[spoilers] Gaspar and Commodore welcome you to the islands, mon!

[Lewwyn]

You should be able to fit 4 cities on this island easy.

[mackoti]

In the immortal words of Mackoti, "Pyramids

You dont like the wonder?

Not on this map wich such low food, and no production mids are worthles.

[Commodore]

You dont like the wonder?

Not on this map wich such low food, and no production mids are worthles.

Actually, I do, it's just that I note with amusement you manage to snag them in nearly every game.

Sadly, on this map (or maybe, charitably, just this island) practically everything is worthless. Low food, low production...and I realize, we're working on maximizing commerce with a 1/1/4 tile.

[Commodore]

Got it and played.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is our "great site". At it's best, 4/0/0 deer, 5/0/2 crabs, 3/0/2 lake, and a shared 1/1/4 fur. Oh, and a whopping three forests to chop if we settle on the icy hill, although that means we'll only ever have one 0/3/0 mine.



So, what's our other option? Well, Mr. Jin (Vol' to his friends) is proudly standing on the much better looking "East(er) Island Site", where we could experience all the joys of a shared riverside grass hill mine, fp farm, and riverside cottages along with its very own 3/3/0 cows and dry wheat 4/1/0 farm! All only at the cost of about 150 more dearly bought beakers (if willing to give up chopping).



This start, frankly, sucks and we need to sim this hard before going for the double-down plan of Bronze Working next. It's awesome to have a site that uses both food techs we already have, hunting and fishing, but it's going to be slow going improving those resources with just one worker. It started off pretty.



But got ugly and slow fast.

[Commodore]

More depressing mediation (but no simming, have a job and all) on our position has made me think that maybe AH should be next. Depressing as it is, a 3/3/1 tile is far and away our best to work. One cool thing is that if we work the cows to grow while building a workboat, both growth and WB finish at the same time. It feels less efficient because we're picking up Agriculture, but if we settle the tundra Zul'Drak site first we won't really need farms immediately. The thing is farming flood plains only ups their yields by one food, which unless we grow heavily isn't better than, say mining a hill (same net foodhammers).

Even if we go for two quick cities (tundra then east wheat), as of turn 25 Zandalar's borders have the cows in range to be improved first. This means Agriculture can be tabled for quite some time.

This would mean a slightly slower second city, with Zandalar going worker, worker, workboat, settler, settler (with possible second wb if the first settler is whipped). Meanwhile, tech path is an esoteric Hunting (done), AH, BW, agriculture, with the two workers actually having plenty enough to do with mines. Hrm. Worth looking at, anyway.

[Commodore]

One final note, I didn't fully consider the implications of my earlier demos post. Everyone else has opted for going AH first, and while I'm not saying we gotta follow the herd...hipster indie openings lose games (okay, Carthage in general might be so). Timing works out perfectly to go camp the furs and arrive at the cows the same turn AH finishes.

[Commodore]

Well, in lieu of other inputs, I pulled the trigger.



The timings work out really well, with the worker having exactly the right amount of time to go camp, then pasture as soon as AH rolls in. Need to see if mining the hill might be better though, we'll have to see.



Had second city a bit slower that BW first, but this way the crabs were netted the first turn of the city being down, and the third was faster by eight turns.

[Commodore]

In the hopes of getting a third turn in, I hit enter for us.

Only news is Sian, working a +1 commerce FP, got a tech, probably AH although maybe some Agriculture move. Oh, and also found more not-seafood. :thumbsdow

[Gaspar]

Looks solid, Commodore. Assuming I can get shot of the wife I'll run some sims tonight. If you have an updated sandbox and want to send it along, that'd be swell. Otherwise I'll twig the you made early to current map knowledge.

[Commodore]

Okay, so obviously I'm a horrible team mate. Posting micro plans? Nah, I must have assumed mind-reading or something. Oh course, depressingly most of my micro is a gut-level think anyway, so this might be a bit hard.

Okay, so here's the rough idea, the mine and furs might be swapped:
Turn 4, Hunting in, research set to AH (ETA t13). Workers ETA turn 8.
Turns 5, 6, 7, push enter, whine about map.
Turn 8, worker done! He goes to camp furs. Next worker, started.
Turn 9, start camping.
Turn 10, 11, hit enter, bemoan map.
Turn 12, camp done (swap to it), worker moves towards cows.
Turn 13, AH in, BW begun (ETA t22), start pasture.
Turn 14, hit enter, whine more about map.
Turn 15, pasture done, worker goes towards riverside hill, swap to pasture and WB, growth and WB ETA t20
Turn 16, move to furs, hit enter.
Turn 17, start camping furs, hit enter.
Turn 18, 19, hit enter, talk about worst start ever, get depressed.
Turn 20, capital grows, work both pasture and furs to get BW in two and worker out next turn! Worker moves to forest.
Turn 21, worker is bored, other worker moves to forest, cap starts settler.
Turn 22, BW in! Agriculture next. Workers chop out settler...

And so on, at this point things get fuzzier.

This all make sense?