[SPOILERS] Scooticator and Pindooter give a sporting try

[pindicator]

Yeah, I did the math on growth. The rice farm will finish the turn that Red Wings is at size 2 with 16/24 food in the box, so just in time to get that city to +8fpt and growing to size 3.

The chopping before mining is only one-turn each for each worker. Otherwise we could also put a road in somewhere, but it's two tiles from rice to copper and neither of them will be roaded. I like putting two turns in to a forest chop instead as that will help speed along the next settler. Again, it'd help if I had a visual. Might be able to get that in tonight.

I also would like Noble's thoughts on mine before cottage there. I think in general we want to rely less on whipping and more on general production than we were doing in pb8. That's why I'm trying to keep our whips to 1-pop here and only if we're whipping off unimproved tiles. But we absolutely want to get cottages started. (And the next improvement I have in mind for TB after that mine is a cottage on the grassland.)

[pindicator]

I've also been toying with the thought of settling the gems spot 3rd, but I can't quite go for it. Production is still king in the early game, and that Stone/Wheat site is going to be a nice production city for us. Any reason I'm wrong and we should do gems ahead of stone/wheat?

[NobleHelium]

I would cottage instead of mining, yeah. I'm not paying super close attention though.

[pindicator]

I would cottage instead of mining, yeah. I'm not paying super close though.

I'll look at chopping a different tile then cottaging and see how that compares

[pindicator]

Going cottage ahead of the grass hill mine will delay city #3 by a turn.

[antisocialmunky]

With so many 'old friends' around, I think you guys should emphasize early production so nothing ridiculous happens.

[pindicator]

Turn 039

Plako has overtaken us in score, but we finish Pottery this turn so we will hopefully reclaim our rightful place again next turn!

In the north, I learned the meaning of the word 'schadenfreude':



And then in the south, our scout may help me learn the meaning of the word 'hubris'. Or would it be 'irony'?



According to Cyneheard's spreadsheet, I'm getting 29.79% odds that we win, so this may be the end of our scout

Finally, the real action of the turn, which brings on a question of it's own:



Our original worker (Clyde Drexler) finished it's chop, going into worker #3. Worker #3 is due in 3 turns.
The second worker I named Terry Porter, perhaps lesser known to people outside of Portland, but he was the point guard on the early '90s teams that had multiple NBA Finals appearances. He's also the best point guard the team's ever had. (Here's hoping Damian Lillard can challenge for that honorary after a long and successful career as a Blazer!)

Anyway, TP moved to the forest by Red Wings, and CD finished the chop. Next turn TP will road the tile he's standing on, and CD will move to the wheat and road that.

I also have a question about what to do with 'Sheed. Do we send him northwest to uncover that nearby fog? Do we send him southwest to fogbust the next city? Or do we put him between the two cities we have to play a bit of zone defense, in case barbs show up? I think we have a little bit of a window before barb warriors show up and start wandering into borders, so we could maybe get away with moving NW a few turns. But it would be riskier, even if the archer got injured.

Demos:



Not too good, and we're working all of our bonus food tiles. This is what has me a little worried about our starting land: there is not that much food. It reminds me a lot of what I had in pitboss 7, actually. So I think we need to make an effort to prioritize the food in our settling, but also because this is RB Mod we should mind our whips.

Right now our happy cap is only 4, 5 in the capital. I don't think we want to build granaries in our first two cities until we're ready to push that happy cap higher. Later cities will want granaries chopped in ASAP so they can grow fast. But we won't be whipping these first two cities often due to lots of good tiles, and RB Mod's slavery nerf. So I would recommend only emergency whipping in these first two cities and then building the granaries only as the happy cap grows (hopefully from hooking up gems and gold).

[NobleHelium]

I would either have Sheed defend or scout northwest for a few turns before returning. I don't think there's much need to clear the next city location right now.

[pindicator]

Turn 040

Our scout didn't survive and now we have another animal "bearing" down on us in the north. I like the odds a lot better for this one, so I kept Bill Walton fortified.





69hp is the absolute maximum the bear can have to be listed at 2.0/3. 67hp is the minimum, and the odds between the two are pretty similar.
Odds are we'll be promoting him next turn!



I didn't move Sheed last turn despite thinking that was a worthwhile risk after Noble posted, so my mistake there. I figure we can move him to the hill as shown. Ideally we get sight over a good area bordering where we want to settle. We can also risk moving onto flat ground simply because he's an archer. At worst it's another bear but he should still get ~75% odds to win that fight.

Workers are roading as planned.

I think after worker #3 finishes we build a warrior at TB for MP duty. The city will be unhappy at size 3 without one thanks to the earlier whipping. Happy cap is only 5 at the capital! I somehow thought we'd have 6 and 5 elsewhere but it's 5 at the capital and 4 everywhere else.

I checked everyone's diplo screens, and everybody we've met has a 2nd city ...except Jester. Not sure what they did with their opening, but it obviously didn't work so well.

And we have graphs on Lewwyn this turn. I moved our EP spending over to Commodore, but here are the updated graphs. You can see that Lewwyn went worker->worker to start the game due to the high mfg & low food:

[pindicator]