[49 spoilers] Miguelito, pindicator and Adrien take Shiva by the hands

[Miguelito]

ours:



MrCairo's






no time to write, will do later tonight. Maybe there's something in the fog south of that wheat.

[AdrienIer]

Lol I was going to mention red dot (or one of its neighbors) as a good alternate first spot before the copper reveal. I think red before the northern frontier is fine. Orange dot can be a filler later on when IW is nearer. A bit more scouting to the south would be nice though. Persia is probably going to go for a copper city before considering this area, so an early third city there is going to be ok.
I assume we have a bit more space than others, and that they don't have the FP. It would more or less balance the jungle.

[pindicator]

What are your thoughts about settling on top of the elephant? It's a 2h plant, shares the flood plains with the capital, and gets you another port for the center sea.

[Miguelito]

Lol I was going to mention red dot (or one of its neighbors) as a good alternate first spot before the copper reveal. I think red before the northern frontier is fine. Orange dot can be a filler later on when IW is nearer. A bit more scouting to the south would be nice though. Persia is probably going to go for a copper city before considering this area, so an early third city there is going to be ok.
I assume we have a bit more space than others, and that they don't have the FP. It would more or less balance the jungle.

Gotta, say I hate it. No forests, no sharing with the cap, just one 4food resource, and flood plains to keep our workers busy for the rest of eternity. Red dot (at least the not-pale version on the river) sure is going to be awesome, eventually. But it has an awfully slow start, particularly as we don't have a worker yet  . That's why I envisioned it for 4th or 6th city. It also needs a border pop (which sure can be arranged)
Pale red at least gets one forest from the capital, but is of course not as good after cottaging the river, doesn't get a TR, and settling 1 off coast is ugly, sure. Now, pindi's suggestion:

What are your thoughts about settling on top of the elephant?  It's a 2h plant, shares the flood plains with the capital, and gets you another port for the center sea.

Also gets that forest, and sharing the capital FP is helpful, but it gets even less FP, which we would have to claim with blue.

I will send the scout to the tile E of the wheat next turn, then make a comparison of the available options. Pink sure is out of the running, we would be betting all on MrCairo's peacefulness, and while I think he hasn't seen our copper, he has scouted the pink dot area and will conclude we don't have it at our cap either. Now, I do see good arguments for Orange again.

I really think the copper location will dictate everything else.  With copper and hunting we have all the tech we need to defend against a rush in the early game.  (I wouldn't worry about an immortal rush so much to change my plans yet; but if you later see the power starting to spike then it may be time to get some extra spears out.)

Sure, but the plan has to include Hunting somewhat early. But I think that's implied in your response. If we see the power indicate immortals, we can whip the spears, as long as the tech's there.

As far as the technologies you list out, Polytheism, Wheel, and Pottery are the 3 immediate needs in my opinion.  The other ones are a second tier, and I'd add Animal Husbandry to that 2nd tier as well because finding horses is also very valuable information.  As for Poly vs Meditation, I think Poly is the better tech overall for the tech tree, but I may be not remembering some of the ramifications of the more recent tech requirement changes done in RtR.  Agriculture really isn't needed until we get a city that has a Wheat in it.

I agree. Note though that both pink and red dots do have wheat. I think, if we end up with either of the reds, we have to take agri before pottery, as we don't want to grow on FP alone.

Wonders are a bit of a weak spot in my game; I've tended to just dismiss them in general because the safer play is usually not to go for them.  That's what will have you place in the top half of these pitboss games.  But the winning play is to risk it for the wonder.  So I suppose it depends on your strategy for this game:  risky play and be okay with getting rushed and losing, or play solid and go for the top half of things.  I will add that I can't see where we'd build a wonder right now except in the capital - and then are you commiting your forests to the wonder or to chopping out settlers?

I do think the mids are very strong for us, for obvious reasons (we can do more than the standard Rep, but also switch into PS when it's convenient (or even cyclically, to coincide with alternating Theocracy/OR unit/infra building cycles). I also think we would very much appreciate triremes (and if Cairo somehow gets his hands on them, that's an immense problem). Now, oracle is 150 hammers. I do not fancy building it from the cap, we need those forests for expansion, we have no others. But I can see a grey dot (by the plains cow / double PH sheep) building it. One of them can get 3 forests first ring (more second ring, but that would require a lucky religion spread). That is not great and it's by no means assured, superdeath with IND may go for it or someone else with more forests. But differing from others, the tech is right in front of us if we go for the early religion, and pretty cheap.

How I'd play this is to keep the pink dot + poly plan, then follow up with Wheel to connect cities and probably Pottery because cheap granaries are just nuts. 

pink dot is no more, but still cheap granaries - yessir!

But keep an eye out for copper and be ready to throw everything out the window and reassess when copper appears.

and here we go, just one hpour after you posted

[Miguelito]

Now at least according to the demos we are winning  

best in the world!

Also got graphs on MrCairo this turn. He's continuing to spend on us, but apparently just 2 ep/t, which is strange either way.

