[Spoilers] Bacchus debuts on RB showing unmatched vision and slick dice-rolling

[Bacchus]

Dammit, Azza, I really want these 14 turns to go by quickly to see whether this is worth playing at all. If we don't have copper -- it isn't, really; we'd have to get Archery and would regardless be stuck in the lands that Khmer chooses to leave us, you can't really push forward with archers.

[Bacchus]

Thought: pig/gems has 3 forests available for chopping immediately on settle, that's 60 hammers, and we can get 40 in 8 turns by working a flood. Our worker and settler both become available to move on T30, on T31 we settle Forever Machine and move Isaac onto the southern forest. FM starts settler. Isaac completes the chop on T34, the same turn Arthur leaves the cap. T35 -- Isaac moves onto the forest 1W of FM, Arthur moves onto the forest 1NW, T38 -- both chops complete, T39 -- settler completes. On T41 we can then settle the desert tile 1N of the corn, to get the clam too. Fun fact: with RB mod Exp, chopping a WB gives 27 hammers, if you start chopping as the city is founded, it will complete with the chop in 3, with Cre it means the boat can net a seafood in the first ring after sailing for 1 turn just as borders pop. Sadly, to derive benefit from this, we have to make sure the corn is farmed no later than the turn after the city if founded, and for that we need 3 workers (in addition to the lumberjack).

Realistically, Isaac at least will stay back to pasture the pig after we get hunting on T39ish (thank God for that early clam, eh), Arthur will to go work the copper wherever that is, and Robert, who will complete in the capital on T40 with the help of a whip (40 hammers with Exp) will start on the corn just as Double Star is settled. Double fun, as Robert is the actual author of the Double Star.

EDIT: Could somebody please give a reality check for the above plan? Also, how does having 3 cities and 3 workers on T41 stand against the historical timelines at RB?

[Bacchus]

Azza grew a pop point. I can't really explain this: if he built the WB of a 1-2 tile, he would have it completed in 8 turns, the maximum food he could have had in these 8 turns is 10 (7 turns of a 1-2 tile, 1 turn of 3-0 tile), even fish then gets only 10 food over the next 2 turns. If he built a WB of a 0-3 tile, it would be completed in 6, and still get only 20 over the next 4 turns off a fish. Some bizzaro play of working a 2-1 tile (or any combination of tiles which amounts to this over 11 turns) gets growth on 11, but he wouldn't do something like this.

Serdoa (America) researched a tech, either Hunting or the Wheel, can't tell until I see demos; the former would mean he missed his resources with Agri/Fishing combo (ouch), the latter would be a bit strange, why not Mining?

[Bacchus]

Going through the demo table, I realised I miscounted -- on T7 there was a total increase of 5000 power points, 1000 came from pop, 4000 from techs, so both Greece and Netherlands researched Mining, so both hit their resources.

[Bacchus]

The scout found nothing interesting:

Khmer explorer is in for a nasty surprise next turn.

Demos show Serdoa researched Hunting. Someone has a crop yield of 10, not bad going for T11, fish + 3f land tile I presume. We are still first on GNP as we have been since starting on BW, but of course with Cre this means little. Rival best is only 1 behind, so we are actually not doing so well.

Will update the sandbox and do some sims to have them ready to bin once we uncover copper.

[Bacchus]

And now it looks like Azza is keeping turn order with someone. Scout racing, supposedly.

[Bacchus]

New sandbox, with the 91 gold and turns rolled until T24 -- the turn when BW and the wet wheat farm both complete.

http://ge.tt/api/1/files/7Wqz4Tn/0/blob?download

[Bacchus]

Low-optimization run-through with the sandbox gives this for T80.

Demos:

Overview:

We just adopted HR which lets us grow beyond 6 and great scientist pops up in Hadrumetum on T94. Fifth city to take the pig away from the financial cap should have come much earlier, of course. In reality, a lot of that pop would have been whipped into axes.

[Cheater Hater]

Hooray for micro that I quickly lose track of! Things seem okay, as far as I can see--yes, just get to copper so the game can begin
(though if neither of us has copper, wouldn't it be okay? How long until we get graphs with Khmer to see if they've built a warrior yet?
Honestly, how quickly can we build a warrior and cheese them out of their capital?)

[Bacchus]

Micro sucked, actually: for one thing, Arthur will complete a turn later, for another, we need to switch into slavery at some point and I wanted do it whilst the first settler runs. Albeit, given the lack of improved tiles, we might be able to stave off the slavery switch until the second settler comes out.

No copper for either of us is fine — our side of the floods has better food, and we are creative, so on peaceful competition, we will dominate the borderlands, be first to IW and Construction, I would imagine. Unless, of course, neither side has copper, but one side has horses.

We can build a warrior in 3 turns and in 7 turns he can get to a tile 3SE of the capital, which should be fogged. Provided he doesn't run into a scout, this would allow to step out 2SE on T+11, leaving him only 2 turns to muster defenses. I thought about going warrior instead of scout for this purpose, but then decided it's too cavalier and uncertain a play. If we were playing competetively, it would have probably been the right thing to do — my guess is that warrior assault upwards of 1/3 chance to take the cap; capitals don't autoraze IIRC, and his capital is so sweet that it would have given us a serious lead in a geography which doesn't seem disposed to allowing dogpiles, on top of AI-diplo which discourages them. My biggest worry is that he opened BW, which would mean that in any case he could switch into Slavery and whip a warrior just in time after seeing ours.