[Spoilers] Louis XIV of Babylon

[Tatan]

No Pokemon though. And by extension, no Harry Potter or Twilight either.

... Yu-gi-oh?


Seriously, though, if you do go with philosophers, a few more:

Rousseau, Machiavelli, Burke, Madison, Mosca, Strauss, Archimedes, Lenin, and a bunch of other people I can't remember [guess who's taking a Political Theory class? ].

[SevenSpirits]

... Yu-gi-oh?

http://magiclampoon.com/blog/2009/03/04/...i-oh-card/

[SleepingMoogle]

[Krill]

Your turn:

[SleepingMoogle]

Thanks again for designing the map Krill! Hopefully this means the game will be booted up this weekend.

First thought, I'm playing Louis of Egyptylon! So this might mean the borders will be yellow rather than purple. Possibly a ploy to keep everyone guessing just who their neighbours are? Borders peeking out through the fog won't be sufficient to identify a Civ this way, but the score card will definitely identify who's who after defogging a tile. Maybe I'm missing something.. underneath Bowman and Garden can still be found, no?

Anyway, the start itself seems fairly obviously aimed at settling in place. I don't see too many reasons to not do so (plains hill, river, triple food). The city will be pretty hammer-heavy with 7 hills, but that's good for wonders. Assuming balanced starts, Expansive leaders should have no problem getting their bonus Worker hammer. And the naval Civs are rather screwed, even though there's a coast to the north and we're probably not all that far from water.

It's rather late over here so I will do some sims tomorrow to determine the most efficient early tech/production path. What is interesting is that the Warrior can move in all 4 diagonals to reveal something interesting. With a coast to the north though, south feels like the place to direct early scouting.

[DaveV]

Philosophers? Monty Python lists a few:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQycQ8DABvc

[SleepingMoogle]

Philosophers? Monty Python lists a few:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQycQ8DABvc

Hmm.. think, drink, sleep, dream, think. I think we have come full circle.

Anyway, now that I'm actually slightly awake there's a few more observations to be made. For one, the capital won't be all that rich in food. Both the Cow and the plains hill Deer provide only 3 food when improved (but they do provide 3 hammers each). Some of the grassland tiles need to be farmed to produce enough food if all hills are to be worked. This definitely feels like a future hammer city. For now I'll cottage some tiles for early research but eventually I'll probably want to move my capital to a more commerce-rich site and focus this city on production.

Also, there's no happiness resources in sight and that means Monarchy can't be ignored for long. Any nearby resources will deserve consideration for expansion sites. It gives me some incentive to tech towards construction fairly quickly to open up cheap Gardens as well, and a lucky religion spread would add some additional happiness. For growth beyond that I'll need Hereditary Rule though.

Finally, no Agriculture resources in sight. That's rather annoying as both of my starting techs provide little early benefit now (unless I'm right next to someone I don't plan on Chariot rushing them). Anyway, teching Hunting -> Animal Husbandry first seems like a no-brainer to start with. Hunting will reduce the beaker cost of AH and allow the Deer to be camped. Animal Husbandry enables pastures for the Cows and hopefully reveals Horses somewhere nearby, either in the BFC or close enough to plant the second city. BW will probably be next, before Pottery and Writing, to get visibility on Copper and so that I can whip/chop out some more Workers, a Granary and a Library later.

So the provisional tech path for now:
Hunting -> AH -> Mining -> BW -> Pottery -> Writing

And possible build order:
Worker -> Warriors to size 2 -> Worker -> Warriors to size 3 -> Settler

Maybe the amount of Warriors will be overkill, but it will be useful for scouting purposes. Without barbs, building a Scout or two might even be feasible.

[SleepingMoogle]

It's rather annoying that the forum automatically marks new posts as read if you linger for too long. After writing the previous thread I totally missed the tech forum thread updates because of it and wasn't aware the game had started already.

There appears to be some early start hiccup right now, but hopefully I can play the turn later tonight.

[SleepingMoogle]

And we're off!

