[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[Zed-F]

Without googling, I think that's a character from Last of the Mohicans. Now to go see if I'm correct.
Edit: Not quite, that's Uncas. Close tho!

[Krill]

Carthaginian counting system?

[aetryn]

Cities from Malazan Book of the Fallen?

[scooter]

No, it has no real connection to the actual game. This is probably just spot the reference, not really something you could think real hard about and puzzle out.

That would be an interesting thing to read and to write, tbh. But I'd be way too scared of offending people to actually do it (which I assume is why they fell out of style?).

Nah I just remember a phase where everyone made tier lists constantly, and I really don't remember why. I don't think anyone got offended. Or if you were, you simply lowered that person a tier below where they belonged in your next version out of spite.

[scooter]

Cities from Malazan Book of the Fallen?

Yep, there it is. Have been steadily working through the series for the first time over the last 6-7 months, so it seemed fitting. Just started Bonehunters this week.

[Tarkeel]

First off, it's good to see this game finally moving. Secondly, it feels great to not have the pressure of being the turnplayer.

Sadly no resources turned up on these tiles, and more important fog-gazing showed coast. Tarkeel pointed out to me that any move was risky in that it could screw us out of valid city plants if our starting land-mass was very small, and it looks like that's a real risk on the west side.

...

And it looks like a real risk up here too, as I can see water north of two of these tiles. I did test out the Sheep plant at one point, and while it's a tiny bit faster, it didn't seem worth it at all, especially with the added risk of invalidating city plants. So I SIP.

Completely agree on SIP, looks like there's not much options for dotmapping this island. Speaking of which:

* Fish southwest is good because it means our next city could share Corn OR settle for Fish.
* Think Scout needs to check the Fish area to the southwest before circling clockwise?

One option for the fish is to wait until it's claimed by the second capital border expansion on T51 (assuming slavery swap), in case that city needs to be situated W or SW of grasshill. I think the land ends SW of the hill, but sending the scout down to check it out seems worthwhile, and then turn clockise north.

* Sailing ASAP. We can already see what appears to be 3 separate islands, though it could be 2. Earlier we plant one of them, the earlier we take advantage of our trait.

Yeah, Sailing was always going to be a priority here, but the big discussion will probably be if we take it before Pottery. I don't think so, but it's worth considering. (Also, everyone gets the same raw benefit of island cities as we do, so that shouldn't factor into it)

[scooter]

And we're moving for real this time, as we've gotten launched on Pitboss and played a whole turn through.





Mostly mirrored starts confirmed. I say mostly because there is some extremely small variance visible on this screen, but in general everyone settled t0 on a plains hill and is working a 3F tile.





An easy early city over here. If we plant on this forest we can get Crab/Cow first ring and the Fish will be in culture T51 as Tarkeel pointed out. I'm hoping we find something good just north of the corn to settle that first and this second.

[Tarkeel]

After thinking some about this, I think I prefer settling on the forest tile. Sure, we waste a forest that could have been chopped into say a monument, but that wouldn't actually finish the thing and we'd still have to wait for the borders to pop to claim the cow. That cow is going to be very important to get this city up and running. I would still prefer to share the corn before we settle here though.

[scooter]

3 days later we have another turn. Hoping things stabilize now or else this game is not gonna make it.





I opted not to move 1S and check the coast. Rationale: there's almost no chance of a seafood on that coast, and I can see through the fog that 1S of the coast is a forested tile of some sort on another land mass, so it's not really going to affect city placement choice. Basically no real knowledge gain, and I'm impatient to see other nearby land. Green dot here highlights the tentative plan for this area. North of here, we have spotted another Fish. Also can see this land mass rounding out. It kind of looks like we might get about 4 cities here and then be off to the seas.


One thing I showed on the T0 screenshot but neglected to mention - 613 land tiles, or ~123/player. That's actually a pretty good amount for this type of map, as many cities will have a relatively small amount of land tiles.






One oddity - someone changed their tile assignments. Almost certainly that is somebody going WB first. Either there was some weird micro timing for doing 1T on food and then swapping, or that is Superdeath who said he forgot to select a build or something on his first turn and bizarrely didn't notice it until later or something? That seems the most likely culprit. I was assuming the foods were more or less hard mirrored, but WB first makes me think maybe he's got a Fish.

[scooter]

Truly amazing that this guy has now twice in a row joined a game as a solo player and ghosted in the first 10 turns. I should have known better than to join a game with him involved. Ah well.