[spoilers] DTG thinks filthy casuals are ruining Realms Beyond

[DTG]

What sort of water is to the East and West? The hover will say 'fresh' for a lake and other (can't remember) for an ocean. Wales to the East pretty much says it is an ocean (doesn't it?)

Ten water tiles count as an Ocean, nine or fewer a lake. So when I say:

We should try to figure out if the coast to our East is genuine coast, or just an oversized Lake. If it is a Lake, we can just loop around it.

I mean something like one of the "Oceans" here:

[picklepikkl]

That sounds reasonable, DTG; if the scout moves to the grass forest S of the ivory next turn, we can see what the coastline does (east? south? southeast to taunt us?) and doesn't waste too much time returning if it doesn't look promising.

I am pretty anxious about exploring our southwest even if it means cutting through already-explored territory, though. This might just be my inherent bias for knowledge over no-knowledge, even when I can't immediately act on it, but I do think it's important to our tech path after we get Hunting (I'm pretty sure we need that first) to know if our second city can rely on land food or if we have to become sea peoples.

[DTG]

Foooooood:




Dry Corn, but 5F is 5F.

Now let's hope the turn pace speeds up a little.

[picklepikkl]

Nice! But still kind of far from the capital. Fog gazing makes me think that this body of water continues east for a while before rounding south, if ever; are you thinking double back, or do you just want to yolo our scouting in that direction and rely on eventual Quechua scouting for the southwest?

Looks like those whales are in fact orphans, too, unless there's something very weird going on southeast of them. Swim so wiiiiiild and swim so free...

[Ruff_Hi]

City where the scout is looks really attractive ... but not for the 2nd city. Maybe we can scout with the worker by moving to forest hill (South of city) to chop into 2nd worker (or settler)?

[picklepikkl]

I updated the sandbox, since now that we see what our northeastern first-ring city sites are like, it might be worth simming how quickly we can get them up and improved: link. On the whole, though, I agree with Ruff; that city will be bonkers (kind of wishing we'd nabbed Wang Kon now), but due to distance and tech needs (Fishing and AH), I don't think it should be our first expansion if we can help it.

In a couple of turns, the hills S-SW and W-SW of our cap will be inside our cultural borders, so we'll have vision from them. Even so, the forest just south of the southern one blocks us from having 2t of vision in that direction, so if there's anything hiding down there because greenline is trolling us hard, we'll need to send a unit to go see it.

EDIT: What's the deadline on selecting a tech, by the way, before it automatically puts all our beakers into something arbitrary?

[DTG]

Great, and thanks for the updated sandbox picklepikkl. We could run some serious tests after Cuzco's borders pop? Hopefully that will reveal something interesting, Forest line-of-sight blocks be damned. (Also, this is a reminder that one of us needs to rename the cap...)

I agree with you both that the Corn/Ivory/Crab location isn't ideal for a second city. I had forgotten that we need Animal Husbandry to build Camps. But yeah: Fishing, AH, BW to chop a Forest, Pottery to get the Terrace and border pop... that's a lot of beakers. Too many for now, I think.

With regards to movement, I thought about it a bit and decided to move 1E,1SE. That lets us move back to the Ivory on T5 if necessary (which will still unfog some tiles). Plus, more importantly, I have a gut feeling that the water mass can be circled. YOLO! Here's what we've found:

I think it makes sense to loop round now, right? We won't build a Settler for another 20ish turns and, although we'll need to plan Worker movement before that, I think we'll have enough time to make it.

Also, wet riverside Corn is the best find so far. It's a shame it's so far away, and surrounded by Jungle.

EDIT: What's the deadline on selecting a tech, by the way, before it automatically puts all our beakers into something arbitrary?

It's T5 in SP and PBEM, but I'm not sure about Pitbosses and I *think* I read a game once where someone got forced to tech Archery by accident. I picked Hunting this turn to be safe.

[picklepikkl]

I feel like this game's logistics can only be described by the word "shitshow."

Going for the loop now that the game is back on seems reasonable; I just hope we don't get eaten by a lion (barbs are on, and I'm not sure when animals start spawning) before we can make it around this body of water. If that was a land bridge to a mostly unconnected continent, I will be frustrated.

Also, good lord this map is green. I'm amused by how the only plains we've seen thus far are in our BFC.

You mention renaming the capital, DTG; I really liked the suggestions of "rhetorical devices" and "cat breeds," but did you settle on one of those? If not, Ruff, would you care to cast a vote?

[DTG]

I feel like this game's logistics can only be described by the word "shitshow."

Yep. It's mind-boggling to me that you would signup to a game like this, and then drag your heels about playing before we've even reached T5. Let's hope that the July 4 weekend was the root cause and not some deeper malaise.

Going for the loop now that the game is back on seems reasonable; I just hope we don't get eaten by a lion (barbs are on, and I'm not sure when animals start spawning) before we can make it around this body of water. If that was a land bridge to a mostly unconnected continent, I will be frustrated.

We get one free win versus barbs on Prince, so we can go in all gung-ho and shit whilst initially exploring, knowing that we're invincible for our first fight.

I think barb animals appear on T5? It's T5 on deity, but the actual barbarian units appear later on lower difficulties, so it might affect animals too.

You mention renaming the capital, DTG; I really liked the suggestions of "rhetorical devices" and "cat breeds," but did you settle on one of those? If not, Ruff, would you care to cast a vote?

ruff, the choices are:

Obscure Greek and Latin rhetorical devices? (listed on the right)

Breeds of cats

I'm happy with either.

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For the game, here's our capital after the border expansion, along with a friend:




1SE of the Fish looks like a potential City #2 site to me. Despite the lack of Corn, we won't need a border-pop for a while, we can steal a food tile from the cap, we can chop a WB, and the new Cow tile is handy. It's not an A* city spot, and it isn't on a hill, but it'll be good to have a second hammer city for Quechas and Workers.

Obviously the Eikad Scout is big news. We must be close... 10 tiles or fewer away? I suppose that means we shall need to be a little defensive and that, if there are contended city sites to our south, we shall need to be aggressive.

Anyway, our uncomfortable proximity aside, Eikad is probably as good a neighbour to have as we could have hoped for. Asoka will be one of the slowest starters and has no way to bully us with culture. He may also be a turn behind our development, if he failed to SIP. And Vultures are less threatening than Impis, as long as Eikad doesn't try to rush us.

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The Scout is revealing goodies to our east:






Poor stranded Whales. Swim forth, thouest wonder of the sea, for now and forever free.

[picklepikkl]

I am so incredibly delighted by our luck in neighbors. 2cow+fish is OK, but I hope there are other food resources thataway, because I want to send as many of our early cities as we can in that direction. What's he going to do? Pay half-cost civic maintenance at us?

I'm also heartened by how the coast seems to be curving back west in the fog. Everything's coming up Milhouse.