The game's settings:



With a huge map size, I'm fairly certain Civs won't have started too close to each other and that makes rushing or choking possibilities unlikely. It also makes Worker first a safer pick. Good for those with a scout start, especially if they also started with Deer at the start.

Before settling, the starting Warrior (now christened Aristotle) moved SW so he can pet the Deer and I get some more visibility on the surrounding lands:



It looks like the coastline may be bending south (you can just see the coast bleeding through the fog behind those plains forests), so we may be sheltered in two directions at least. Also, given the lack of snow on the trees revealed towards the south, we are on the northern half of the map. Whether or not that will matter remains to be seen, but there could be tundra and ice further north.

There is a possibility that planting the capital in the current location may prevent potential seafood resources from being worked. But without having revealed any, and not having the tech to hook them up yet, settling on the plains hill was pretty much a guarantee. The land to the south appears to be a little more flat, but I'd rather not move away from the river. And so the first of the tribes of Somnus founded their city. (Yep, it's not very original, but you try being creative before the morning coffee has had its effect )



More water. Perhaps those naval Civs aren't at as much of a disadvantage as I initially thought.

The river next to the capital appears to be emptying in the lake or inland sea to the SE (I forgot to check whether the lake is salt or freshwater but will do so next turn), but there is a second river to the east. I think I'll let Aristotle explore towards the south while determining if that coastline actually does protect our western border, and send a second scout east to look for potential city locations there. Research was set to Hunting (7 turns) and a Worker has been queued up (10 turns).

Another thing of note is that after the capital expands its borders, it will block the passage towards the east. Depending on how close Civs are to each other, that may prove to be an advantage in denying scouting efforts.

Finally the demographics:



I don't really intend to make a massive effort at C&D as it is quite an exhaustive effort and I don't know all the specifics (though if anyone wants to do that for me I certainly won't stop you ). All starts do seem to be pretty equal though, with similar production and food scores and none of the cities settled so far have been on a coast.

That's about it for now. As always, if there is something specific you would like to see a screenshot of or hear my thoughts about, don't hestitate to ask.

[SleepingMoogle]

It looks like I'm not the only one going with a custom name. The Emoticonfederate city names should be a treat for sure.

Anyway, everyone except for Sunrise and Rego settled their city on the first turn. It is a fairly decent indicator of equalized starts, although I am curious why Sunrise decided to move away from it. Perhaps scouting revealed a resource that made moving beneficial for them? I can't imagine why they'd want a coastal start in any case. Well, unless they want the lighthouse. With everyone else having a non-coastal capital, they would have a decent shot at even beating the Industrious leaders to it. That's assuming a lot though.. for now it's a mystery.

The body of water to the southeast is a saltwater one by the way. So we might actually be playing on a archipelago or islands-esque map (congratulations to the naval Civs if that is the case), but with no one starting on a coast it could be something else entirely. Lakes perhaps? The script was used for RBP1, and Krill has made alternate versions of earlier maps before (PBEM7's map was a variant on RBP2's map for example). I'll need to have look at scripts to see which ones may generate terrain similar to what has been revealed so far. It's far too early for anything other than speculation though.

I did make note of the number of land tiles though, by mousing over the score:



So there's 2435 land tiles. If it's not considered spoiler information, could anyone tell me the total amount of tiles on default huge maps? Much appreciated.

On a different note, are names on the score card are colored the same our borders, so connecting Civ to border will still be possible. There might be a different reason for altering the colors for every Civ, but that still escapes me for now.


Nothing too much happened on the turn itself. Aristotle continues scouting towards the south (SW was blocked by the lake). Here's what he found:



Non-irrigated corn, but perhaps more important is that the river continues to the south. Placing a farm on the tile SE of the corn will irrigate it from CS onwards at least. Depending on what else hides underneath the fog, this might be a good location from a commerce city, so I'll definitely want to explore the area. Somewhat less pleasant is what looks like a desert further SW. It might be floodplains (which would be quite awesome), but I was kind of hoping to find a coast there instead. Aristotle will likely be moving onto the hill east of the Corn over the next two turns.

Demographics at the end of the turn, confirming no one has a coastal start: