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

[Cheater Hater]

Can you post some pictures so the lurkers (and teammate too lazy to actually log into the game) have an idea what's happening? (most notably the copper placement)

[Bacchus]

That copper location in glorious technicolor:


I'm pretty sure we will research AH straight after hunting, as this is so far out of our best dotmap it's ridiculous. Hopefully horses are better located. Silver lining is that no-one will take that copper away from us ever. Well, Vikings might. Also, this is the sole source of metal on the map that we revealed to date, which is actually quite a lot of map.

[Bacchus]

Oh yeah, also this:


As expected for an 18-player, there is some ridiculousness going on. 18 crop yield with a max city size of 4 gives an average yield of 4 per tile worked, but given that one couldn't have improved this many floodplains by this point, it actually means someone has double 6f resources. We are bang in the middle on CY+MFG, and slightly behind average on GNP, so not all bad.

[Cheater Hater]

Why wouldn't you put the copper city 2N of the copper so it gets both seafood? I know you generally want the copper to be first-ring, but that's what we have creative for

Of course, I'd much rather not have to prioritize that city--will we get AH before the second settler? Could we afford to settle a good city and wait and see on horses, or does Khmer have copper in a good position and is preparing axes?

[Bacchus]

Yeah, the city should be 1N of the pointed out location, I fucked up the arrow. That's the level of effort and attention that's going into this game.

We will get AH long before the second settler, I am tempted to research it straight after hunting. We need it for the ivory in any case, we have both prereqs, and there is just so many resourceless tiles in the north-east, that surely they will pop somewhere. Or if not there, maybe in our starting bfc, the forestless tile.

[Bacchus]

I have a question for lurkers on the boundaries of AI Diplomacy. It's totally within the letter of it to re-extend enforced peace every ten turns for a very practicable NAP. I'm not sure whether it's against the spirit, though.

I'm considering doing this due to our strategic situation, which is as follows: we have abundant land, enough to keep us busy settling for the next 50-odd turns, which we should consider a blessing given an 18-player BnS map. I forget what the actual land tile numbers are, but we clearly have at least our fair share. Which means, that after we grab even more land towards retep, we have no reason to war offensively. Retep, on the other hand, is screwed — he has to war against either us, or Inca. Inca seem a better target due to buddhist holy city, proximity and slower appearance of 20% culture defense in cities, but there can be numerous other considerations for why retep could choose to expand south, rather than east.

Another consideration is that for both us and Inca conquering retep means immediate war against the other neighbour. In fact, conquering Khmer is just the start of the task — the stack that will be brave enough to capture retep's capital is likely to come under next-to-immediate attack from the other neighbour. This is especially true for us, as Inca is so close to Khmer. Hence, I would much rather keep retep as a buffer and as an annoyance for William.

On an unrelated note, as William is more northerly, his lands are likely to be if not less abundant, then drier than ours.

[Cheater Hater]

I'd assume it's fine, but it has other effects too (it breaks trade routes every 10 turns, even assuming peace is accepted each time), so I don't think it's worth it.

[Bacchus]

CH, on an 18 player B&S we will have trade routes aplenty, probably IC ones. But yeah, we might have to take trade into account.

[Bacchus]

We found a friend, or more correctly he found us:


Fortunately, Shaka with Phalanxes is at least this far away:


The excuse for the shit scouting is that we aren't really going to settle due south of Incan capital anyway, probably. Not in the near future, anyway. I'm more concerned about getting contacts. I also hope to maybe snatch distant huts, but clearly no luck — there are others in the east. Question now for our eastern explorer is North or South? I'm tempted North, just because it's quicker to complete even if it is all land.

In other news, here is what my inattentive ass has missed:


That's an awesome city site there. Funnily, I'm not sure that retep actually scouted this hill, and as you can see his own scout is camping almost due south of his cap, not sure why. It's a bit of an awkward position, you would want to build your third city there, not the second, but Khmer might not have any choice. It's less awkward than our copper in any case.

In the south our woody scout, healed to 97 HP, advanced and found this:


We've got to heal before picking it, so I moved 1 NW to scout more of the coast. There's a crab.

We get Inca's graphs next turn, I put in 2 points into Greece. From there on, I think espionage will go 1 to Inca, 1 to Khmer, 2 to Greece for a while. Greece must have met Inca and Khmer, and surely have a closer neighbour in addition to that, so I expect to get a good spy advantage on Greece, which, as mentioned above, has pretty bonkers traits and is already fourth on score to boot.

[Merovech]

Why do you have to heal before grabbing it?