[Spoilers] Harry Hydra Tours his Hit Charitable Thoughts

[Old Harry]

Turn 24

So a lion showed up to menace the scout and when he moved NE to sneak past a bear popped up too. The only option was to move NW onto the hill and meet Krill (Rusten). If we move SW next turn we might convince him we're coming from the north east (lots of land over there) and then we might get visibility on his capital a couple of turns later, but it's an obvious move, so may pose a risk of getting shanked. Alternatively 2N would let us see the capital in two turns from the slightly exposed desert hill, or we could just declare and move NW-N instead... Any opinions?


Demos. Nothing happened this turn.

[Old Harry]

Turn 25

Making new friends! I'm not planning to sit on any resources but I think that Krill (Rusten) has a warrior out and about, so we need to be careful. I didn't offer peace just in case we got teleported to become bear food. Krill moved his capital and settled on t1, presumably from the coast to the west?


Demos.

[Old Harry]

Turn 26

Krill offered peace, but that would have bounced us out toward our nearest city, which we're hoping to keep hidden for a while, so I moved north and offered a peace treaty. The good news re: hiding our location is that Krill's scout is just here, so won't be exploring our way any time soon. Also interesting is that EP spending tells us Krill already met someone else. Anyway, I was thinking we should move this way next turn, then we can have a look at the site he moved away from on t0.


Demos. Krill 1-whipped this turn, which makes me think he's got a settler out already. Is he going to settle back to the west or go north for copper or south east for corn?

[Old Harry]

Turn 27

No sign of a settler, and Charriu pointed out that Krill was working a plains hill forest before he whipped last turn, so it was probably a worker overflowing into a settler. We'll keep an eye on Civstats. In other news I'd love to have land like this. Will we have to kill for it?


This is the turn we need to decide which religion to go for. Of our potential rivals:
- I'd counted Donovan out of the race as we have 30 beakers more in start techs than him, but he just finished BW a turn before we got Myst, so he's used FIN to overhaul that deficit already. I do think that as CRE it's unlikely he'd go religion before pottery, but if he doesn't then we're in trouble.
- Cairo should get BW in the next three turns, but he could have gone for Polytheism if he doesn't want to revolt while his first settler is in transit, in which case we'd need to switch to Meditation when that turns up.
- Superjim hasn't finished Myst so he's not in the running.
Donovan is the real risk here, but as CRE/FIN with 18 land in his BFC he's got to go for Pottery, right?

Demos.

[Old Harry]

Turn 29

I settled Babylon's Burning last turn and this turn the warrior reveals a fish. Rip up the micro plan! That fish means we need to pop borders in a city on the gems (extra early happy!) or settle EESE of the capital. So how do we make that work, huh? I hate the idea of cramming two cities in to work four land tiles and two fish so the real question is how to make the gems city work?


Settling red then yellow would be good, but before sailing or wheel it takes 6 turns to slog over there. Pink is likely to be a bit crap, why I didn't want to scout it properly back at the start of the game is beyond me now. Orange is a possibility (although needs to be delayed so it doesn't steal religion from B ) and might make a good base from which to settle the western continent.


How we're going to squeeze any commerce from this crappy land is another puzzle. I could give you a great plan for doing it over here, but I'm sure Krill/Rusten/Mackoti have that covered already. I'll concede when everyone else realises as well. Next game I'm playing on mirrorland.


Demos.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

We really never learn when it comes to setting up games.

[Old Harry]

I could've sworn the general silence after I said I'd like something more balanced than 41 was nobody disagreeing, but perhaps it was everyone saying "no, Fuck you."

[Mardoc]

I could've sworn the general silence after I said I'd like something more balanced than 41 was nobody disagreeing, but perhaps it was everyone saying "no, Fuck you."

From my perspective it was essentially "No, I'm sorry"

Krill did specify the map in the recruitment post, and in fact had gotten me to sign on as mapmaker before he started recruiting. But me signing on as mapmaker was very much a matter of this approach being the maximum time I could spare. I'd have loved to spend time handbuilding a map to be more balanced, but I just couldn't.

If consensus had been to go with a handbuilt map I'd have been happy to be dumped as mapmaker - I just don't know who you'd have found instead. I think RefSteel and Cornflakes have the flair, but they probably have a bad taste in their mouth for how PB38 turned out.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

PB38 had a good map, just way too much. And, in the end, I think the map would have been perceived to be more balanced if it had not been mack roflstomping the newb. I would habe suggested less overseas colonies but they didn't decide the game. As usual, neighbor luck contributed to a strong player's path to eventuality.

[Old Harry]

Thanks for clarifying Mardoc. Sounds like I just heard what I wanted to hear in the setup. I thought the PB38 map was awesome, but as Boldly says neighbour luck is everything...

Anyway, down to playing the hand we're dealt - we spent a while working out how to set up the next few cities ASAP. City C1 would be faster to settle by a couple of turns and at size 2 would provide the same amount of foodhammers, but we decided that the potential that C2 holds makes it worth the wait. C1 would steal clams from B if it wants to grow and while the copper is a great tile we won't have wheel for ages yet, so we can't actually hook it. C2 has many more land tiles to work, provides food for a gems city to share and expands in the direction of our only discovered neighbour, so we decided on that one.




Micro plans:

City B is nice and straightforward. The options are:
- whip a work boat next turn to head off and do some exploration then come back and net the fish or clam
- whip a work boat next turn to head off and do some exploration then whip another to net the fish when poly comes in t36
- wait 5 turn for Poly to work the lake for beakers and make the wb just in time for the border pop

The beakers might be nice for getting sailing a turn earlier but I think exploration trumps that easily. Figuring out where our first overseas city will go can make planning things a lot smoother.

City A is more complex, partly because of the hills blocking the route to city C. We chop into the settler this turn, then can:
- whip the settler to complete eot32
- complete the settler naturally eot33

- worker move to chop
- worker stay to build grass mine

- overflow to complete workboat
- overflow to complete warrior

If we whip the settler and the worker makes a grass mine then we should overflow to complete the warrior so that the capital can grow eot36. This means the work boat turns up a turn late for City C to net the fish, but we can work pfh and put the hammers into a worker to be whipped pretty quickly. So is there any benefit to saving forests instead of building mines?

If we whip the settler and the worker moves to chop then we should overflow to complete the warrior but the work boat will get to city C in time and we get some nice overflow into another settler at size 3. The worker could move to the plains hill forest (blue arrow) or grass hill forest (red arrow). If the former then he can mine and make a shared 0/4/1 tile, if the latter then he should probably follow the settler to city C to farm the wheat - if so C will work both fish and wheat on t42 and once it hits size 3 can work on a settler for the gems.

If the worker moves to city C then city B can make the next worker while A makes another settler. If the worker follows blue then C can whip a worker t46 and work both tiles when it grows back to size 2 on t51. I'm leaning towards red because it feels like A and B just don't need more improvements until B can produce that worker.

We want two more settlers for gems and to settle the overseas copper asap, but I'm not totally sure what the best pattern is to get those. I think clear-cutting the area for the fast start is a good strategy but when we're at 5 cities then we get pottery and will want to chop into granaries, so maybe we need to keep some forests around...