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

[Nicolae Carpathia]

5 hills is great, everyone forgets about the production to get your infrastructure up asap. There are 8 riverside tiles, and another 3 base grasslands. You guys are so spoiled , that is *gorgeous*, I'd be stoked to get a site like that in any other game.

And don't forget, a city 2SE of the whales tiles is the filler you're after. It's a valid site, it's 3 spaces away from the rest of the dotmap. Don't forget, cities on a different landmass don't follow the 3-tile rule. I'd settle that soon, grow on floodplains cottages, and work them in anticipation of bureaucracy.

As for the food situation in Yellow, the fish and 3 grassland farms will let us work all the special tiles and the grassland hills. It's a great production city.

[SleepingMoogle]

Sorry, but I just don't feel 5 hills and 2 peaks make for a very good commerce city, especially when a large amount of the grassland aren't even riverside. We have enough forests to chop into required infrastructure at both locations to not need the mines for extra hammers.

Here's my case for the 2SW location. We have not scouted all of the tiles yet, but peeking in the fog allows us to make an educated guess:



So all four tiles are river ones, and we know at least 2, and maybe 3, will make for solid cottage tiles. Which leads to this:



So, assuming we will farm that upper right tile to spread irrigation to yellow dot, we still have 12, maybe 13, tiles left to cottage, of which at least 9 are riverside as well.

To compare:

Current vs proposed:

5 hill tiles - 2 hill tiles
2 peaks - 3 peaks
11 cottages - 12(13) cottages
8 riverside ones - 10(11) riverside ones
10 total riverside tiles - 14 total riverside tiles
4 food surpluss - 6 food surpluss

So 2 to 4 extra cottages and 4 extra riverside tiles? And even additional food? I see a clear winner for a high-commerce capital.

Here's how it would look with some potential fillers:




One other thing we should consider: That double clams location on the starting islands would make for a decent spot to run some scientists. The faster we can get out an Academy for the capital, the better our tech rate will be.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

So really, we trade pigs, 3 grass mines and a plains hill centre for 2 cottages and a peak and +1c for one of the mines and a couple of the cottages (that we're not going to even start working until our happy cap starts breaking into the double-digits). However, I want to settle the area ASAP. In other words we're probably going to get it before CoL comes in for the caste artists. That way, we have both food specials inside the first ring, and a couple of cottages to work on, as we work on getting our cheap culture sources online.

Plus, don't forget, we're going to want a granary, forge, library, market, palace, university, and oxford (minimum). 2 mines and 8 forests is simply not enough. Still, we'll have a better picture once we defog the south and east, though I wouldn't expect deer to spawn in the forests to the south (I'm pretty sure all the deer in PB2 was editted in).

Also, I'd prioritise settling the mainland far above the double-clams city, it's a safe backfill site and workboats are expensive and we're aiming to make a GProphet first. It would be pointless beating our Oracle city to its first GP.

[Ellimist]

Keep in mind that we cant place a city 2 spaces away from another city(Sirius), even on a diagonal.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Yes we can, if those 2 cities are on different landmasses.

[Ellimist]

I did not know that. Thanks.

[Ellimist]

Exchanged some emails with NobleHelium, I'll post them later.

He doesn't seem very friendly so far. His latest message says that they don't want to open borders and give us trade routes without getting any in return. I replied that our cities are already maxed out on foreign trade routes, so I'll see how that goes. Probably better than what I wanted to write, "then send a boat our direction."
He said that our team seems to be doing the best right now. I'm not sure how deeply to read into that. His team has 3 cities(since T50 i think) and Kuro has 4, while we have 2.
I also asked if there were any wonders/religions that they don't want us to compete for, and he replied "no wonders." We'll see if the omission (religion) means anything in the next few turns.

[SleepingMoogle]

It sounds like we took a reputation hit with them before even meeting them by building the Oracle. How dare we steal that from the Ind leader who went for Henge first?

[Ellimist]

Yeah, that was the impression I got. Their latest email seems a little better.

I played the turn. More updates in a bit.

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Okay, when we send our scouts to the mainland, let the southern scout move counterclockwise through Kuro's land, but make sure the eastern scout lingers around NH's land, just in case he sends a chariot at us. Should we switch our EPs to NH before we get Kuro's graphs, so we have NH's first? I think the former is a sunk cost, we're better off getting the graphs of our scariest rival first.