Speaker's super top secret thread for the purposes of world domination; Neener Neener

[Profane]

shield
· n.
4 Geology a large rigid area of Precambrian rock, unaffected by later crustal processes.

[Jowy]

They are clearly anvils from sky pov.

[Sullla]

OK, in non-spam related news...

There are a couple of decisions to make as a team at the start of a Medieval teamer. The first is whether or not to pursue the Great Library wonder. (Side note: this wonder used to be disabled for Medieval, and it should still be disabled as it's too unbalancing in a 3 vs 3 teamer in favor of whoever gets it. A bad change made in the expansion.) We decided not to chase after the Great Library for a couple of reasons:

- There is a Bismarck player on another team (Exp/Ind)
- We're assuming that all teams have access to marble at the start (since we have it)

If an Industrious leader plays their start correctly, there's no way we can win the race to the Great Library. Not if we all have access to marble, and I can't imagine the map team giving some teams marble and some no marble. Therefore it's better not to chase the wonder and concentrate on doing other things in the early game.

The next team objective is figuring out which tech to pursue first. There are two strong openings for Medieval: Music first or Civil Service first. Music allows you to Build Culture in cities (not trivial, as this allows you to ignore Creative trait or monuments and still pop borders) and grants the free Great Artist to the first team that gets it. Civil Service unlocks Bureaucracy civic. Both are strong choices, with Music being more of a gamble because only one team can get the Artist. Both can be unlocked with a Great Person lightbulb, Music requiring a Great Artist and Civil Service requiring a Great Merchant.

Speaker wanted us to go after Music, so that's the path we'll be pursuing. At the start of a Medieval game (or any late era start, for that matter) Great Person lightbulbs are far more valuable than normal research. We each start at about 10 beakers/turn, and while that will go up rapidly over time (because we all have 2 settlers and free granaries in addition to being on Quick), it still takes a while before normal research can compete with lightbulbs. A Great Artist is worth a little over 670 beakers on Quick; Music itself costs about 1200 beakers. Winning the race to Music essentially means maximizing early Great Artist production - the faster, the better.

Sunrise is our Philosophical civ, so I went ahead and simmed out his start while we were sitting around in dead time during reload stuff:



The capital is going on the "1" tile, and the other settler on the "2" tile, both to be founded on T83. This is a very unusual start, with almost all of the early food locked up in seafood resources rather than land-based tiles. This is actually a good thing for us, as sunrise is going to be underdeveloped in the early going as a result of chasing after that early Great Artist for the rest of the team. (This would be really silly in a Free For All game, but teamers are not Free For Alls. We can afford to slow down the growth curve of one player to achieve a highly valuable team objective.)

To get a fast Great Artist, we need to run Artist specialists via Caste System, and for that we need food. We have to use the capital and not the second city. (Why? Because the worker is over at the capital, and we can forest chop a work boat much, much faster at the capital. Can't do it at the second city without a worker.) The first Great Person costs 67 GPP on Quick; for a Philosophical civ that gets 6 GPP for each Artist worked each turn, that's 12 total Artist turns needed. How can we get that quickly?

- We can run one Artist at size 2. That takes 12 turns though, which takes too long.
- We can run two Arists at size 3. This is the best way to go.
- We could also run three Artists, but then we need to get to size 4, and also drive the capital into starvation. Neither of these is practical.

The basic plan is to work the fish tile at size 1, building a work boat, and then chop it to completion. The chop finishes on T85, which produces the work boat the following turn (for immediate fish connection). Capital goes 3, 3, 3, 5 food and hits size 2 on T87. It only takes two more turns to reach size 3 (T89), at which time sunrise starts working the fish tile (5 food, 7 total food with center tile, enough to avoid starvation) and 2 Artists. Great Artist finishes 6 turns later, T95. We should be able to lightbulb Music on that turn, with the beakers our three civs have been producing naturally over the intervening dozen turns. Here's the actual micro for perusal:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/PB6/Sul...Artist.xls

Speaker/sunrise, let me know if you have thoughts or additions. There are two different things to build in the capital after work boat; the optimal growth item would actually be a lighthouse, turning the fish resource into a 6 food tile and the crabs + lake tiles into 3 food tiles. However, it may be more prudent to build 2 archers instead for safety. Either one works, it's just a question of whether we want safety or growth. We can decide based on what our scouts come across. I'm pretty sure that this plan is optimal for the western city, assuming we push hard for the early Great Artist (which we want to do). This does put sunrise a ways behind in development, because he's forgoing early workers... but it practically ensures our Great Artist play works out. Suggestions welcome.

I considered building a fort for some kind of canal between these lakes, but forts cost 7t even on Quick, and that's unacceptably long this early in the game. Way more important stuff for workers to be doing.

I can't properly sim out my start until we get to play a second turn, so I can see what's on some fogged tiles and make a final decision on where the second settler is going. (First settler founded on the starting tile, because it was awesome.)

[sunrise089]

That works for me. As Speaker says, I do love me some early lighthouses!

We should make the archer v lighthouse decision a few turns in. Hopefully our two scouts moving east will give us some sense of the importance of additional early units.

One thing we do need to discuss sooner rather than later is the mix between archers at home vs defogging vs scouting for rivals. For instance I could move one archer to defog to Sullla and another due east (my scout is going northeast due to the unit spawn point and the lake, but I could also keep one of those two units at home.

[NobleHelium]

Those are shields.

I did play Civ2...but why did they use such an icon for production?

[plako]

There are two different things to build in the capital after work boat; the optimal growth item would actually be a lighthouse, turning the fish resource into a 6 food tile and the crabs + lake tiles into 3 food tiles.

You get Lighthouse for free in Medieval.

[shadyforce]

Am I the only one having trouble seeing images from dl.dropbox.com?

[darrelljs]

Am I the only one having trouble seeing images from dl.dropbox.com?

I see them fine.

Apologies if this was covered in the game setup discussion, but I was on vacation. Is unit gifting allowed?

Darrell

[Speaker]

I see them fine.

Apologies if this was covered in the game setup discussion, but I was on vacation. Is unit gifting allowed?

Darrell

Yes.

[Sullla]

We are finally up for Turn 83 (the second turn). Let's plan on playing the turn together sometime this evening.