[Miguelito]

the scout has no good news:



so, let's compare second city candidates:

1. Orange

• shares capital fish
  
• 2 forests (from capital)
  
• no new food resource before IW
  
• 3food city tile
  
• immediate trade route
  
• 2 new FP (+1 from cap)
  
• copper second ring, needs border pop
  

[*]2. Red

• no shared tiles with capital
  
• no forests
  
• wheat second ring
  
• regular city tile
  
• trade route after border pop or 2 roads
  
• 6 new FP
  
• needs border pop for the wheat
  

[*]3. Pale Red

• no shared food with capital
  
• 1 forest (from cap)
  
• wheat first ring
  
• regular city tile
  
• trade route with 2 roads (required for copper anyways)
  
• 3 new FP
  
• doesn't need a border pop soon
  

[*]4. Elephants

• no shared food with capital
  
• 1 forest (from cap)
  
• wheat first ring
  
• regular city tile
  
• immediate trade route
  
• 1 new FP (+1 from cap)
  
• doesn't need a border pop soon
  

[*]


For me it comes down to Orange vs. Elephant. I concede that Elephant is the better city per se. But we're not really set up to found it - I feel like it actually would want 2 workers right at founding. We currently have 0 (you may argue that in hindsight, the double workboat was bad play).
- Orange can be founded without a worker on 25, then the turn the worker (whipped to the hammer  from the cap straight after the settler) reaches the copper the borders pop from Polytheism, which is researched to the beaker the turn the city's founded. It's all working very beautifully. It then builds a second worker and granary, which is chopped in. Cap builds the next settler, which is whipped eot 36. Orange doesn't grow too slowly with the 3food city tile, the availability to take the capital fish, and the shared cap FP (and later the 2 other ones). Of course the capital suffers.
- Elephant can be founded with a worker (who chops the settler before and has the copper road ready*) on turn 28. The next settler comes eot39, maybe 38. The micro always feels a little off. But the fact remains, on turn 40 we have one more 6yield tile in the civ.
* that chops the forest in Elephant's reach into the capital though, but Elephant has hammers while we are thirsty for worker turns, so it can get the granary on its own

Apart from that, I like Orange because it is perfect for getting religion on our way, while with Elephant we can't really research a religious tech before t36 or so, which feels late. It also has the advantage of being a stepping stone to the NW area with the three animals and the forests, which would give us a lot of hammers, and project us further north towards the green valley. We could then found for 3rd or 4th on the Elephant, or SE of it to get the newly discovered cows (that is still closer to us than to Ruff), with better worker support.
Might be that Elephant is stronger, while Orange is fancier. I fear I want fancy :rolleye: . But if you think it's a grave error, I can probably be talked out of it.

Demos/power - I think 3k for Cairo means he got a pop and a warrior?

For my sims I have two questions:
- can somebody tell me please when to optimally build the granary (empty food barn / no more than half full / ?). Bonus cookies if you can explain why. I remember that there's something to be observed but I never understood this exactly
- My current standard approach is to grow on granary, put a chop in when possible, but whip settlers/workers. Would you whip a granary? Burning pop to get pop faster seems counterintuitive

[Miguelito]

... and after going back and forth on this for way too long, a late turn rolled.



nice area, but this is rather Ruff's natural domain. Purple can connect seas with a fort on the desert.

I'm still researching Poly, that's the path for Orange, but I can still change to Wheel/Agri in time for Elephant (but we're getting close to the point of no return)


demos. Cairo got BW in.

[AdrienIer]

Granary should be built when the food bar is half full : while the rest of the bar gets filled it "fills" the granary as well. IIRC if you're at (let' say) 16/32 at the beginning of the turn where you finish the granary the order at the end of the turn is : granary finishes, then food gets calculated. So you get the full granary benefits. But perhaps someone can confirm that.

[RefSteel]

Actually, no, it works like this:

The granary does nothing on the interturn when it's completed. On every subsequent turn however, each food you gain is added both to your food bar and to the granary. The maximum the granary can hold is half the current food bar (before growth). Then, when you grow, you get all the food in the granary added to your new food bar; this happens after food is added to the original food bar and granary.

So if you finish the granary at the same time you reach a half-full food bar, it will work for every growth thereafter. But even if not: Suppose you're at size 4, so you need 28 food to grow, and you're making 7 food per turn. You finish your granary on the same interturn when you reach 20 food in the bin. That's a lot more than half! But the next turn, you're at 27/28 food and the granary is at 7. And the next turn, you go up to 34/28 food, the granary goes up to 14 - its maximum - and you therefore end up at size 5 with (14 + 34 - 28 = ...) 20/30 food in the bin!

[pindicator]

RefSteel has it right regarding granary.

I'm warming to Orange - with a border pop it will be good.

I also like purple and red over coastal elephant.

How about pulling the scout back and scouting south of that desert a little? I'd just like to see that next row or two of tiles to see what's near the wheat