[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[picklepikkl]

That was really cool and educational to read! Thank you very much, Sullla!

When do barbs start spawning in later-era starts? (I keep calling it advanced starts in my head, but need to remember that that's another thing )

[scooter]

T0 T250

Off we go!



Settled our capital in place. And thankfully I remembered to revolt civics.



Expect to see this screen highlighted pretty often throughout this game.



So this is interesting. Cheater Hater (Peter/India) was the only person to settle so far, so I got a direct look at his tiles. Both of us having 7 land tiles suggest we are mostly mirrored, but his 10/2 tile output suggests we are not perfectly mirrored. There's no way for our starting 9 tiles to get that output, and I don't see a tile to move to that would do it either. I'm also guessing he picked a different tech judging by that GNP. Also looks like he did not go worker-first given the food-heavy tiles and his Expansive trait.



Our inventive workers Alexander Graham Bell and Benjamin Franklin got started farming. The era the inventors lived in will have to be a little more flexible given the lack of options. Although I believe my ded-lurker is literally a history expert (right?), so please tell me if there are better options.

I moved the capital's rifle SE thinking I could scout a little and return, but now that I think about it, I think by the time he got down that way and could get back, the capital may briefly hit unhappiness. So I may just turn him around. I'll check the sandbox and figure out if he needs to stay put or not. We've got an explorer coming in the capital's queue anyway for the southeast.

[GermanJoey]

Another forest chop completes in the capital for worker #8 at end of turn. The incense plantation completes as well and becomes the aforementioned 1/1/6 tile. Will the other teams realize how powerful that tile is? It's just slightly weaker than the gold resource (which is 0/3/7) and is even less of a negative food hit. The natural instinct is to think "incense resource = crap" but this isn't a normal game, and the incense is on a non-natural plains tile to boot. (Incense naturally appears only in desert.)

Wow, it's like you just stepped out of a time machine from 2006...

[Sullla]

Thanks for snapping a picture of the Demographics screen, scooter. I'm happy with the naming scheme, anything vaguely Industrial-sounding is fine with me. And if we're being completely true to history, the Industrial era in Civ4 terms starts around roughly 1750 anyway, which makes people like Benjamin Franklin very much in the same period. Civ4's Renaissance era runs from about 1500-1750 (think Printing Press, Gunpowder, Chemistry, etc.) while the Industrial era runs from about 1750-1950, and the Modern era is roughly the post-WWII era to present.

Anyway, back to the actual game at hand. I think there's a good chance that the starts are still mirrored. Cheater Hater can get the 10 food / 2 production we're seeing by working the crabs, the floodplains, and a coastal tile to get 10 food / 1 production, and with a revolt to Bureaucracy civic that 1 production would be doubled to 2 production. Presumably they wouldn't have changed the tiles being worked while in Anarchy this turn. Is that how the food/production shows up on the Demographics screen while you're in Anarchy (?) I think it works that way but I could be wrong. I'm waiting to see what happens when someone else founds a city for more information. The only other team to play thus far is Gaspar, who ended turn without settling a city.

So probably two more days until we roll around to the next turn. I'm fine with waiting, and the extra time was very fair given the complexities of an Industrial start. That said, I always like seeing teams be slow to play the first turn, as it suggests they don't have a plan in place. That can only be good for us.

picklepikkl, I don't know the rules for when barbs start appearing on late era starts. I think we get barb rifles, which could be pretty amusing. We're lucky in that we still have the Prince difficulty bonus against barbs, and as an Aggressive leader, our rifles get free Combat I promotion, which makes quite a difference. Scooter, on your question about whether we have the happy cap in place to move out the rifle guarding the capital on exploring duty, it looks like we'll be fine. I tested and the capital is still OK at size 4 (there are 5 happy faces and 5 unhappy faces) with no military unit inside. It will be unhappy at size 5, but we'll have Representation happiness in place by the time it grows to size 5. So we're fine to move that rifle out, but let's not get TOO crazy about leaving our capital undefended for long.

Also agree on the call to move the machine gun to the city #2 site. That looks like the most exposed location out of our initial three cities.

[scooter]

Anyway, back to the actual game at hand. I think there's a good chance that the starts are still mirrored. Cheater Hater can get the 10 food / 2 production we're seeing by working the crabs, the floodplains, and a coastal tile to get 10 food / 1 production, and with a revolt to Bureaucracy civic that 1 production would be doubled to 2 production. Presumably they wouldn't have changed the tiles being worked while in Anarchy this turn. Is that how the food/production shows up on the Demographics screen while you're in Anarchy (?) I think it works that way but I could be wrong.

