Ranamar and Lewwyn, ministers for Bismarck of Mali

[SevenSpirits]

Woot. That's another fish and whales up there. Sadly we might waste our free barb kill defending here.

It's a 90% chance the wolf attacks each time. Really wish we had chased the bear.

[Ranamar]

I've got an 8am conference call today, so I think one of you will need to get this save, too.

[Lewwyn]

I've got an 8am conference call today, so I think one of you will need to get this save, too.

got it

[Lewwyn]

So I started the cow pasture, moved both warriors NW. The south one can either go SW towards the jungle or west. Consider though that the borders will pop in 7 turns and we'll be able to see probably most f the west since we'll get a new hill tile in our cultural borders. Thus I suggest both warriors head for their respective isthmus connections.

The wolf did attack in the north. No scratch. No sign of the bear right now either.

[Ranamar]

So I started the cow pasture, moved both warriors NW. The south one can either go SW towards the jungle or west. Consider though that the borders will pop in 7 turns and we'll be able to see probably most f the west since we'll get a new hill tile in our cultural borders. Thus I suggest both warriors head for their respective isthmus connections.

The wolf did attack in the north. No scratch. No sign of the bear right now either.

That's what I'm inclined to think too, with regards to warrior movement.

The bear's probably wandering around on the west (already explored) end of the northern area.

[SevenSpirits]

The wolf did attack in the north.

OK. So now we have to be careful with the scouting warriors, especially the northern one (what with the bear sighting). Don't move to a non-forest/jungle that a barb is or might be adjacent to.

[SevenSpirits]

Played t18 and sent.

Our micro plan called for finishing the road and the pasture and then using two workers to chop the same forest. I realized it would be better if the new worker moved to chop right away, while the other worker finished the pasture and the road and then had one free turn left over. The chop still finishes at the same time, we just don't waste a second worker turn moving the other worker onto it. So next actions are: worker 2 chops for 3 turns, worker 1 completes pasture, comlpetes road on 1N of cap, ??? party!

Northern warrior moved W onto the stone.

Southern warrior crossed fingers and moved SW. Will have to cross fingers again next turn (there might be a lion in the fog).

At end of turn, bronze working finished. Copper is not visible!! Two possibilities:
a) We don't have copper on our main blob of land.
b) It is on that tile in the west that we haven't revealed yet. (That would be frustrating.)



It's important that we decide upon a plan in the next 3 turns at minimum, because we have to choose our tech path very soon! I think we can get away with Mysticism next no matter what: reason being, even if we need fishing due to settling the double fish, we will just whip out the work boat and therefore don't need to start it until the city has almost grown. Which is enough time to get Myst->Fishing. Whereas Myst might be more important to get sooner in order to start Stonehenge if we want to do that. Beyond Myst though, which is a 3-turn tech, our tech path is quite up in the air.

[SevenSpirits]

Here's the skeleton of a sandbox. It's the right dimensions with the right settings. Just needs our land blob to be filled out (and played through turn 18).

[Ranamar]

Since you kindly produced the picture I meant to make and never did, I decided to see about laying out cities...

The eastern half of our land, which is looking more islandlike all the time, seems pretty straightforward, actually. A few of these could be shifted around, but not by much due to city spacing rules. That, of course, leaves the hard work for us in trying to figure out what to do with the western half. Also of note is that every single one of these cities are coastal. The Great Lighthouse would give us +2 trade routes in every one of those, which is going to be at least +2 (initially, with internal routes) and later +6 or more commerce per city. Of course, the Colossus would also get us a lot of commerce, eventually, because of the large number of water tiles, but... this wouldn't even require citizens.

Green Dot (shares cow) is probably our best bet for getting it built, if we go that route, since it shares the cows, has a second food source in the pigs, and has several minable plains hills. (Also, it's another "plant on a desert to make use of a useless tile" city.)

Red Dot is the ridiculous food city we've been discussing. If we want to whip out the lighthouse, instead of building it some other way, I suppose that's the place to do it. Do either of you know how to find the minimum population after a whip? (I think it may be "no more than half may be whipped away at a time"...) I'm unconvinced it has the production to build things in a timely manner, though. (hmm... actually... a mine on the hill, and cut down the other forest... or maybe keep it until almost the end, actually... and deforest purple dot's land... that could be worth trying.)

In the North, there's Yellow Dot, which hits a ton of food resources. My money's on this being our GPP pump. I'm not sure what to say about it further, beyond that I wish the corn were somewhere easier to share.

Orange Dot is there to share the fish and get the stone and whale. I'm not sure it shouldn't be moved 1N. That would lose it the chance to use the fish, but... that seems like an excellent place to put the Moai Statues, which would make more water tiles not terrible, as well as reducing overlap and getting us off a peak. Yeah, I know I drew it there, but I'm really thinking it ought to be one north of that. It won't be able to share food resources to grow, but it makes better use of the land, and, if we have good worker support by then, it might not matter anyway.

Finally, there's Purple Dot, an otherwise worthless site, could be used in a mass deforestation ploy, at some point, but you only get that once, and it'd then proceed to suck until optics, at which point it'd only suck a little less. I haven't done the math, but I don't think that chopping down that many forests would actually get us there. That city is only there because there was space to fill, and that's basically the only legal place to plant it. It'd give us more trade routes, though.

West of those cities is harder, unfortunately. I think you're right that we can cram one in on the coast W of Timbuktu and probably sharing the wheat. That desert (again) hill looks nice, but I'm inclined to wait for borders to pop another layer before nailing anything down, I think. 1N on the plains forest could also be good, since it gets at the incense, but I kind of want to put a city near the FP grabbing horses and luxury goods. It'll suck to feed, unfortunately. Maybe share the sugar, and figure something else out for the incense.

[SevenSpirits]

Here's what I hope is a fully accurate sandbox. I left the unknown tile as tundra.

Our opponents in this game have one-tile islands and no palace, so they should not be able to steal any religions or wonders.