Spoilers! Time For A Change. ( superdeath spoilers )

[superdeath]

so, we have food for the stone. Would it be worth settling on the fur, and growing using capital corn + sheep.. then chop out mids down the road with stone? IF we decide not to go for mids/other wonders, id rather plant 2nd city on the hill west of the fur. ALSO ALSO, we have easy access to Silver and Gold! Glad we didnt choose a CHA leader. I could see city 3 going west towards the riverside corn, got to scout to make sure we wont orphan the crab. I really want to push towards that juicy floodplains, settling on the forested grasshill nw of the ivory? Something i got to keep remembering is this is Emp. Barbs will be a bit nastier than im used to. If bronze isnt in a great location, might be good to go for archery?

[Gavagai]

1) Don't loke the idea of settling on furs. Riverside grassland furs is a very powerful tile, I do not want to sacrifice it without a good reason. And there are a number of other ways to grab the stone, for example, a city 1W from stone would be decent.
2) It is too early to dotmap but my initial thinking is to get second city 1N from Western Corn. We have two food resources in the capital, no real need to split away one of them ASAP, though we want to do it eventually. On the other hand, we want our second city to work capital cottages. Settling sheep/fur is also a strong alternative. Fur is food-neutral five commerce, I am thinking we can aim to start working them ASAP to get a local tech lead.
3) With this land I'm fully on board for Pyramids.

[superdeath]

1) Don't loke the idea of settling on furs. Riverside grassland furs is a very powerful tile, I do not want to sacrifice it without a good reason. And there are a number of other ways to grab the stone, for example, a city 1W from stone would be decent.
2) It is too early to dotmap but my initial thinking is to get second city 1N from Western Corn. We have two food resources in the capital, no real need to split away one of them ASAP, though we want to do it eventually. On the other hand, we want our second city to work capital cottages. Settling sheep/fur is also a strong alternative. Fur is food-neutral five commerce, I am thinking we can aim to start working them ASAP to get a local tech lead.
3) With this land I'm fully on board for Pyramids.

1- Fair enough, it is a GREAT tile. I am liking a city 1w of the stone.

2- Never too early to dotmap! Would the 2nd city not be better placed on the hill 1w of the sheep/1e of the fur? Can share the capital corn to grow quickly, and i think we should tech hunting-archery for barb/player defense anyway. But im also fine with a 2nd city to the west, with the corn. REX to fur/sheep and then use the fur to tech ourselves into masonry, chop mids around t80, and swap into being the tech giant of the map?

3- With that easily accessible stone, do we go for math b4 chopping? Or go stone, chop chop? I think the fur city might be a good candidate for the mids. Will grow fast, has a couple hills for mines, and LOTS of forests.




Im guessing that the floodplains/nice river to the north is likely disputed territory. I think a city at the furs, then west corn, then push for 1nw of the ivory? And fill in the stone location once we have masonry. Really hope copper is in a good location.

[superdeath]

Got another turn in, and the scout revealed:



Not much, coast-mountain, hill for a chokepoint? Should i go w-nw and see whats over there? Or go SE-S and see whats next to the crab?

[Gavagai]

OK, it's a lot of powerful early commerce tiles, we may want to think how to leverage them. Some options:
1) Oracle. Does not go well with Mids, we do not want to build too many wonders with such a good land because wonders compete with settlers and lose to them (this is one of the things I dislike about RB maps - building settlers-settlers-settlers becomes the only right choice at the start).
2) HBR/IW and kill someone. Need a target though, preferably someone who would build a wonder for us.
3) Religion. Need a way to shrine it. Btw, Mids allow us to generate easy Engineer as a first GP with Philosophical. MoM seems like a perfect target for rushing. Confucianism is an interesting choice for a religion, as we would be able to get a great spy as our first GP. Infiltration mission early should be OP even with the nerf to Espionage in this mod, it will give us an insane amount of free beakers via steal technology mission.

[Gavagai]

Actually, an easier way of getting a great spy is just building The Great Wall.

[superdeath]

OK, it's a lot of powerful early commerce tiles, we may want to think how to leverage them. Some options:
1) Oracle. Does not go well with Mids, we do not want to build too many wonders with such a good land because wonders compete with settlers and lose to them (this is one of the things I dislike about RB maps - building settlers-settlers-settlers becomes the only right choice at the start).
2) HBR/IW and kill someone. Need a target though, preferably someone who would build a wonder for us.
3) Religion. Need a way to shrine it. Btw, Mids allow us to generate easy Engineer as a first GP with Philosophical. MoM seems like a perfect target for rushing. Confucianism is an interesting choice for a religion, as we would be able to get a great spy as our first GP. Infiltration mission early should be OP even with the nerf to Espionage in this mod, it will give us an insane amount of free beakers via steal technology mission.

Actually, an easier way of getting a great spy is just building The Great Wall.

Hmm, what would be a good enough oracle target to be worth throwing hammers into something that either DZ, or Cornflakes might go after?
I like the idea of going HBR, and smashing someone with a bunch of HA's.
We can see how the religion pans out, if no religions are claimed early.. we can maybe go for like the 4th city or something builds oracle?

My biggest question is, due to no active espionage/no spys.. How/what are the rules regarding Great Spys? I was under the impression that they basically are to remain in borders, and used for GA's only?

[Gavagai]

I don't think active espionage is banned here. We usually don't ban it under RB mod.

[Gavagai]

A good oracle target with our land and leader is civil service Self-research CoL, bulb Math and boom! The thing is, other players probably ask themselves the same question and don't see a good answer. The land is so commerce-rich that it looks like pretty much anything can be easily self-researched. So... I wouldn't be surprised if Oracle falls late in this game.
But a very long shot, of course.

[superdeath]

Better to put hammers into the Mid's? Or Oracle? Oh, and we have a neighbor to our southwest.

Elkad.




Dotmap so far, any thoughts?



I think Elkad is a very good neighbor draw for us. And it pushes me to think about a BW-hunting/archery- Masonry- AH-HBR- win. I only put hunting/archery in there, because its very likely we will get slammed by barbs. And well, i guess we need hunting for the sheep for city 2.


City 2, the Sheep/fur location, looks to be somewhat ideal for a mid's build. Also, as far as city planning goes, i think it should go fur/sheep, corn, Floodplains/cow/ivory, Stone, Crab/cow, Gold/fur/cow. I say this order, because i doubt Elkad will expand to that desert hill, and we can save that for a later plant ( leaving a scout/warrior to spot for anything ) The floodplains up north looks like it could be contested area, and id like to grab that asap. Im also really hoping we have easily accessible copper and that my barb luck isnt as shitty as the last few games.