I'm actually not so sure. I thought your demos show as blank during anarchy? It's worth noting that while he founded a city, he chose not to end turn. It's possible he simply hasn't determined what his civics are yet. I guess we'll know soon enough. If you're right about how demos show in anarchy, then yeah the starts are likely mirrored.

Scooter, on your question about whether we have the happy cap in place to move out the rifle guarding the capital on exploring duty, it looks like we'll be fine. I tested and the capital is still OK at size 4 (there are 5 happy faces and 5 unhappy faces) with no military unit inside. It will be unhappy at size 5, but we'll have Representation happiness in place by the time it grows to size 5. So we're fine to move that rifle out, but let's not get TOO crazy about leaving our capital undefended for long.

I also don't really want to take the risk that some clown is settled across this sea to our east, and they decide to whip out a Galleon and load up their units. So yeah, that rifle will probably turn around and come home pretty quickly.

picklepikkl, I don't know the rules for when barbs start appearing on late era starts. I think we get barb rifles, which could be pretty amusing. We're lucky in that we still have the Prince difficulty bonus against barbs, and as an Aggressive leader, our rifles get free Combat I promotion, which makes quite a difference.

I actually do have an answer for this. It's hardly a 100% concrete answer, but I did play a couple test games on randomly generated maps. The game starts on T250, and the first barbarian cities showed up on T270. As far as I could tell, the barbarians made 0 attempts to actually invade anyone's land - they seemed happy to just camp in their cities. The cities do contain rifles, and they do get the free buildings/population that everyone else gets. With that in mind, I think we would be wise to try to get out a couple Grenadiers (and/or drafted pinch rifles) between now and then. I think it'll be cheaper to capture cities than to settle them, and there's the added bonus of building military that you'll want to have handy anyway. It also means that we don't really want to fogbust. If they aren't going to invade our borders, we're better off encouraging them to settle cities near us that we can capture. Just need to hope the AI isn't TOO dumb when they settle the cities.

edit: I guess I should note that while they do get free buildings, they are hardly guaranteed to survive the capture. So perhaps that diminishes the value of a city capture ever so slightly.

[Sullla]

Another day down, still waiting for the rest of the field to finish the first turn. Pindicator's team (Boudica of Russia) did plant their capital and end their turn, the only other team to do either:



Are the starts mirrored? I still can't tell. It's much harder to figure this out with the Industrial era starts, and honestly probably not all that useful. One thing that we do know for sure: pindicator and Donovan both swapped civics on the first turn, or else their GNP would be higher than 19. (They are both non-Spiritual.) Not exactly shocking that the other teams would be changing civics on the first turn, I know.

About half the field still to play. I'm happy to wait for now.

[Cyneheard]

Dedlurker #2, checking in.

I doubt I'm going to do nearly the level of micro of Sullla as support - I'm way too rusty and was never that great at it anyway.

This will be fun though. Looking forward to the State Property shenanigans.

[scooter]

Turn 251

I have to say - I definitely didn't expect a couple people to take the full 99 hours on the first turn. I think that qualifies as the longest unpaused turn in RB history. The next 4ish turns are set at 50 hours, so I expect those will be slow too. Should kick up to normal pace after that.



Cash-rushed our worker as planned.



Finally got to do some exploring. The land is very green up this way which is nice to see, but no new resources uncovered. Certainly nothing drastic that would make us rethink our plan, so this city will be settled next turn.

Probably NE is the next move, and from there it'll just depend on the terrain. Generally speaking I think this explorer wants to drift towards the coast (assuming the coast goes straight north which it may not), and then gradually loop counter-clockwise towards the other explorer so we can first figure out if there are any urgent city sites. Alternatively, it could just beeline north and try to find a neighbor while the other explorer scouts out the nearby stuff.




Just a row of forests and/or hills, but they are pretty green. This explorer probably ought to hug the coast for a couple more turns.



Rifle probably doesn't really need to go further than the iron hill before returning. If I move it straight to iron and back, it returns to capital by T257. If I detour onto the corn tile on the way back, it'll be T259.



Finally, a few opponent notes.

1) Two players chose not to settle anything on T0 - Boldly Going Nowhere and Gaspar. Gaspar's settling priorities may be a little different being Darius of Dikes. Boldly may prefer to settle on the hill.

2) Really Evil Muffin rolled the turn and immediately settled a second city. He's also not spiritual, so he didn't go into serfdom and use that to 1T road the floodplains... Demos here say he's got 3 land tiles, so we should be able to solve where he went. I originally thought maybe he settled 1S of the lake, but that would give him 15 land tiles rather than 14.

[Sullla]

Looks good scooter. I'll have more thoughts tonight when I get home. I don't think the turn is rolling any time soon.

[Kurumi]

Turn times try to make up for missing all this time till the starting era! :D