[SPOILER] The Steak, Beer, and Cigar Saloon

[Catwalk]

Second attempt:
Metal Casting t76 (also researched AH, Writing and Mathematics)
Colossus t78
5 cities on t73

I did cheat and give myself a fur tile, as grabbing a luxury resource with my third city is crucial to the plan. If we don't find that, we'll be in for a rough time.

Dhalphir, this is Normal speed. All the games I referenced were Quick, so multiply their turn numbers by 1.5 for a reasonable approximation. Anything below t90 for Colossus seems fairly safe, but I'll check out more games and see if it ever falls early.

[Dhalphir]

So yeah, even the most aggressive Colossus play by Boldly at turn 68 on quick speed wouldn't be until past turn 100 on normal speed.

[Catwalk]

For later use:

Hammers = (SabotageCost * (TheirEP + 100)) / (3 * InvestigateCost)

[Catwalk]

I have yet to find a game where Oracle was used to grab MC and then build Colossus in short order. Apparently CoL is a very popular Oracle slingshot. It's risky to base my early plan on that assumption, but I think I'll go with it. I'm not even sure if an IND player without FIN would prefer having the Colossus rather than failgold, 2.75 gold per hammer is powerful and the Colossus won't do them that much good. If I plan on landing it t90, it won't disrupt my early growth much at all and we can focus on getting off to a proper start. What GP should I go for first and when? Merchant, Engineer (60% chance) and Scientist are all in play. I can get the first two fairly fast, and probably should.

[Dhalphir]

Wait, Jowy is IND/FIN?

Just to let you know, I almost ALWAYS see Jowy make the Oracle, and if he's IND/FIN, he may want to go for the Colossus. Jowy isn't THAT strong a player, so it may be worth outexpanding him and just taking the Colossus from him later.

[Catwalk]

Good tip, I'm going to read up a bit on Jowy's latest games to get a feel for his playing style. I'm not keen on relying on taking it from him, both because he may well not get it and because I probably won't be geared for any kind of early war of conquest. I hope to limit early warfare to border skirmishes over territory rather than invading established enemy cities.

PB12, playing FIN/SPI of Babylonia:
t25:

MM plan from last page. We have kind of a slow start. If anyone's determined to get Stonehenge, they will beat us to it. I would prefer waiting until we have marble hooked up, and then using those forest chops to build marble-based wonder(s). How about The Oracle -> Metal Casting -> The Colossus combo? Colossus city needs to be on the coast. I'm having a hard time dotmapping our island, especially the area close to our capital. But maybe plant the first city near the cows. Chop Oracle there. Third city grabs marble in the north, fourth city 1N of the Silks and that's where we chop The Colossus. It would help if we had copper in one of those early cities. How's that for a plan?

t66:

Wohoo! Hinduism spread to Jasmine, just when it grew to size two. This means we don't have to whip the monument. Let's whip a worker instead. Jasmine will work the crab and the shared mine for now. Someone also built The Oracle a few turns ago. You were right that ours would have been way late. He probably took Metal Casting and will build The Colossus. We could check for score increases in CivStats, but TBH I don't see us going for The Colossus anyway so it doesn't matter. EDIT: It's Gavagai, I checked.

[Catwalk]

Added PB12 stats as well, with Colossus landing on t115. I feel confident that t90 is a conservative estimate for when we need to have it, I might even push it to t100 if I'm feeling bold. Colossus seems to be a low-valued wonder in general, I'm not seeing much competition for it anywhere. I'm guessing this is because Metal Casting is required, as you don't typically want it this early.

I don't think Astronomy will be in that high demand here, it seems like there are mostly coastal tiles. I'll need to also check up on when Astronomy falls in a game like this, so I know how much we'll get out of it. This also means that we can likely go with your early Academy plan Dhalphir

[Catwalk]

I revised the micro plan again, posting it in a little bit. Results:
- settler done t35, settling t36 (spending 3 turns building a PH road)
- warriors done t30 and t31
- capital whipped back to size 1 on t34 to complete the settler faster

[haphazard1]

Merry Christmas! Been busy with family activities, so just a quick drive-by comment or two today.

Those later timings for Colossus make grabbing it much more promising. I generally tend to avoid early drives for wonders because expansion is usually such a stronger option. And you definitely have good city sites available. But if you can manage without stunting expansion much then it could be quite a good move. Especially since I think you are correct about Astronomy not being high priority with all the coast.

First GP: scientist is almost always a strong move unless the capital will be commerce poor. That is not at all the case this game with all that FIN river grassland, so I would probably go for an academy. GE is always a powerful option, although I am not sure 60% odds would be worth risking. (What would you get if not a GE?) GM is less desirable I think, although any great person is of course better than not having one.

[Catwalk]

If I go for the 60% GE shot, the remaining 40% would be GM (Forge + Colossus). It would actually be a bit higher:
6E + 60E + 40M => 63.5% or so. Is that math correct? I'd be at 66 GE points out of 104 total.

As I mentioned earlier I really like GMs, but I'm not too keen on trying to safely ship them away somewhere this early. A GS for an academy would take 9 turns to spawn, I'm guessing I can easily complete it around t75 or so. Should I go for a second GP right away and diffuse the pool with engineer and merchant points?

Micro reminder for later: If a chop comes in before you want it (happens a lot while I'm building a warrior and want to grow but don't want any extra hammers on the warrior) then you can feasibly delay it by putting one cottage or mine turn into it. After the chop, that cottage or mine turn still counts! This may be common knowledge, but I've never used it that way before.