[Spoiler] Team slowwalk of the Reservoir Cats (Suleiman/Korea, slowcheetah + Catwalk)

[slowcheetah]

But I can get the oracle on the turn pottery comes in (and could have got it one turn faster had pottery come in earlier), going double worker start (well worker warrior worker). This has the added boon of getting easy culture into the second city, because buddhism founds there, (founding in cap seems rather wastefu). Settler first leaves us too low on worker turns, which is the main delaying factor.

[Catwalk]

If you can get the Oracle on the turn Pottery lands, I'm fine with your plan. But I would still like you to compare with going settler first and growing the capital to size 4. If we can save forests, I think we should. And I actually don't think the culture would be wasted in the capital. Wouldn't you rather have 8 cpt in the expansion and 7 cpt in the capital, rather than 13 cpt in the expansion and 2 cpt in the capital? Also, I completely confuddled myself earlier about chopping. For some reason I assumed we needed the chops on the turn we landed Pottery, I momentarily forgot that we're starting on the Oracle sooner.

It seems we're back to research being the main bottleneck. If we can shave off a turn, we should do so. Maybe reconsider revolting to Slavery? It gives us more hammers and costs us beakers.

[slowcheetah]

So the worker completed (needs a name) and wandered off to farm some corn, and a warrior was started in the Holy grail. I also took an executive decision and moved all of our EP onto Sian, if one of us finally gets energy to read his demographics, then those graphs could be gold.

Scouting Info

I think we should continue going SW with the scout because as I remember Sian came from the NW and spacetyrantxenu appeared to come from the SE

[Catwalk]

Spent 20 minutes trying to dissuade slowcheetah from his horrible Oracle plan that'll probably land it t50 or so. Failed the dissuasion :neenernee

I ended up agreeing with the NW site, still don't agree with the build order. We should probably stick with growth first now that we've started. I'm still strongly against revolting to slavery, there has to be a way to get the Oracle on time without it. We should also be able to chop out a settler fairly easily. Revolting to slavery means losing an entire turn of research, holding back the Oracle.

It seems like the SW tundra peaks connect all four of us. I wonder what this means for the rest of the map. It worries me a bit that spacetyrantxenu hasn't responded to my message yet. Do you want to try to send him one as well, just to poke him a bit? I hope I didn't put him off, we don't need two players miffed at us from the start. We don't even have a NAP with him yet, he might be preparing a bowmen raid.

[Catwalk]

Oracle t33!

I did an early settler, founded Buddhism in the capital, went for Priesthood before The Wheel and neglected to construct roads between the two cities. Didn't revolt into Slavery yet. But it finished nicely in t33 along with Pottery, 4 forests chopped. I had the expansion at size 4 with a warrior produced from the capital.



I'll post the full plan tomorrow morning, there might still be room for improvement. Would be nice to get the roads done earlier as we're losing a lot of commerce, but Pottery can be finished t33 without it and I see no other way to get enough hammers for the Oracle. I also put a few hammers towards Stonehenge, for either failgold or possibly a grab attempt. The early growth is wasted on a warrior as we don't need one yet and the hammers will deteriorate before we complete it. We can easily complete a warrior later on when we need it.

[slowcheetah]

Ok, I honestly wasn;'t expecting that, very nicely done, Two questions, firstly does buddhism found in the second city and two does the initial turn into the warrior screw up the plan? Even if it does and we have to go turn 34 it still sound good

I'll probably leave the turn for you tomorrow (athough you seem to be up earlier anyway ). in case there are any adjustments needed to fit with your plan

[Catwalk]

I'm sitting with a sandbox run which seems to complete the Oracle on t32. Growing first is fine, and I think there's a way to profitably grow the expansion to size 4. Hmm, failed to get the Forge done in time, one turn short. Are we going to accept the risk of getting a great prophet first in case they're both born same turn? EDIT: Did a quick test, and it seems to be entirely deterministic. Reloaded 10x with reseeding enabled, every time the GP was generated in the capital in case of a tie. I think we'll be safe, so let's shoot for that. EDITAGAIN: Just tested it again in the sandbox, also gives us the great engineer.

