Ride to ruin and the world's ending! (TBS, Becko & Joao)

[BRickAstley]

At least changing map size is just a one line change in the save file

[Becko]

Thanks, if nothing else I can always use the sandbox (including world size change) to practice for filling in. Which, btw, I'm cool with doing, but I hope you know what you're doing. But I guess at this point it would just be moving scout and pressing enter, right? Oh, and you mean this upcoming Mon-Wed (21-23), no?

On C&D: I have done it, just to see if I could, but I've only ever had any practical use for it in duels. If you can think of a specific use case, let me know: I have more time than skill.

Rohan... Riders... Maybe, capitals of fictional riding peoples? 'Cept I can only think of Edoras and Vaes Dothrak right now. OK, let's see if we can get creative. We take a Rohan placename, like Dunharrow. We "translate" it into modern English (dun = hill, harrow = sanctuary). Then we run that translation through Google Translate Mongolian: Tolgoi Ariun Gazar!

...See, this is the sort of thing I can be helpful with. :P If nothing else, we have a list of Rohirric placenames to refer to.

On a more, uh, game-related note, do you have any thoughts on your competition? In terms of the people you're playing against, I mean?

[The Black Sword]

Here we go. Pretty sure we're going with agriculture unless I find another Hunting-centric city site for the fast settler BW would give.

Regarding the naming scheme, I'd prefer one that I can pronounce . But tying in other people sounds good, most fantasy worlds have someone famed for their horses. Maybe we can group together cities from the each land?

I can come up with some opponent analysis when I have a bit more time. I meant to keep myself to 2 games at a time, but then this and PB18 came up and I didn't feel I could turn them down.

[Becko]

Yes, I've been playing around in the sandbox too, and while you can get a real fast two-workers-and-a-settler thing going, there's not all that much to do for them after that. Unless, as you say, the scout runs into a bunch of deer in the next few turns. When would you go for pottery? Right after agriculture?

Also, what are your thoughts on the early wonders? Don't see much room for teching to them, I suppose.

Finally, during my cursory search, I've also found that fictional horse peoples have one thing in common. Well, two, if you count the horses. Anyway: they don't tend to be big on building cities. They seem more into tents and yurts and, of course, gers. And I'm guessing that between the Mongols and the Hippus, most horse-related themes have been used on RB already.

...John Wayne movies?

[The Black Sword]

No Deer and no more information of immediate relevance until the border pop. Scout is going to the hill NNE next I think. I'm going to leave further decisions until after the border pop and I get all the information but it looks to me like Agri -> AH -> Mining is best and a size 4 settler working the 3 resources and the plains hill mine. Pottery might make sense directly after Agri, we could get the full Granary bonus on the 3->4 growth I think but I don't really want to be working any cottages yet. Just have to wait for that border pop to decide I think.

The point about tech is pretty much spot on for early wonders. That said, I assume everyone else has a similar start, with 3 different types of food resources and is similarly tech constrained. So, while I don't think we should aim for any wonders until after BW and Pottery, they might still be around. GLH, Stonehenge and a religion would be my top choices. Some way to pop borders beside monuments would be excellent and looking at the amount of water here, GLH could be awesome. Dtay does have Roosevelt's Ind/Org though ... Oracle and Pyramids don't give a great deal when built immediately without their multipliers IMO.

I can't say I'm a big John Wayne fan tbh, but he surely has enough movies for us. I could run with it if you picked out the names?

[Krill]

If you want a horse type theme why not just pick something like Grand National Winners?

[Becko]

Some quick reflections, in ascending order of randomness:

• Scouting looking good. Feeding cities doesn't look like a problem. Doesn't look great so far for your pregame hopes of a cottage economy though, does it? :/
  
• Agree, no need for post-Agri discussion just yet. Will keep sandboxing.
  
• Too early for dotmaps, too, but I'm thinking about the southeast of the capital. 2N of clams would share cows and pick up flood plains tile that might take a while to get into play otherwise. 1SW of pigs is on a plains hill and doesn't need a border pop to pick up the pork. Which brings us to:
  
• Wonders question was indeed an oblique culture question. Stonehenge would be nice, but could take a while. OTOH, the only player starting with Mysticism is Oxyphenbutazone, who also happens to be Creative. (Edit: But there's a Charismatic leader as well.)
  
