[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[TheHumanHydra]

Agree with SW, avoiding contact.

[Old Harry]

Knowing our luck it'll be Darrell and Ichabod. Not contacting allows us the chance to boat their capital at some point in the far future. Contacting gets foreign trade with sailing and open borders, so no rush. In this game is foreign trade going to be as important as it has been in PB13?

Also do you think we have a land bridge to the south east? That would put our capitals remarkably close together, so I doubt it...

Also THH, you need to get this mod up and running so that we can get some hut luck!

[Fintourist]

Turn 16




Scouting options:
1. S-SE (if we want to keep scouting this area)
2. W-NW --> W-W --> SW-NW --> W-SW/NW (this gets us back to west)
3. S-W? (or some other compromise where we keep revealing some tiles before heading west)

We don't really need much more info about the southern area for our near future. There are sites worth settling, sure, but the area west of us is clearly a higher priority. If Cheater Hater (my current best guess after staring more at the color) decides to go for early Sailing and settles that sheep+crabs site, we may need to take it from him, which would be unfortunate. However, it is even more unfortunate if we fail to grab a decent share of land to our west, which seems a lot more fruitful. I also think that we have cleared the huts from this area unless the land continues pretty far to south. Consequently, knowing how close our neighbors are in the west and finding attractive city sites there would be my first priority. I'm not saying we should run there immediately and I am fine with option #1.. But pretty soon I want to go there.

Updated Sandbox
Everything is clear until EOT23, which is the turn when BW finishes and our worker finishes the 2nd pasture. I'm convinced that growing now to size 3 and starting a worker/settler then beats stagnating at size 2 or 4 regardless of what we do. And we want to grow while building a warrior, not scout, we will need one warrior.

So on T24 we need to decide:
1. Do we take Agri or Wheel next. (current hypothesis: Wheel leads to marginally better results)
2. Do we build a 2nd worker or settler (current hypothesis: Worker. These scenarios are really tough to compare and one needs to sim at least until T50, better until T60, before one can really say which approach comes ahead. I''ve experienced only little so far. Some sims where I push settlers out early with minimal worker support look ugly but lead to surprisingly good results)
3. What to do with our existing worker (ie which forest do we chop first, mining a hill is weaker. This depends heavily on which site we choose for the 2nd city, which might be affected by copper)

Aaaanyways, I don't expect that you, OH and THH, do any micro planning. I just wanted to give an update in case you are interested. Lurkers certainly aren't.

[Old Harry]

My first thought for the scout was s-nw.

It looks like we could be connected to whoever that is, so se to confirm would be good. Although I agree there's probably nothing left to see down there, so heading nw soon is fine.

Its good to know we have a week before decisions need to be made - perhaps I'll have a chance to give the sandbox a try (yeah, right!) but if not I'm sure you'll do the right thing.

[Fintourist]

My first thought for the scout was s-nw.

Something similar was my first reaction as well, but the route to west from there does not seem so quick. Kind of wasting 2 scout turns for that one S movement. I prefer S-SE or completely turning to this option. Maybe S-W, and again S-W, and then full speed west could be another way of revealing a bit of extra tiles.

It looks like we could be connected to whoever that is, so se to confirm would be good. Although I agree there's probably nothing left to see down there, so heading nw soon is fine.

Hmm.. Kind of 50-50 situation. I would not be surprised if there would not be a connection immediately outside the fog, but significantly further south so that for early aggression purposes it plays like a different island.

Its good to know we have a week before decisions need to be made - perhaps I'll have a chance to give the sandbox a try (yeah, right!) but if not I'm sure you'll do the right thing.

No pressure! From past I know that the outcome will always be better if you go through my micro or vice versa, but I can promise you that our first 60 turns will be at least somewhat competitive unless animals just kill everything that exits our borders..

And I forgot to reply to this:

In this game is foreign trade going to be as important as it has been in PB13?

If this is a continents map, surely, if its a snaky lakes map or something then Free Market won't be that good..

Also do you think we have a land bridge to the south east? That would put our capitals remarkably close together, so I doubt it...

This was already discussed above, but yes, I think it's possible, but maybe I would slightly bet against it. Probably there it's at least some kind of a bay that separates us making barbs the biggest worry from that direction for a good while.

