Luddite/Pindicator

[luddite]

Yeah, you'll get 1 point there for each land tile that you've owned for 20 turns. So I guess we've uncovered about 10% of the total land area. So if each player does the same before we run into each other, we each get 10% of the land, leaving 400 or so extra tiles. That does seem to suggest that there are island, or maybe another continent.

I think it's OK to explore a little more with our warrior, but then move him back to escort the settler.

[luddite]

Met another neighbor in the north. It's Mackoti, and he also got a combat 1 warrior . Hopefully he won't be a jerk and kill our scout.

[pindicator]

Met another neighbor in the north. It's Mackoti, and he also got a combat 1 warrior . Hopefully he won't be a jerk and kill our scout.

I'm sure it's not as funny for you as it is for me, but I'm sure mackoti has to be thinking the same thing you are, being neighbors again.

[luddite]

Yeah... he's not exactly who I'd choose as a neighbor. And this time I can't kill his axes with chariots, since he's greece.

Speaking of neighbors... if everyone has two neighbors, does that mean the land is in roughly a ring shape? With more land in the center?

[pindicator]

That's my first guess for the layout. Maybe outlying islands as well? If we can see about 1/10 of the total land and we've mapped out about an equal portion of the the map then I'm not sure just having land in the middle would make up the other 4/10.

Back home and I took some time to go over demographics and take a stab at who has researched what so far. No big surprise; it's all worker techs. Let's start with our newest neighbor:

mackoti
Started with Fishing and Hunting
Turn 6 - Agriculture
Turn 6 - pop increase to 2

novice & spaceman
Started with Agriculture and The Wheel
Turn 5 - Hunting
Turn 9 - Fishing

sian & ichabod
Started with Agriculture and The Wheel
Turn 8 - Animal Husbandry

fierce
Started with Hunting & Mysticism
Turn 5 - Mining

yuris & nicolae
Started with Mysticism & The Wheel
Turn 6 - Agriculture

Interesting tidbit: I believe everybody is [strike]working[/strike] currently researching a first tier tech except Fierce (Bronze Working, which is a logical followup to Mining). Why? Because it's the only way to make the GNP work with mackoti's extra population (and we're assuming his citizens are working a 2f2h deer and a 5f2c fish).

Edit: You can also make educated guesses as to who went inland for rice and cows and who went coastal for fish & deer -- again, going along with the notion that every team had that choice. Mackoti obviously went to the coast, novice & spaceman went for fish & deer (that 2f2h deer does make sense to work if you're expansive, it's giving out 7 food+hammer towards a worker), sian & ichabod went inland, fierce stayed in place, and yuris & nicolae went inland.

[pindicator]

Turn 10

I started bringing our warrior back. The settler is 7 turns from completion and the warrior is 7 tiles from the capital. If we settle the gold/fish site to the south the warrior can tarry longer, but I don't like the look of that site for a 2nd city quite yet. Sandboxing may say otherwise, but I'm seeing a number of potential 2nd city locations. (I'm leaning towards 3NW of the capital since irrigated corn is the best food tile we have and the horses + hills will give great production.)

But we also have to contend with mackoti's warrior. I moved the scout to explore and keep tabs on him.



Notice we have our first animal sighting. With mackoti's warrior around I don't want to risk damaging our scout, even on a sure battle. No need to tempt him to be opportunistic.

[strike]We need to swap to a warrior if he gets 2 tiles away from our capital, correct?[/strike] This is wrong; we need to swap to a warrior if he moves within 2 tiles of the cow / 3 tiles of the capital. Because if we swap to a warrior when he is 2 tiles from the capital we'll get 5 production to the warrior, then the next turn if he declares and moves on top of the cow we have no other 3h tile available to get the warrior out in time.

Well, good news is that our borders will pop again in 3 more turns (end of turn 13) so if he tarries to the north at all then he will be cut off from the south by our culture.

Would you like the updated sandbox file? I'm going to start running through some scenarios and see if i can find what the best 2nd city location is. I like the look of a few of them, really: 3NW, 1S3W, 3E.

[luddite]

Hmm, i really hope he doesn't try to pillage those cows. That would be incredibly annoying. Maybe we should switch to a warrior immediately. Also, run the scout back- we can use it to temporarily block his warrior from stepping on the cows, if necessary (stack it with another warrior there).

I'm not sure which is better between going northwest or going south. Maybe should mess around with that in a sandbox.

edit: it seems clear that the jungle acts as a midway barrier between us and the other civs. We need to settle the jungle as fast as possible, to grab extra land for ourselves. what about settling directly on the northwest elephants?

[pindicator]

Now that's an aggressive plant. Can we defend it though? I have no doubt mackoti will snipe a settler if we let him; we'd need an extra warrior or two before grabbing that site.

Here's the updated sandbox. Let's compare out to ... say turn 40? Or if that's too far then 30. I mean to go farther to see how the second city helps contribute to the third, fourth, etc.

Edit: I guess for me the sites that are most appetizing are the ones that we can get workers to the fastest so we can improve tiles. I like 3NW for that because we can improve corn and horses right away -- two of the best tiles we have open to us on the map. I'm not as hot about the fish/gold start because we'd have to 1) research fishing and then 2) get a work boat produced without mining or slavery. Then we can start making aggressive plants with our 3rd city. Maybe 4th but I don't want to wait too long.

[luddite]

It would indeed be very aggressive. But, it would claim almost that whole jungle area for us, and with the river there he'd have to cross first to attack the city.
Settling south of the corn first seems almost as aggressive, but we'd need an extra city to claim the jungle. I'm worried that, if we try to plant two "safe" cities before grabbing the jungle, someone else will grab it first. However, if we did that, maybe we could settle a city on the plains hill 3NW from there and claim even more land.

I do think we'll need some more warriors before the settler, though.

[pindicator]

So should we grow to size 2 and build warriors now then? We could get 2 1/2 warriors out in that time, and the rice should be about irrigated by the time we hit size 2. Dang I hate hindsight. It makes me wish I would have pushed harder for the worker -> warrior -> warrior -> settler opening.

You know what we need? A good ol fashioned dot map. Like this:



Any changes you would make? Off the top of my head I would do red first, and then hook up those chariots to defend purple in the SW. Then probably the gold; either on the fish or hopefully we'll see something better in the fog to the SE.