some thoughts but no more time to type, got to run.

Might be C the best option?  I think I can see a grass tile below the mountain. and with so much water we have to measure very well the land tiles to share between cities.

[Cornflakes]

T5 brings tiding from our eastern neighbor:

   

Raskolnikov / Rusten - Catherine (CRE/IMP) of CARTHAGE (Fishing/Mining). Why Carthage with 2nd pick??? I'll attribute that to "Something Completely Different". I just don't see the value that would make this worth 2nd overall pick. Highly likely to have a seafood start. Catherine is solid though. Early game leader of the pack (at minimum on the scoreboard), but I just have a hard time seeing how Carthage makes much of an overall impact in the final analysis. Raskol seems to enjoy planning but as far as I know is yet untested on the battlefield. Maybe a bit idealistic, and perhaps inflexible in the face of fluid circumstances. 

Overall I'm quite please with my neighbors. I think we have a solid chance of out-developing and maneuvering our way into the dominant power in our corner of the world. I again played before Raskol so their scout moved at most 10 tiles towards us, putting them at most 13 tiles away. It is quite possible that a "comfortable" and "harmonious" border would leave us with just 3-4 mainland cities   Elkad and I can get one towards each other, plus one of use can get a city in the currently-useless jungle. We'll get at least one east towards Raskol, but a 2nd city further east would likely push aggressively against Creative culture in a less-than-ideal situation. 

   

Capital's border pop revealed some additional incentive to take to the seas early. Furs! There's our early happiness resource. Man I'm pleased to have Charismatic happiness early! Those firs will be nice for the economy too. I have an advantage heading for the seas because I can skip pottery and hit sailing earlier. ORG lighthouses will also play a role this game

[Cornflakes]

Fixed the 2nd image in the above post. I realized that I was talking about furs but inserted a screenshot from before the borders popped to reveal them! At least it was a screenshot from the correct PB

   

Here's Elkad's starting area. There is a freshwater lake NE of my scout. I'll send the scout counterclockwise around the lake, see if I meet Elkad's eastern neighbor, and try to locate Carthage capital before returning to fogbust ahead of the settler.

Elkad will have a difficult dotmap (not that ours is easier ... our east looks pretty barren, and our south only has clams). Elkad has to plant a city on the west cost for fish, either at GREEN dot or the two tiles north. The plains hill that can share capitals wheat is the more conservative location ... but the only tile that Elkad could reasonably pick up gems with is the flatland stone 2N of green dot. In any case, a city on the west coast invalidates the green "X" (cities must be at least 3 tiles apart).

RED dot is foodless. ORANGE has 2nd ring cows, not practical for non-creative. 1st ring to cows is all jungle or flat plains. There is another river peeking out in the east so that may provide some more natural expansion. We'll uncover a bit more of that in the near future (assuming our scout survives the 99.9% lion attack).

[Cornflakes]

Here's a look at the future of Babylon ... all 34 non-jungle mainland tiles to our future glorious name

   

[Cornflakes]

Solid-orange line is 13 tiles from my capital ... the absolute farthest that Carthage could be. Double-thin-orange is the midpoint between our starts. Island hopping is a question of “when, not if.”

Overseas expansion has some positives and drawbacks. On the negative side are the startup costs. Saining tech and galley production. On the positive side is relative safety in the early game due to isolation, especially when neighbors are still focussed on mainland expansion.

Elkad unfortunately dies at some point. There’s just no conceivable way we coexist long-term on our tiny subcontinent. Early ironworking makes sense because it unlocks a happy (gems), increases workable tiles by +20 (compared to starting 34 that’s a 60% increase), provides weaponry to take out Elkad. Exactly how soon will become clearer around T50 ... whether I hit Construction first or not. With very limited chopping potential, Maths is devalued. Speed may trump all here. But maybe the islands are bigger than I expect. Hammers have to go somewhere and if not settlers and workers, then either Wonders or warmongering

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I know absolutely nothing about finance, so this is fun. I'm diving into all the links you've posted - I like exploring an entirely new field. New enough that your early posts are essentially gibberish to me, but it's time to learn!

[giraflorens]

Good, I'm following you.