Mooooooo.... wait, wrong animal. Neeeigghhh

[Square Leg]

Amelanchier of Hippus! Roar!

Iskender reporting for dedicated lurking.

Welcome! The game should be starting on Sunday night so we shall see the start soon.

Some things we will need to hammer out early is how soon we are going to go to horsies...

[Mardoc]

Your start:

[Square Leg]

Thanks Mardoc!

Scout go pop hut.

Warrior 1SE.

Settle in place.

After having played the Native Americans and the Luchuirp it is nice not to be brown.

[Iskender]

Looks good

Some observations:

• Lots of riverside plains. It should make god king + cottages more attractive than early agrarianism + aristocracy
  
• If people cottage their riverside plains it's going to be Raiders Paradise for us
  
• No land to the north. I think it's good considering that every civ has a means of early rushing. In the perfect scenario we end up with only two immediate neighbours, NAP one and bother the other, or even NAP both to bother them when their cottages mature.
  

I was contemplating settling 1S the advantages would be:

• 5 hills vs 3 in the BFC, better setup for a god-king capital
  
• 4 river plains vs 2
  

Cons:

• Losing one turn to move the settler.
  
• Losing Sheep, not much of a loss IMO - FP and Wheat give 10 surplus food, more than enough to work plains hills and cottages
  
• Losing the extra hammer in the capital by settling on a non-plains hill
  

I think it's a close call, with settling in place giving more immediate benefits and 1S allowing a better capital after it grows out of the early happy cap.


As for the research: I think we don't need to focus on HBR right away. The earliest conflicts will take place after people grab BW, which should be T60+. This path seems reasonable:

Calendar->Ancient Chants->Education->Mysiticsm->[AH->HBR or Crafting->Mining->BW]

I think Edu before Mysticism is better since we're not aiming for an early Academy anyway (are we?). Maybe Edu before Calendar would even make sense given that there's only 3 more commerce gained by improving the Silk, 3 more food from Agrarianism and the 6th citizen would have to work a weak tile (ie. plains or grassland forest, the first 5 would work Wheat, FP, FP, Silk and plains hills).

[Square Leg]

So Iskender and I have been talking about where to settle and we have identified 3 options:

After debating it quite a bit we have concluded that we are going to move to the Green dot rather than settling in place or moving to yellow. Our reasoning is that we would like our capital to be on the hammer > commerce side of things and Green gives us that in the form of plenty of hills.

Initial tech path will be:

Calendar -> Ancient Chants -> Education

After that we will be considering whether to go for Mysticism or Crafting -> Mining. It will depend on what we feel like we need to do wrt 2nd city placement. If there is a strong site involving a mining commerce then definitely Crafting -> Mining, if not then maybe Mysticism and running a sage for an Acadamy would be a good choice.

[Square Leg]

Turn 0

Looks like we are going to have a restart but here is a shot from T0:

Settler moved to Green and scout headed towards hut. I couldn't see a better way to move the scout other than to where the settler started! The warrior moved SE and found another hut to pop!

Everyone else had settled on T1 and the Illians popped a tech froma hut.

Having 2 mana sources is nice although I won't be focusing on adepts and mages too much this game.

[Square Leg]

Religion

We will be heading towards Empyrean this game once it gets that far with a hope of bulbing up to Religious Law and Chalid. Here is the Great Prophet bulbing list for reference:



So we can either tech or bulb Priesthood and then bulb into Religious Law. I'd like to have 2 Great Prophets for this if at all possible. We will have to avoid Ways of the Wicked or KotE if this is to work as with both researched Corruption of Spirit will be the 1st target of the bulb... I think that can be arranged!

Our mid game army will consist of Horse Archers, Ratha and Chalid hopefully... If the others let us get that far then more fool them...

[Square Leg]

Urgh - I really want to play T0 again...

In my sandbox I keep discovering calendar 1t after I finish the wheat farm. It is really pissing me off.

So I was thinking about a naming theme and I have decided to go Horse racing venues in the UK.

Ascot
Epsom
Aintree
Chepstow
Goodwood
etc...

[Square Leg]

Played T0 again last night. Did everything the same as before.

Next turn we will found our Capital and pop a hut.

