[SPOILERS] Team Unpronounceable Unicode Symbol: True Grit

[Sisu]

Why was farming first dismissed?

Agriculture first/worker first leaves the worker with 9 turns of nothing to do.

I just did a quick and dirty agriculture first/warrior first sim and it's competitive with the bw first/worker x3 first scenario that I was testing. Going to have to sit down with a spreadsheet and optimize each to judge which is better in terms of total hammers, beakers, and food, but my gut instinct is that the bw first one is better (I believe with some tinkering I can get the capital up to size 3 with 3 improved tiles by the benchmark turn).

I think the best things to dump the "something" hammers into in capital and city 2 are probably 1 or 2 more warriors + a second settler.

[Sisu]

Meh, forgot to drop more saves from various point in my sim in the dropbox. Guess I'll get to it tomorrow.

The thing I mostly have to figure out before tomorrow is how I'm going to move my Scout, as then I'll have exact tech costs and such to work with. No point working out razor-thin timings that might get bollocksed to hell.

The options are:
14. This gets me the most vision of what looks to be a fertile river valley to my SW. Flood plains and FIN get along very, very well.
21. This gets me vision of the river valley (though not as much) but also gives me eyes on the grass hill 33 of my start, as Ceil kindly pointed out.
69. This is my best route to see the north. The tile 99 seems like it might be bare, which could be indicative of resources (or just a coincidence).

I think that's it for options that aren't terrible. I'm probably going to move my scout roughly spiralwise so as to get an idea of my first-ring possibilities. Here in the temperate zone, I doubt I'll find accessible marble, so if I do go for Oracle it will likely be without a doubler. But this start doesn't lend itself well to a tall approach, with needing many turns of tech to improve my BFC tiles. Claiming land has never gone out of style, and maybe I'll get lucky and be near one of the softer leaders (i.e. anyone but Aggressive Rome or Team Experienced Trio). So let's roll up our sleeves, go Paul Bunyan on this land, and see what happens.

...we've even got cows. Cow tile, I officially dub thee Babe the Blue Ox.

[Sisu]

An insomniac brainstorm I had and then popped into WB to check:

Settling ON the wines would give me a 2/1/3 city tile. Is that any good? I don't know, but I intend to check tomorrow!

[Ceiliazul]

Hammers are generally more valuable than commerce. Many folks figure that in the early/mid game, 1f=2h=3c. Some say it's 3/5/8, but the result is similar. But bottom line, you gotta sim it.

Also, 3 workers was just an idea. Try 2 wkrs as well... isnt this fun??

(regarding tech cost: if your sim is the right size/difficulty/wrap etc, they should be right on. The actual tile size doesn't matter until city maint comes into play.)

[Sisu]

Right, I've encountered that formula but if 2h = 3c, then the 2c from the wines plant > the 1h from the ph plant.

And yes, this is fun

[Ceiliazul]

And yes, this is fun

I admit I considered and dismissed the wine tile. Definitely worth a try.

[Sisu]

It's hard to tell about the wines tile, but on the plus side even having the question means that my scout move is easy. If I want to understand the wines start, I pretty much have to move the scout 14.

In the meantime, while we wait for the game, I'll try to sim out permutations of "start on base tile."

[Sisu]

Okay, here's my best stab at BW first, worker worker worker: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?...sp=sharing

Ends with a size 3 capital working 3 improved tiles, 3 workers, 2 warriors, a second city, and a second settler halfway done, which seems strong for turn 38. However, I burn 9 forests, which seems like a lot.

Going to take a stab at an agriculture-first warrior-first start after work. Ceil, BW first 2 workers seems like it would be extremely tech-limited, as Agriculture doesn't come in until eot 23 - what would I do with the capital? Grow it onto a SECOND unimproved tile?

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I also updated my sandbox save from earlier to put all the AI in little mountain cages.

[Ceiliazul]

Ends with a size 3 capital working 3 improved tiles, 3 workers, 2 warriors, a second city, and a second settler halfway done, which seems strong for turn 38. However, I burn 9 forests, which seems like a lot.

Sounds good. Forests are like money in a jar: a resource that isn= gaining interest. Exception near the discovery of Math, but that doesn't matter now. Chopping a forest takes 4 worker-turns, earning 5h per worker-turn. Burn em all for fast growth.

Going to take a stab at an agriculture-first warrior-first start after work. Ceil, BW first 2 workers seems like it would be extremely tech-limited, as Agriculture doesn't come in until eot 23 - what would I do with the capital? Grow it onto a SECOND unimproved tile?

wrr - wkr - wkr - settler. The workers keep chopping until Ag comes in. As always, trust the sim.

With all this talk about being tech-limited, I am looking forward to your results settling on wine.

[Sisu]

So, um. The game hasn't even started yet, and we're getting our first instance of locking horns. teleh is getting upset in the Q&A thread; I don't really understand why, but it seems like he feels it's an abuse of BRick's power as a moderator to do stuff in a game where he is himself playing.

I want to step in and try to peacemake, but if I can't even understand teleh's motivation here, I might end up making things worse.

EDIT: Thanks for the feedback, Ceil. I was thinking in terms of potentially cashing those forests in for a free wonder down the line, but your point about spending the "money" to gain dividends in terms of faster growth is well-taken.

SECOND EDIT: Looks like the situation self-defused. Phew.

THIRD EDIT: ...welp