[SPOILERS] Pindicator Walks With Dinosaurs

[pindicator]

Turns 020 & 021

We hit size 3 and finished our second warrior at the end of t19. It looks like a lot of people opted to start their settler at size 2, and as such we are going to have a little bit of a demo advantage, at least until they get their second city down before us. But I figure we want to get the good tiles worked as soon as possible, so grow until we can work all 3 of the bonus tiles and then expand out to claim more bonus tiles. Go forth and snowball, commanded pindicator to his people.



What's crazy is I think I've found my solution for my worker bottleneck. City #2 is going to go in the south, although I'm not sure if we're putting it to share the wheat or if we're going to try and grab the many herded animals I've been uncovering. Oh, to be CRE this game... In the back of my head I'm looking for locations where I could make a Stonehenge run with my second city, even though I know it'll be nuts to try and fit Mysticism in next.



Now that the wheat is done and AH is still 4 turns away, I've moved my worker to the plains hill to mine it. That will give my capital 3 improved tiles to work while building the settler -- that is, the second settler. Going to go two settlers in a row. I'm just not sure yet if the first settler is going to grab a spot to the northeast and share the cows, or if it will go south and share the wheat. Or possibly it goes farther out, but only if i can find a spot with two first-ring food resources.

And then we hope we'll have enough commerce to reach Bronze Working and be able to mine some more tiles. Or do I skip BW and just go for Pottery and commerce? And who knows, maybe AH will reveal horses and give my worker more to do.

One of the changes I really like about RB Mod is that people actually give a damn when they see whales. I was worried about settling one away from the coast in the south to share the wheat with the deer or cow, until I reminded myself that whales are worthless until I get optics, so basically whales are worthless. In RB Mod you can honestly get excited about whales. Not that I've ever gotten to hook up whales in an RB Mod game... Even in PB8 when we stole all those islands there weren't any whales

[pindicator]

Turn 022

Found me a city. Probably future Moai-land here

[pindicator]

Turn 024

Tempting fate here... but I probably don't want my second city up here anyway. Better to put it where I can hook up another food resource first ring with my worker, who will otherwise have nothing left to do.



Demos add another piece of evidence towards mirrored starts:

[pindicator]

Tun 026

I've now lost my second battle in a row at 25% odds

But I'm really quite happy to see that we have multiple horses in the area. Worker turns are no longer an issue



I'm still going to go settler-settler... perhaps? Ugh, need to do more micro work but i'm tired of doing micro work. I could also put a city 2E of the wheat to grab that horse, but right now I want to see what's farther rest.

[GermanJoey]

what order would you settle those two sites if you went settler->settler?

[pindicator]

Of those two I'm settling the sheep/horse site first. That's got 2 bonus tiles to improve and I have the worker to improve it. I'm following up with Wheel/Pottery to try and get some cottages down and cities hooked up, because I'm a bit in a commerce hole early on. Lots of bonus tiles for early production, so I'm feeling okay about delaying Bronze Working.

The downside is that I'm putting a city where it will take my one worker 3 turns of moving just to get to the sheep.... So that makes me think maybe I go settle 2E of the wheat and the worker will only take 1 turn of getting to the horse. Probably do a worker straight away in city 2 while a settler is being made in the capital. Again, this is starting to look ugly and I'm not sure I want to put the time into finding something prettier.

Also, losing these early units is going to tell as I'm not going to be able to see if there's a better spot to settle just a little farther east or not. So yuck on that.

You know, doing the second city on the lake like that would be a very productive city. Too bad it doesn't claim any new food tiles.

Maybe I can swap to Mysticism and try to build Stonehenge there... Again, need to see if that's feasible.

[pindicator]

Turn 029

In the end I picked neither.



I really toyed with the idea of swapping to Mysticism straight away and trying to build Stonehenge here, but we'd be looking at a turn 47 henge, or turn 45 if I built it in the capital. And both of them would just stunt my growth like mad. I'm already stunting my growth due to these wonderfully awful starting techs I chose. No need to pour salt on everything.

Now, I can understand if this doesn't look intuitively like the kind of spot you want to grab with your first settler. I am claiming zero new food tiles. I didn't know I was grabbing a second ring ivory until I founded the city, so that's a nice little bonus. The whole point of this city is being able to work the tiles I can improve now. Going west would be better, true, but it also would waste an ungodly amount of worker turns just to get there. Same with going south. Here that horse tile is 1 turn away. And by the time I'm done pasturing the horse we'll have finished The Wheel (and our second worker), which means hooking up these cities and roading towards city #3 out west.

What this city can do is build workers. It can be amazing at that. Horse + Plains hill mine = 10hpt with expansive. 6-turn workers from here until eternitiy. Capital will pump settlers. I plan on having 4 cities before turn 50. We'll have Pottery by then and can start recovering from this. Bronze Working and Slavery are going to be a while though, but by the time they come it'll be time to whip or chop in granaries everywhere and grow grow grow.

[pindicator]

Turn 034

The cities are connected:



A not-so-insignificant decision this turn, as I had to decide whether to swap tiles around this turn or not. I decided to keep the Wheat and Horse at Allosaurus for one more turn, and finish the warrior without any overflow. Next turn the capital will take the wheat back. This actually delays the settler out of the capital by a turn, but for that turn I end up getting 15h of overflow which will go straight into a granary. So I'm hoping that speeding hte granary up by several turns will make up for delaying the settler by one. I'm thinking that's a good trade.

[pindicator]

Turn 035

New tile arrangement this turn, as I discussed last night:



Allosaurus is taking full advantage of that +25% worker production to get 10hpt into a worker. I think we're going to do 1 worker and then go into a granary. But gets tricky when you're sharing food like this - it might be better to grow one on food tiles while the other builds workers/settlers and takes the production tiles. Well, we'll want granaries either way.

Also, with the settler due in 4, that means I have 5 turns to get roads on the tiles SW and W-SW of T-Rex. That leaves enough time for us to connect the horses, but not quite enough time to mine a hill. So we'll road the horses and waste a couple worker-turns as we head west. I am going to need more workers when Pottery gets in and those granaries get in place - lots of river tiles to cottage, even if they are plains.

[pindicator]

I think I've finally got an opening I'm happy with. At least to start. 4 cities, 3 with granaries, and 5 workers all by t50. We'll be in slavery and finally able to chop out all those annoying forests.