[Fintourist]

Turn 17

Ok, I kept my mind and moved S-SE and I'm kind of glad I did:




I revealed a 2nd crabs resource. It will never be ours as it's in the 3rd ring of Cheater Hater's capital (I will refer to our neighbor as CH until proven otherwise), but this gives us a better idea regarding how this area will look in his eyes. CH will get a border pop ~T50, which will reveal also that sheep resource. How long it take for you before you would settle a potential island city 4 tiles away from your capital that gets 2x crabs and sheep in the first ring? I would imagine that I would head there with my 5th-7th settler if I have good land in other directions, but even earlier if I don't have quality sites. What I'm saying is that we are kind of in our first settling race already...

We are not going to put our 2nd, 3rd or even 4th city over there, but I could see us settling that plains hill spot as our 5th or 6th city. Improve sheep, chop-whip granary, chop-whip barracks for culture, whip lighthouse, whip SA, keep whipping stuff. We just improve the 2 sheep and net crabs, otherwise the city can work lighthoused lake+coast tiles and our workers can support other cities. Always keep a hammer in an archer etc. Note that the Northern crabs will be in the 4th ring of CH's capital so there is a realistic chance that we could control that tile.

Ok, this is a bit early and we need to see what else we will find, but well, there is not much else to type about.. :P

Next scouting move?
1. S? (and head to west via that southern path)
2. NW-NW/W?

[Old Harry]

Had a quick look in game - the water south of the lake you marked is also a lake so a city there could get at least five lighthouse lakes (although probably not much else). I did a quick worldbuilder test and our neighbour is indeed Cheater Hater, Bismark of Zulu. Hopefully he'll build us a wonder or two . (Edit: although Impis will make a Horse Archer rush less effective ...)

For the scout do we want to head straight for the Pig/Gems area or over to the ivory/corn area? I'm inclined to explore Pig/Gems as that could yet influence the second city site (which I'm presuming will be cow/corn at this point).

On the religions Brickadoc aren't Spiritual - so why have they already revolted to Buddhism?

[Fintourist]

Had a quick look in game - the water south of the lake you marked is also a lake so there is a city there that could get at least five lighthouse lakes (although probably not much else). I did a quick worldbuilder test and our neighbour is indeed Cheater Hater, Bismark of Zulu. Hopefully he'll build us a wonder or two .

Let's hope! And thanks for confirming it (how did you do that?)!

For the scout do we want to head straight for the Pig/Gems area or over to the ivory/corn area? I'm inclined to explore Pig/Gems as that could yet influence the second city site (which I'm presuming will be cow/corn at this point).

Re scout: I Agree, that's probably the highest priority area.

Re city: Yeah, my current hypothesis is still site "b", SE of northern corn. Ivory/Corn/Sheep area is just a bit slower, E of corn in the north is a bit far for my taste and does not create trade routes via river so I prefer wasting a forest to it.

I also tested the spot that shares capital pigs and grabs cows + wheat. As you can imagine, 2nd city gets up to speed faster, it pretty much wins 2 turns in development compared to corn+cows site. However, wet corn is of course stronger than dry wheat and catches the difference turn by turn. I've only tried it once, but for now I don't think that those 2 turns snowball into something concrete enough that would justify giving up the corn and coastal plant.

On the religions Brickadoc aren't Spiritual - so why have they already revolted to Buddhism?

Intro: 6 teams have already grown to size 2, including Brick+Mardoc. Probable reasons for that are fast EXP+PH start and coastal start where one goes WB first (demos show that there are starts with water in BFC. and yeah, we have seen that CH's start is different compared to us).
Consequently: I would imagine that B+M finished their first WB (or worker) and decided that now while there are no improved tiles yet is a good time to revolt. That might be a decent move if they are going to need that 1 extra happy in the near future, waiting for the first GA could be too slow.. Or maybe they just wanted to show the whole word that they got it?

[Old Harry]

thanks for confirming it (how did you do that?)!

Started a game with the civs you suggested, put in some water and a scout near each and Zulu was the only one close to the right shade.

For the scout do we want to head straight for the Pig/Gems area or over to the ivory/corn area? I'm inclined to explore Pig/Gems as that could yet influence the second city site (which I'm presuming will be cow/corn at this point).

Re scout: I Agree, that's probably the highest priority area.

I'd send the scout back up north next turn then.

I would imagine that B+M finished their first WB (or worker) and decided that now while there are no improved tiles yet is a good time to revolt. That might be a decent move if they are going to need that 1 extra happy in the near future, waiting for the first GA could be too slow.. Or maybe they just wanted to show the whole word that they got it?

Ah, yeah that's a good point. Lets assume they're doing the clever thing...

[Fintourist]

Turn 18

Scout is heading back to north so no new tiles were revealed. Let's note that 8 people grew to size 2 this turn, which sounds like they were able to build a 12-turn worker.