[SPOILER] The Steak, Beer, and Cigar Saloon

[Catwalk]

Interesting scouting info this turn. An early happy resource is always welcome, and lots more lake tiles. Hmmm, wonder if pushing purple dot 1E would be worth it? Loses the wine (which is a decent but not great tile), but picks up the ivory and two lake tiles which can be boosted by a lighthouse. It still has a strong tile in first ring for early growth with the grass cows. Overall a stronger city with more food plus picking up the ivory earlier, although obviously a border pop would be needed to get the crabs and ivory so it would develop slower. Not sure it is worth it, but something to consider.

I like moving the purple dot 1E, it'll take forever to get to the elephants otherwise. I'd actually suggest going all the way and moving it 2E. We lose the clams, but we're able to use the elephants without a border pop. The main point of this city would be to secure a critical early luxury. Having to chop a monument before a granary and waiting for culture buildup would lover the value of this city massively. The clams will be worked by the Moai city long-term anyway, and I rather do like the idea of chopping out Moai for starting that city rapidly.

For the scout, you could go SE (to ivory) -> NE and loop around the southern lake. Or if you want to stay closer to the capital maybe NW -> NE and go between the lakes, with vision across the water getting some of the tiles to the east anyway. If your estimate of distance between capitals is accurate then going past the ivory is likely to reveal your rival in that direction.

My analysis is that opponent scouting is more important than complete scouting of my SE, do you agree?

[Dhalphir]

I'm not keen on it because I'm awful at micro plans for building wonders, so I prefer not to ruin my games by trying and failing.

But your arguments for it are sound.

[haphazard1]

Moving purple dot 2E is an interesting idea. I would definitely like to explore past the ivory in that case, to see if there is anything else useful in that direction. Losing the crabs is pretty significant, costing you two food per turn compared to the extra lake tile you would gain. You would get the ivory online much faster, although this only make a significant difference if you grow your cities to the happy cap by the time you would get it (or immediately after). Moving purple 2E would open up the possibility of planting a city NW of the crabs for crabs, wine, two grass hills, and a pair of river grass tiles -- a pretty nice filler city and close to the capital for low maintenance. This would be especially attractive if you end up moving the deer city further west after scouting that direction.

On Colossus, I think it is risky but would have sizable payoff with all the coast and lake tiles you can already see. My biggest worry is that some IND civ will Oracle MC and end up beating you to the wonder. Not even because they are targetting Colossus but because they want their cheap forges early and then afterwards see Colossus as an easy opportunity. Another concern is copper -- I guess you do not need copper settled/connected until after researching MC and building the forge, so there would be time to get a settler out for a copper city. But if you complete BW and do not see any copper.... But you should know that before you have to start focusing your tech choices, right?

[Dhalphir]

A game with multiple industrious civs can be a bit of a prisoner's dilemma situation.

They want to go for wonders, that's why they picked IND, to discourage you. But if they think you've been discouraged, maybe they don't race for the wonders and you can sneak one out from under them. But maybe they do still race for the wonders.

I think given the three IND civs we have here, we can be fairly sure they are going to leverage them hard, and I really worry that we would miss out on the wonder. A Colossus play could be two extra settlers.

[Catwalk]

A game with multiple industrious civs can be a bit of a prisoner's dilemma situation.

They want to go for wonders, that's why they picked IND, to discourage you. But if they think you've been discouraged, maybe they don't race for the wonders and you can sneak one out from under them. But maybe they do still race for the wonders.

I think given the three IND civs we have here, we can be fairly sure they are going to leverage them hard, and I really worry that we would miss out on the wonder. A Colossus play could be two extra settlers.

I agree with you for the most part, except I don't think Colossus will be that high on the wishlist of most IND players. I think most other FIN players will want Colossus, but I also think they're feeling as discouraged as you're trying to make me I'm going to optimistically scratch those off my list, and leave in Jowy + whichever IND player gets Metal Casting. I don't think Jowy will make a play for the Oracle, it's a highly contested early wonder and I don't think he'll feel optimistic enough about his chances to get it.

In a straight race for Colossus, Jowy has on obvious leg up on me, since he's IND. Or does he???! Research time for Metal Casting will matter far, far more than construction time. And with both copper and a forge boosting wonder production, the difference is factor 2,75 vs factor 2,25. He'll only be producing it 22,2% faster than me. And I realistically expect to chop it out in one turn: Base cost is 250, that's 112 base hammers for me and 91 for Jowy. I only have to chop one more forest, and I ought to be able to chop it all in one turn. Next there's the forge, which he also gets an annoying bonus on. It has a base cost of 120, which will require heavy whipping. This is what my end plan would look like:

t?: Sometime before this, build an axeman to 34/35 and whip it to completion 64/35.
t0: Set the axeman to complete at size 6, hpt is 9. Overflow generated is 35 (I'd get 36 with something other than an axeman, just figured it'd be nice to have an axeman on the stack).
t1: Metal Casting hits! Axeman completes, build a forge next with 35 overflow and 9 hpt.
t2: 44/120 on the forge. Triple whip it to 134/120, still 9 hpt.
t3: Forge completes with 23 base hammers overflowing into Colossus. Finish 4 pre-chopped forests with workers on them for 80 base hammers, adding 9 hpt from the city and letting us finish Colossus in one turn with 112 base hammers = 252 Colossus hammers.

Jowy can at most do this one turn faster, and that's if he chops out both the forge and the Colossus. While that is possible, that requires either a significantly larger worker force or far more wasted turns pre-chopping forests and roading them. Is this expensive? Hell yeah. Is it worth it? Hell yeah! I have plenty forests to burn, my capital will regrow in no time and having 4 workers ready for this project by that time is not unreasonable. I also get a free 60% shot at training a Great Engineer, an opportunity I will not otherwise have available. I'd use that to race for Calendar if it's not already taken, I need it for Silk anyway. MoM is a much more expensive wonder, and I'm gambling that noone will have Marble hooked up yet. A Great Engineer would be a huge asset in this race.

So as far as my race with Jowy is concerned, it all comes down to who can research it faster. Neither of us have any advantages to help with that, and both have sub-par starting techs. I feel confident I can micro up beakers better than he can, and it doesn't take many to get a 3t advantage on a tech this expensive.

Now, that leaves the IND/Oracle player... This will be a tougher biscuit to chew. Here it comes down to how many turns I'll be behind in acquiring Metal Casting. I think the fact that noone has Mysticism and there are so many IND civs means it will fall a little later than it would otherwise. If you go for it and fail, you're behind quite a bit. Even if an IND player succesfully rushes it, I think he will more than likely be slow building it unless he does careful C&D to see who's researching what. And even if he does, how is he going to figure out that I'm about to get Metal Casting? He can make educated guesses if he has perfect C&D available to him, but I don't think he will have. Slow building a forge and Colossus will easily take 10-12 turns.

I'm going to read up on Colossus and Oracle build times in previous games to see how my plan stacks up. After that, I'll micro a focused Colossus plan. Rough draft:
1) Get another 2 settlers and 2 workers fairly soon, probably settler/worker/settler/worker.
2) Build cottages everywhere and keep cities at high pop and happiness.
3) Get MC right after Pottery and Hunting.

[Catwalk]

Turn 7

Pink dot discovered It's on a PH too. It's not really that amazing, but I bet that it'll be right in the middle of a contested zone. The yellow dot probably is as well. I like this dotmap, but the good spots are quite far away. If I go for the purple dot, how soon should I settle it? If I don't find other luxuries nearby, I may have to go for it as #3 without really wanting to.

[Catwalk]

Turn 8

Yet another resource bubble, there's very nice land over here. The abundance of water tiles makes me even more keen on Colossus, it effectively expands our useful territory by a very significant factor. I still think we'll be squeezed for space, and I want to make the most of what we get. I just barely remembered to swap to fish this turn, I need 2t of fish before growing and I have 3t left now. Remind me to switch back before growing!!

I expect Oracle to fall around t58-t60, with the Oracle player building Colossus around t70-t75. I think I can get MC around t63, I'm going to sim a simple run where I just grow my capital and my expansion with cottages and see how fast that lets me land the Colossus.

[Dhalphir]

I might have to stop being a dedlurker for a while - I've offered to play BaII's turns for the next 3-4 days while he is away. He's given me a detailed micro plan and I'll be making no decisions, but I guess it'll be up to him as to whether I go global now.

[Catwalk]

Up to you, but can't he find someone else? I enjoy your contributions

[Dhalphir]

I asked him, he has no problems with me returning as dedlurker once I've finished carrying out his instructions. So all is well.