[SPOILERS] Novice and SevenSpirits play Suleiman of Korea

[Rowain]

Warrior NW

Not NE?

[novice]

Not NE?

I don't see us moving the settler east, away from rivers and wet corn.

[novice]

Sandbox:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/15215428/PBEM29/...dSwordSave

[novice]

By the way my brother had an excellent suggestion for a naming theme: RB Naming Themes.

[novice]

Warrior NW, scout SW-SW, settler S-Settle, perhaps?

Research Agri->BW->AH?

Build worker->settler(partial, [until corn is improved])->warrior(partial)->size 2->settler->worker?

Seems pretty good to me. Gets us the first settler out eot16, and the capital can build a second worker while AH gets completed, while the first worker goes with the settler.

[SevenSpirits]

Did you account for the road he said was on the start tile? I guess that doesn't help us until we get wheel (for the city tile road), huh?

[novice]

Did you account for the road he said was on the start tile? I guess that doesn't help us until we get wheel (for the city tile road), huh?

I did not. We get the city tile road without having the wheel, though.

That road lets us improve the corn 1 turn faster. It doesn't speed up the settler, but it lets us grow to size 2 one turn faster, which is of course a good thing.

Also, if we work a flood plains instead of a forest while building the settler and waiting for the corn to be farmed, we can eke out Bronze Working one turn sooner, which then still lets our worker start chopping immediately after finishing the corn farm.

I looked at revolting to slavery the turn BW comes in, and finish off the settler with a whip after the chop (still finishing eot16), for overflow to a worker. But it only speeds up worker 2 by 1 turn, and forces us to complete it at size 1, so I'm not sure it's worth it. We do have to adopt slavery at some point, though.

[spacemanmf]

This follows the 23 signup thread in which he ominously claimed to have been waiting to play against novice/spacemanmf a long time.

He's going to have to wait a long time for this...

Hmmm, to read other threads or not to read other threads, that is the question.

[SevenSpirits]

As IMP we should think carefully about our food surplus. What we want to be able to do mid-early-game (post-granaries) is something like this:

Happy cap of 7. Corn, Cow, 2 FP cottages, 2 grass mines, 1 plains mine
t0 put 18fh into a worker at size 6.
t1 grow to size 7
t2 whip worker. 18h (previous) + 40h (whip) + 16h (size 5 output) -> 34h overflow.
t3 with +8f, +8h + 34 over, build a settler, with 6h -> 4h overflow.
t4 grow to 6
t5 grow (still at 6)

And repeat. As IMP we are more constrained than most by whip anger since we don't do 3-whips. Luckily we should be able to use almost all our food surplus here. We have 3 turns to grow in, and need 21 food to get from 5 to 7 each time. Our food surplus with this setup is 8 at size 5, and 6 or 7 at size 6, so it works out perfectly without any additional farms or even cottages necessary. Of course we may want to add cottages anyway.

We can almost manage the same cycle at one happy point lower - unfortunately we're a couple hammers short unless we work a mine over a FP cottage twice (and/or manage to overflow into the initial worker build each time).

[SevenSpirits]

[This thread may end up containing bits of early-game micro information from PBEM23, for comparison. I don't think it's a problem if anyone from that game reads it given that it's apolitical and so far in the past. If there are any actual spoilers I'll mark them.]

After trying a few openings I don't think we can decide what to do yet. Unlike 23 there's no visible second city site that makes the fastest possible settler obvious.

I think we need to at least consider Agri-AH-BW. One possibility there is grow to 5 after the initial worker, whip a worker as soon as BW is in and we've revolted, then complete a settler with the overflow. Settler on t22 and we're at size 3 and have built three warriors, and have cows, corn, and the plains hill all improved.

It's slower to the second city but I'm not sure that's relevant - it's not clear we get a free trade connection like in 23, nor a plains hill plant next to food that also shares an improved capital tile that the capital doesn't want to work. And most importantly, unlike in 23 we have a massive food surplus in the capital even before fishing-pottery. Therefore my inclination is to grow a bit first and make sure we're working our resources, and often working our flood plains.

We can also go two workers before settler even with BW right after agriculture, but I think in that case we'll have to chop way more than is productive at this stage.