[SPOILERS] Isabella of Carthage, starring Ellimist, SleepingMoogle, and Nicolae

[SleepingMoogle]

Also, we should make contact around turn 48? Looking forward to it.

[Ellimist]

Turn 49, I think, unless they're creative(Kuro).

[SleepingMoogle]

If your mirror marks are correct, we will be able to see the tiles marked on the map as T49, and the one east of it on turn 48 due to the added visibility on water tiles. And these should be tiles in the capital's second ring.

[Ellimist]

By the way, barbarians are indeed turned off. Are scouts still a bad idea?

There are 778 total land tiles on this map, and if we assume that all 4 players have a 26 tile starting island, that leaves 674 in the middle. I'd like to get a head start on exploring it so we can know what city sites will be most valuable or contested.

[SleepingMoogle]

Alright, without Barbs, Scouts become a better investment. We could train two and have them explore in opposite directions perhaps? When they're done, we can always press them into MP duty in a backline city.

We'll want to get the third city up and running asap though (and not delay the fourth any longer than is necessary). Turn 50 is already on the fairly late side given our capital's resources.

[Ellimist]

Ioan sent save, am playing.

It's after 2 am where I live and I've been waiting for the darn save for 110 minutes now.

I can play it in the morning or either of you can if it comes. The complicated micro is pretty much over, just follow the queued moves and keep working 7 hammers per turn.



The only reasons I can think of for Kuro holding the save for this long(2 hours!) is (a) he forgot about it, or (b) he's doing a crazy amount of micro planning. I keep worrying that we'll get the fail message as another civ completes the wonder. Oracle-MC-Colossus will just be so huge on this map, I can really see all players going for it.

Kuro seems like a decent player, if a bit obsessive. I can see him going for the Oracle and micro-ing out 20 different plans for it. He's creative, so (like us) he'd have better access to the 2nd ring of his second city. He's not expansive though, so I think we'd have an edge vs him on getting workers out faster. Plus, we founded Hinduism and he didn't, so he probably isn't even going for it.

Noble/Lewwyn would be the clear favorite to win it, except for their Stonehenge detour and failure to found Buddhism/Hinduism. With their leader/civ choices, it's not really optional for them to attempt to oracle slingshot MC, but hopefully they were overconfident as the only industrious leader. They're still going to be tough to beat though. If we do win it, I don't think it will be by a very wide margin. The best explanation I can think of for beating them to Hinduism is that they went Meditation instead of Polytheism to gain a few turns and try to partially compensate for building Stonehenge.

JK/Ioan had a mysticism start and a cursory look at C&D says they founded buddhism. This telegraphs a possible Oracle race, but they seem to have gone warrior-first. Also there's the weird Inca thing that suggests they aren't paying that much attention to details. Honestly I just don't see them being that major of a threat vs our micro plans.

I haven't crunched through too much of the C&D, but based (mostly) on Stonehenge and religions, I'd estimate our chances are around 55%, with Noble/Lewwyn 30%, Jkioan 10%, and Kuro 5%.

[SleepingMoogle]

If the save arrives in the next hour or so, I can play it before leaving to work.

I wouldn't worry too much about Kuro going after the Oracle. There's not too much reason for him to invest in the early religious techs with a Creative leader, so he simply have forgotten to pass on the save. Getting early Writing for cheap Libraries would be more beneficial for the research boost, and he can then leverage his Philosophical trait to get out a quick Scientist for an Academy.

The other two teams are more likely to go after the Oracle, and I'm confident we can beat them due to their early game choices (Jkaen not going Worker first and NobleHelium and Lewwyn picking up SH).

[SleepingMoogle]

Alright, played the turn (47). No Oracle was BIDL, so we're still on course to finish it at the end of the next turn. Other than that, there wasn't a lot else going on. Here's some screenshots:

Exploration:





Canopus:



Will be at 103/150 at the end of the turn, and get 47 hammers on the next.


And the demographics after the end of the turn:




I wasn't sure if I was meant to whip the Granary in Sirius, but it seemed like a better idea to let the city grow to size 6 and slow-build it, which should minimize the amount of 'lost' food once it starts storing it. The whip can be put into the next build instead.

One small note: I'm not a big fan of queueing up moves in advance. Everything moved as soon as I loaded up the save, which leaves us unable to react to anything that happened outside of our turn (and a lot can happen in MP games). That's also the reason why I always cancel Worker actions before ending the turn.. it allows us to do something else with Workers if the situation requires it. In this case I cancelled the Workers from chopping immediately at the start of the next turn, so that if someone else were to finish the Oracle, we can still choose whether or not to invest the chops into another build.

[SleepingMoogle]

Some thoughts post-Oracle (assuming for now that we'll land it this turn):

Techwise, once Sailing is finished Hunting -> Writing is probably best for us. I mentioned researching AH before Writing for the discount a little earlier, but with Copper present and no barbs we don't really need it for strategic reasons, and we also haven't yet seen any food resource to pasture near us. Hunting can probably be researched very quickly, and enable us to hook up the Ivory for additional happiness.

Once Canopus finishes the Oracle, we should switch back to a food focus (Fish/Rice/Gold) and get a Granary started. We can whip it to completion and quickly regrow using those three tiles again. At this point I'm leaning towards letting the overflow go into a Scout, or maybe a MP Warrior. Once the city is regrown, we can then start on either a Worker or Settler to expand onto the mainland.

Technically we could get started on the Colossus already, but we have such a head start with MC that it makes more sense to me to focus on scouting and getting more cities out asap first. Once Copper is hooked up, the Colossus should be a fast build anyhow, and we probably are a little behind on expansion.

Ellimist, I read the mail about your plan to double-build the Colossus for a fail gold bonus, but like Nicolae, I'm not that big a fan. Not really because I fear losing out on the Colossus itself, but mostly because we would be converting hammers to gold while they could be better spent on more Workers and Settlers. It's not a bad plan per se, but we can't both REX and spam wonders. If we need to grow a city and nothing else is available, we can put in a few hammers, but that should be the extent to which it makes sense.

Workers.. if we're going for Hunting as our next tech the one chopping the southern forest (I think that was Pedro?) could stay behind and build a mine on the hill he's currently on, and then move to build a camp on the Ivory. The other two can build a road back to Sirius while we get out a Galley, and perhaps start cottaging the grassland there. Without barbs, we can send them over for scouting purposes but I'd like to keep one of them near the capital to improve the tiles there if possible.

Sirius is still on to whip out a Galley after the Granary finishes right? Do we want to get out a Warrior or Scout after that? If Sirius is building units, that would also free up Canopus to start on the Colossus.

[SleepingMoogle]

Okay, this game is starting to dominate my Civ 4 thoughs.

Do we really need Hunting right away? We don't have the amount of improved tiles yet that would make it sensible for cities to grow beyond, say, size 5, and we have more than enough that we can whip right now. Perhaps it is a better idea to queue up Writing and Hunting after that? I'm guessing by that time the extra happiness will become more useful than it does now.

Also, with the current food situation, would we need a Granary in Canopus right away? The city can easily regrow to max size in between whips without one. Instead, we could whip out a Worker or Settler and regrow on some scouts and or MP Warriors.

Food for thought?