[SPOILERS] Team Unpronounceable Unicode Symbol: True Grit

[Ceiliazul]

I can beat Prince at a leisurely stroll and Monarch if I pay attention

Monarch is pretty easy for a lot of us, but to win there you must have a grasp of the basics.  You'll have to raise your game to compete with the likes of Brick, but you're as likely as anyone to get to the medievel age.  (Isn't that encouraging?)

As for bad SP habits, I think the best primer for how MP is different than SP is Spulla's PB2 game report on his website.  Check out Garath.net/Sullla for that.  The early part is best, once the wars start it's more a primer for avoiding full-diplo games like My Little Pony reruns.

I will undoubtedly screw up a ton, but I fully intend to come out of this a much better player than I began.

A lot depends on what the terrain looks like as we start, but slinging Metal Casting with Oracle is a fine snowball play, especially if I have precious metals to hand, and it's my default plan as we go into this game. Then I can run an Engineer specialist and grab whatever's available when the GE comes around. Let other people fight to stack rocks - I want The Great Library in my capital with an Academy.

I like all of your analysis until this part.  Oracle to MC is a strong play for any IND leader, but it has become a pretty tight race.  If you want it, you're have to be willing to give up some growth - maybe a lot.  That's fine, it can pay off pretty quickly especially with metals available.

But running an Engineer without PHI is probably not a good option.  You've already delayed growth to get Oracle, stunting the growth in your 2nd city (or capital) for 34 turns is likely to leave you far behind in cities and pop.

And then you want a Scientist for a academy?  You can't have everything. 

Russia ...
Yawn.

Yup.

[Sisu]

Thanks for the feedback on the Oracle plan, Ceil. We'll discuss it more as the game progresses - for now we've got a start to consider!

SIP yields:

2/2/1 rivered city tile
Plains river cow
Plains river wine
Dry grass corn
Two grass hills
Something like 16 (!!) BFC forests, from what's visible and fog gazing
A bunch of grass and plains, much of it rivered.

Fog gazing reveals what looks to be a plains hill 666 of the settler pair, which would be in a position to share corn. Additionally, a grass hill 33, what looks like a fair amount of flood plains to the southwest, and CONIFEROUS FOREST on the horizontal band of tiles 222. This tells us a few things:

1) We're not on a Tilted Axis map
2) We're in the southern hemisphere
3) Therefore, we're probably going to start running into jungle to our north.

Ceil, I'm not sure what could entice me to NOT SIP, since the plains hill gets us a 12t worker to start. Thoughts?

My major quandary about this start is the tech path. The obvious route is Agriculture->AH->BW, but that would leave a worker first start with a lot of idle turns (though without actually getting ingame and seeing beaker costs it's hard to judge, since I'm not actually super leet like that).

[Ceiliazul]

Settle in place looks good, but scout should move first. Do I see a 2nd flood plains in the fog bleed? Scout S-SW uncovers the apparent hill SE of the cap, and should reveal a good chunk of that river valley to your south.

Tech: run your sim with and without AH. If you really want Oracle you may decide to postpone the cows. (This is what I mean by delaying growth.) Oracle usually falls ~t40 in a large game.

Another option to sim: BW first and chop chop chop. If the river valley to your south is fertile, this expansion may pay off more than The Oracle.

Edit: Nice spot on the pointy trees.

[Sisu]

I was thinking about moving 14 with the scout to start, but good call on that 21. If that grass hill is pigs or something, it would be good to know.

Yeah, I'm thinking BW->agriculture and REXing might be the way to go on this. Worker->Worker->grow->Settler? Who needs plains cows for production, we're sporting massive wood!

EDIT: Hrm, in my sandbox, Large size, Monarch difficulty, BW is a 15t tech working the cows. Making a worker that does diddly seems weak. Argh, this start is tough!

[Sisu]

Here is my sandbox - I'm new to dropbox, so I may have screwed it up. Let me know if it doesn't work.

Also, about 90% of setting up this sandbox was getting the rivers right, and they're STILL not 100%. Argh.

[Sisu]

Every option wastes worker turns standing around doing nothing, but BW first seems to waste the least. Of course, I could do something like scout or warrior first, but I still end up tech-limited and probably behind in the snowball.

Bleh. It looks like the tile 99 is flatland - surrounded by forest as it is, it might have a resource. I'm thinking that moving the scout 69 might be viable to check it out?

[Sisu]

Okay, on the theory that putting on my big boy underpants is a more productive use of time than whining about non-optimal snowballs, I spent a lot of time after work playing around with the sim, and here's a rough path I have:

Warrior first, working the corn, researching BW -> Agriculture -> AH
Warrior is built on t8, work corn and cow, build a worker.
Worker comes out and starts chopping out a settler. After Agriculture comes in, farm the corn.
Settler comes out, capital starts a worker. Given the very limited map vision I have, I sent the settler pair to the plains hill 666 of the starting location for argument's sake.
Found city #2. Worker gives a chop to city #2 after the corn is done.
After the chop is done, move worker to plains cow, AH comes in on the next turn just as capital's worker comes out, both workers pasture the cow. Capital starts something (warrior?)
2 turns later, on t38, the pasture is done, and we have two cities (at 2 and 1), two improved tiles, three workers, a warrior, and a scout (assuming the scout didn't get beared). We're also two turns of research in on a fourth tech (Mysticism? Wheel?) and two of production in on something in the capital.

Obviously, this can get screwed with (especially if we bump into someone and get a prereq bonus), but is that a competitive start on Normal?

[Ceiliazul]

try warr - wkr - wkr (chop) - wkr (chop) - settler (chop)

That speeds improvement of the corn and cow, and frees up a worker or 2 to send to city 2 asap.

Also try swapping off the first incomplete warrior as soon as you can move your worker onto a forest with 1t left in BW. Complete the warrior as soon as you can grow on irrigated corn (probably after 3rd worker)... should cut a few turns off the goal. The difference that 2nd pop makes is tiny until the good tiles get improved. The difference of the first worker out 4ish turns earlier is huge.

[Sisu]

The "put 2 turns into the warrior, then build a worker so that the worker pops with 1t left in BW" plan was one I tried, but hammer decay wrecks my investment by the time I get back around to it, so it's purely wasted turns.

Your build order gets the settler out t34, founding on the proposed tile t36, with overflow going into "something" in the capital. I get AH a turn faster, so I get to put 3t of research into something (but just about the same overall beakers, because of the overflow in the last build order), but burn 1 more capital forest if my count is right. On the same turn, 38, I have a size 3 capital and several turns of production into "something" in both capital and city 1 (fourth worker? additional warriors? second settler?).

Nice. I like it.

EDIT: I'll try it out going worker-worker-worker-warrior-settler, though.

[Commodore]

Why was farming first dismissed?