• GLH would be great, but I'd guess that if you know roughly what type of map it's going to be, and you pick Roosevelt, you have it on your bucket list. OTOH, it's FDR of Mali, so Oracle -> MC -> Colossus is probably in those plans as well. And that's a lot of wonders. Which makes the Pyramids a good bet for our other Industrious leader, I guess.
  
• I didn't follow the map discussion. The tech thread says PB9-style with 200+ tiles per player. That makes, what, 64x40 with 35% water? So something like 17-18 tiles to neighboring players as the crow flies, longer by scout?
  

[Becko]

If you want a horse type theme why not just pick something like Grand National Winners?

Ooh, that could work! It hasn't been done already? Then the list would be something like:

1. Old Joe
   
2. Gamecock
   
3. Playfair
   
4. Frigate
   
5. Ilex
   

Or, you could go for the races themselves (might already have been done, too):

1. Grand National
   
2. Belmont
   
3. Preakness
   
4. Ascot
   
5. Grand Prix
   

For completeness, here are some Rohirric placenames:

1. Edoras
   
2. Isengard
   
3. Dunharrow
   
4. Westfold
   
5. Hornburg
   

...and some John-Wayne-on-a-horse movie titles:

1. The Conqueror
   
2. Tall in the Saddle
   
3. Three Texas Steers
   
4. The Night Riders
   
5. Randy Rides Alone
   

TBS, you'd better go ahead and pick one before I start googling for things like horse breeds mongols race winners steven seagal.

[The Black Sword]

Border pop shows ...



Deer! Ah well, no way we could have known. It sure is an interesting looking map. I still like the look of that plains hill east of the mountain, first ring sheep, shares wheat. That would probably mean another city on the ice north of the capital, which means we miss out on Lighthousing the clam, but I don't think that's too important, it is so far down the road. I like the suggestion of 2N of the clam, pig city I feel should probably go on that river though. To do that, might need to push the sheep city north. Or maybe settle clam city and border pop it, then pig city could go on the plains hill in the middle of the river and immediately work the pig.

I'm thinking the scout continues to head east, we should have at least 2 warriors out before the settler, 1 can check the northern coastline for orphaned sea food, the other can defog SW.

Doesn't look great so far for your pregame hopes of a cottage economy though, does it?

I think it looks fine tbh, lots of good river tiles around the capital and we want to settle with a lot of overlap on the food resources too IMO. The other river is nice enough as well. It's not like we have much option anyway, can't really count on landing the pyramids.

I'm not sure of the map dimensions myself, I think there's supposed to be a bit more water than PB9 though. I can try some go-to command stuff next time I log in. From the sounds of it, Xenu ran a map generator script(Lakes?) with large world size, maybe we can check what size map that gives?

As for naming scheme, I'm afraid my interest in horse racing is precisely zero. Those John Wayne movies sound good though, and allows me to keep a LotR theme for the next time I run out of inspiration . Given that he plays Genghis in The Conqueror, that's probably a good capital. I'm keeping my Theoden quote for the title though!

[The Black Sword]

I couldn't find anything I really liked up the Agri -> AH path, so here's my favourite quick Granary attempt:



Settler is going to complete at 101/100.

Run through:
Farm wheat, working deer in meantime, hammers into warriors(finish one). Research Pottery.

At size 2, build a worker with the deer and wheat, worker camping the deer. Work the wines for 1 turn over the unimproved deer to finish the worker at 70/60. First worker then farms the wines, second worker has 6 worker turns for roading or cottaging before we finish researching AH and improve the cows.

Grow to size 3 on the granary, where we pick up the wine farm. After completing the granary, back onto a warrior. Work a phf for 1 turn instead of the wines for max overflow from the warrior. Grow to 4 with the max gran bonus, immediately improve the cows allowing us to grow to 5 in 1 turn and start the settler pictured.

Some of the numbers are quite nice but we still have a couple of inefficiencies: ignored a really strong cow tile for some time(it's improved T29 vs possible T24), Granary only gained us 13 effective food before the first settler and we have an excess of worker turns it seems. 1 Possible way to use the extra worker turns btw, is to road the plains hill the city is to be founded on and speed the settler by another turn.

I'm attaching the updated sandbox if you want to play with it. At least there's an opening to compare with now.