[SPOILER] Yell0w - Rhoanna, Hippus

[Mafro]

It's interesting that this map has the occasional cottage or even hamlet sprinkled around. Kudos to the mapmaker - nice touch that yields an interesting early decision!

It would be great to found a city nearby and get an early jump on commerce, not to mention saving a few worker turns....

However, realistically, the two that I've seen on the map are both far enough away from our capital that they won't be settled for quite some time - unless we get aggressive with claiming land and attempt to settle outside our inner ring of cities. I don't think that'd be wise (but it might be fun!). All that said, I think I'd advocate for pillaging cottages for the early gold...especially when there are others nearby who could easily do the same.

Oh, and the whole mountain-next-to-our-capital-exploding-into-a-volcano thing REALLY sucks. Not only has it already robbed us of two forests in our capital's BFC, but it looks like the plains hill forest immediately north of the city is smoking. That's one of the 3-hammer tiles we were planning on working with our settler. Not sure how long it takes smoke to become fire...but if we're going to lose a hammer off that tile soon, does it change our production or growth plans?

[Qgqqqqq]

The chance of it turning to fire is very low.

[DaveV]

The chance of it turning to fire is very low.

3% per turn, to be precise.

[Mafro]

Is there a chance that it just goes out on its own? I don't think I've ever noticed that....

[Qgqqqqq]

Yes.
[Queue Dave with the actual number ]

[Yell0w]

An update was in order. First of all the volcano:

I hope the fires won't spread and destroy all my forest. The good news is burned down forests regenerate over time.

This turn we got another event, we got mushrooms on one of the best possible places. I swapped to them immediately. The free +1 health is nice.

I'll get on a dot map soonish.

The map script does the random tile improvements. I decided not to pillage cause they are close and nicely placed, but I fear Mauros will pillage them =(

[Yell0w]

Well, it happens again, our units start dying.

The scout discovered a Giant Spider, which was happy to have the meal.

And our warrior will most likely die to a Griffon.

If he does, we will need to get another warrior. We can get one done in two turns and grow to size 4 as well, shaving 1 turn from our settler. Which, as you can see, will be done in another 6 turns if our warrior survives.

I still couldn't do a dotmap. But I tested the possibility of settling on a node, and it doesn't work.

The problem I have is settling for a food resource in the first ring would be wise but every available city location needs another ring to really be useful, my proposed city spot especially.
Now culture is hard to come by, it either requires significant tech investment or significant hammer investment.

I would go for an early Drama to just build the culture, but we have to get Aristocracy before that, since there aren't a lot of commerce resources right next to our capital. And we need culture at least in our 2nd city long before Aristocracy will finish.
So the choice will be a monument, but for a monument we need Ancient Chants which will delay the crucial Mining tech. I will try hard to get a dot map done till tomorrow.

[Mafro]

I agree that we need cities to be productive right off the bat. With that in mind, here's my proposed dot map with settling priority.



I suggest we settle City #2 to the northwest before settling south. The city can share the already improved floodplains farm to kick off immediate growth, while having a forested hills plains for hammers. Every tile in the first ring can provide river commerce, as well as all but four in the second ring. With all those floodplains, the city will grow like a weed, serving as a pump for workers and settlers.

City #3 would be south, nabbing us the cotton. The problem with that city is a major lack of hammers in the first ring until we get Mining and a worker to mine the hills. It will be a good city, but needs tile improvements to avoid stagnation. Hence the importance of City #2 spitting out workers.

City #4 would be our first real hammer city, starting off by working the two Cow tiles (I'm thinking we'd have Animal Husbandry by this time), allowing for solid growth and hammers in the short term. It will never be a hammer powerhouse in the long term - it only has two hills tiles - but in the short term it could supplement our capital producing military units.

From there we can decide whether to continue building a ring around our capital (both for defensive depth and to keep maintenance costs down) or to plant cities in pursuit of strategic opportunities. I do think rapid expansion is the path to strength and success for us in this game, especially with the Expansive trait.

My $0.02.

[Yell0w]

I just wrote a really long post just to get it deleted at the very end.

So I'll make it short.

The last two turn fires went out which is good, our warrior did not survive so we are producing another one while growing to size 4.

I have a dot map of my own.

I think for the first city we plant we should chose Red spot or the spot you suggested 1 tile SE.
I like my suggestion cause it will get two corn down the road, we get a river connection to the capital without needing roads, same for the cotton and also giving us +2 health. We can't use the 2nd cotton before mining anyways.

2nd city should be Blue spot. we can get 1 fp farm with capital border expansion and the Incense brings a lot more commerce than cotton.

3rd city Yellow dot. We will have Mining and AC and can chop out a monument quickly to get the the full potential of that city quickly.

4th/5th city Brown and/or Pink dot strong commerce tiles, gold might be better to get first for happiness.

Turquoise and Light Blue dot after that.

Green dot possible HT city

A reason for my planing is that it will be quite a while before we get to CoL and AH will come after we get CoL, I also want to research festivals to get cheap Markets, fueling our research (in ways of allowing us to stay at 100%) and a GM to pop Currency and boost happy via Consumption civic. We now need to finish Crafting, get Mining ->Exploration -> Festivals -> Ancient Chants -> Education -> Code of Laws -> Animal Husbandry

I would be happy to know what you think

[Mafro]

I think for the first city we plant we should chose Red spot or the spot you suggested 1 tile SE.
I like my suggestion cause it will get two corn down the road, we get a river connection to the capital without needing roads, same for the cotton and also giving us +2 health. We can't use the 2nd cotton before mining anyways.

Yeah, in looking at it I like your red dot suggestion better too. That warrior was headed to the tile 1 SE and for some reason I fixated on it.

I can see your reasoning for the blue city, though I think it kills the green one. The chances that we build Heron Throne first there with so few hammers available seems pretty slim, though if we did get it that'd end up being a pretty solid city. It might even be worth a Great Engineer.

I like that the brown city allows us control over a potential invasion route from the north. Might want to put an archery range there, to give the city the defense bonus in addition to the ability to make archers (not sure we'll need them though).

Incidentally, it looks like if we can grow our borders enough to contain the soon-to-be-citadel in the south and we station a unit on it (maybe an archer or two), it would give us a 15% bonus to defense for both our southern cities, as well as a good vantage for early warning. An invader would have to choose whether to lose a handful of units taking the citadel (assuming tech parity), or yield the additional bonus to our city garrisons. Of course, if we build mainly horse archers, then the defense bonus argument is moot, I suppose.

One other thought - there's a lot of land to the east that seems like it should be ours, before the coastline makes a natural geographic barrier. Some of it is kind of blah, but I still think growing our way to victory is a reasonable strategy at this point.

Fun to start visualizing what will be....