One thing to avoid early on is farming the flood plains. If we instead mine the forest hill south of us, we can spend the same 5 turns (+1 for movement) chopping a forest and getting a 1/3/1 tile. Same usefulness for workers, more useful for forge later on. I don't think it's worth spending the worker turns on farming the flood plains when in a wonder race, we get more benefit from working the expansion.

I want to send spacetyrantxenu the following:

Hey spacetyrantxenu.

I hope all is well in your empire and that your start is coming along nicely. Speaking of starts, we would greatly appreciate an indication of whether or not we should be on the lookout for Babylonian troops. We're close neighbours, and you have a very powerful early unit that can butcher a warrior defense pretty good. Would you be interested in signing a brief NAP? We would rather not waste our resources on too much defense, but we'd be really sad if we end up dead. Let us know what you think.

Best regards,
Catwalk of team slowwalk

Tried to make it polite, respectful of his strength and straight to the point without appearing weak. Suggestions?

[slowcheetah]

Oracle planwise turn 32 sounds brilliant , good news about the GE as well.

Note to spacetyrantxenu: I'm not actually sure how close we are, seem a fair distance tilewise (15-20 at a very rough estimate (I didn't check in game). Wouldn't mention warrior defense either, sounds rather too feeble and we are researching BW soon anyway. Note we shouldn'tgive away our map after we've researched BW, we dont want people to see if we havent hooked up strat resources.

Maybe:

Hey spacetyrantxenu

I hope all is well in your empire and that your start is coming along nicely. We were also wondering about the future relations of our great (well currently a little on the small side) nations. We are interested in a peaceful coexistence between the Koreans and Babylonians and as such were wondering if an NAP until turn 30 would be amenable? The short length of the NAP is simply designed to allow both parties to 'test the water' if we get along well obviously the NAP can be extended. However, if we discover we hate one anothers guts, not too much longterm harm done.

[Catwalk]

I sent him the revised version, still no response yet. I'm pushing the scout SW in an effort to find Kuro fast, we need a friend. I'd like to try some more diplo with Sian as well, offering him a one-sided non-compete on Colossus and GLH if we manage to get Oracle first, in exchange for a NAP extension to t50. Scout discovered a whale SW, looks a lot like our territory. Warrior discovered more land and dyes NE, looks like there is quite a bit of territory up here. I wonder if it's an isolated peninsula we all get to expand into, or if they somehow connect further up in a toroidal wrap. We will know for sure what kind of map it is when we found our first expansion and get to see the upkeep costs.

As I wrote to you by mail, here is an outline of the objectives for the Oracle plan:
1a) Need to found the expansion no later than when Priesthood is discovered
1b) Can also found the expansion the turn before Meditation is discovered, will lead to overall hammer loss and commerce gain and will place Buddhism in the expansion (I prefer it in the capital personally, all other things being equal)
2) Need to start mining the river grassland hill by the expansion no later than the turn the expansion is founded (we need it when the expansion reaches size 3)
3) A total of 5 forests will need to be chopped at the expansion, the remaining 35 hammers can be produced by t32
4) We will want to grow the capital in time for the Oracle, and revolt to slavery sometime after the Oracle completes
5) We will need to chop 2 forests, whip 2 pop and produce 14 hammers at the capital, in order to complete the forge no later than t37 or t38, depending on Oracle completion date.

Note that whipping and chopping together has bad synergy, since we can't whip until the chopped hammers have been processed. So the chops need to be done 1t ahead of schedule.

Completion of the road connection is still uncertain, as are the details of the micro on the capital and the forge completion. I will have time to play around quite a bit with it today before Christmas celebrations, so hopefully we will have everything in place.

[Catwalk]

I think I've finalized our starting plan:

t31
Road completed
t32
Oracle completed
t37
Forge completed

Units: 3 workers + 2 warriors + 26 hammers on a worker
Improvements: 1 mine by capital, 2 mines by expansion
Population and buildings: Size 2 capital, size 2 expansion with granary built
Misc: Revolted into slavery, Buddhism founded in capital

I doubt any further tweaking can be done. I like the warriors, lets us finish up on exploration and deter our neighbours from attacking.