[Square Leg]

Iskender and I have been discussing various things over chat:

10:50 Iskender: hey SL
Square Leg hey
Iskender: have you tried sandboxing Edu before Caldnedar?
Square Leg I did yes.

10:51 Iskender: so how is it?
Square Leg Calendar first was better
10:52 AC and Edu are quite a limp otherwise. I can't remember the numbers right now - I'll send you my sandbox when I'm on my laptop next
10:54 My tech path was calendar - ac - edu - caft - min - myst - ah - hbr

I still haven't sent the sandbox but my excuse is I was quite rushed last night and very tired. Must remember to do it tonight.

Calender was slightly better than Education first for 3 reasons:

1 - +1 as the calender resource in on the river.
2 - Whilst building workers/ settlers in the early game, I don't want to have to work 1-1-2 tiles grow the cottages. I would much rather be working FP's and the Wheat and the Silks and just getting much commerce up front.
3 - the boost that the plantation gives is enough to see us through AC and Education. We start with Agriculture and so calendar is only 1 tech away. For the others it is 2 techs away so we will get the bonus commerce sooner.

10:39 So in pbem 12 - I am going to go worker first seeing as we start with Agriculture.
10:40 Iskender yes, it should be safe even with early stasis
Square Leg keep the warrior close to home
Iskender then a couple of warriors
Square Leg yeah
It will depend on the map but I am toying with the idea of getting an early city 2.
10:41 at size 3 working 2 fp farms and the wheat it won't take too long to get the settler.... it may be a bit risky though with stasis around...
10:42 Iskender worth considering once we hit size 3. a lot depends on who're the neighbours
10:43 Square Leg sure
Iskender a 13-14t settler if i'm not wrong
(under agrarianism)
Square Leg yeah - we may be a little light on warriors though to be doing it
10:44 if we do the settler at size 5 for example we will have a couple more warriors and be able to work the plantation whilst building the settler.
Iskender or even faster - +12 food from FP FP wheat and city square, 3 hammers
10:45 a 10-turn settler
10:46 Square Leg I suppose it depends on if we have a strong site to settle - who our neighbours are - and how many warriors we have
Iskender poor escort though, so we'd have to settle really close to the capital (I always do such anyway)
10:49 Square Leg yes - I like my first city to be nice and close - it makes defence against lizards and skele's and orthus much easier


5 minutes

10:55 Square Leg Why did you mention not liking an early acadamy? Is it so that bulbing up to Religeous Law is quicker in that we can only produce priests?
10:57 Iskender we'd have to stop teching at some point, rather earlier than later, too be able to do a lot of upgrades and academy would be useless then. i believe academy is better only if you want to get deeper into the tech tree
10:58 we'd slow down teching after ie. reaching stirrups and continue only when we get enough gold from pillages to afford it
10:59 Square Leg ok - that makes sense
Iskender i'll try to make a more detailed analysis in the thread, maybe i'm wrong somewhere
11:00 Square Leg I don't think so - it depends how much quicker the academy would allow us to get to stirrups i guess but I'm not prepared to do that analysis!
11:01 Iskender yes, that's another factor
Square Leg If we concerntrate only on priests we could hopefully have 3 or 4 ready to bulb priesthood and religeous law.
it would be ambitious!
11:02 especially seeing as we aren't going to have many priest slots
11:03 Iskender 2 from empy temple would help, but that's midgame. i think early game will be the key with so many rushers
Square Leg yes

Snip part where SL get confused about GP generation....

So - early academy or not?

Pros

- Well - tech faster... If it allows us to get to Stirrups significantly faster then it is definitely worth it.

Ok SL, define significantly...

Cons

- We will be turning tech off at some point in this game. When exactly I cannot say right now, but the academy is useless after that.

- It means 1 less Priest for bulbing or Merchant for cash.

Iskender may have more to say on this matter but we should probably get a feel for it as the game develops. The bulbing thing is a secondary goal and shouldn't detract from the primary goal of getting to Horse Archers ASAP.

Edit - something else to consider is just running a mix of GM and GP and settling them all for the cash and hammers. After all, who needs collateral when you have 95% withdraw chance... (I'm not convinced of that statement! )