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

[The Black Sword]

FWIW, I double-checked my assumption that everyone started with a scout. Minimum soldier count on T12 was 2k, which would cover the civs that start with one of Hunting and Mining. Agriculture, Fishing and Mysticism don't give any power, but no civ started with two of those. Ergo, since warriors add to the soldier count, no-one started with a warrior. Reasonable?

Eh, I suppose I should have filled you in, we voted for all scout starts.

We managed to get by the bear and find Oxy's borders:


Zoomed out pic for reference:


I'm thinking we should try ensure we get that wheat tile. Pushing for the deer is probably too ambitious, especially since he's Creative.



I got cut off on the way back by the bear, so I went exploring instead. Should be fine, given the extra sight from the mountains by our capital.



Working the cow over the wines to regain some of those lost hammers. We'll put the worker at 59/60 and overflow 13 ->10h. I checked and that will screw with our Granary build, probably finish the Granary as we Avoid Growth and then take back the food tiles for 10/13f bonus from the granary. The lost hammers are snowballing.

[The Black Sword]

T25, so that is Oxy's 3rd ring borders. Also, look at that plains hill as a plant for a Cre civ, though I guess it might be a little far for a second city.



Cows are online, starting the settler. New worker is roading to the plains hill sheep site. I'm roading the forest rather than the grass, because I think we'll want a road on the forest tile when settling towards the pigs anyway, it just makes a better road network. Hopefully we can 'reclaim' that worker turn when chopping the forest later. It matches the settler timing better too. There was a lion wandering around the area last turn, so I think we'll fortify the warrior on the hill in case he comes back.



The various info we have very much suggests everyone has the same start. Our graphs and Oxy's fit together:




All the Top 5 cities are on size 3, and here are the demos:


We had that 15f/4h setup last turn before the cows improved. Looks nice that we are the first to improve all 3 resources, despite the forest slowing us down.

I have some dotmapping thoughts that I might get to post later.

[The Black Sword]

One possibility for all those forests ...



That is 2 settlers of course, but we do need a way to pop borders.

[The Black Sword]

Possible dotmap:


Brown is fixed next, which fixes green. We'll settle at most 1, maybe 0 cities after that before BW, so this might be a bit premature. I'd like to settle red next for horses, but all 3 stars are alternate locations that could be discussed. Blue could be a good NE city, with a very good 'filler' in blue star. That picks up no additional resources but it does lighthouse all the lakes and shares a lot, so it could start quickly. Blue taking the FP allows us to put Yellow on the plains hill with first ring pig. Grey diamonds are an alternative for blue and yellow but I'm leaning away from that. The dots in the east pretty much write themselves I think. We are losing out on 1 river plains tile on the grey X.

I could see us settling brown -> red -> blue -> yellow ->purple -> light green. Need to fit in copper and maybe an island city.

With regard to culture options we have 3 religions and Stonehenge available still. Grabbing one of those would be great. We have 3 Cre civs, so hopefully that's possible, though given Oxy starts with Myst, he's also a religion competitor.

The only wonder that I'd consider powerful enough to divert for at the moment is the GLH, look at all the coastal sites here. I'm inclined to think we'd need to settle our second city on the coast to beat the Ind civs to it though.

Note to self: another forest growth on the plains hill north of the deer not in the sandbox. That's pretty important because I wanted to put a mine there.

[Becko]

I'm back! You're doing just as well regardless, both with the turnplaying and the reporting, but at least I can make the thread, uh, postier. Picking things out as I go along, let me know if I'm missing something important!

Cows are online, starting the settler. New worker is roading to the plains hill sheep site. I'm roading the forest rather than the grass, because I think we'll want a road on the forest tile when settling towards the pigs anyway, it just makes a better road network. Hopefully we can 'reclaim' that worker turn when chopping the forest later. It matches the settler timing better too.

That sounds good; I never feel comfortable figuring out how to lay down roads properly (cue lurkers: "Have you tried pressing R?"). One thing about the forest growth that slowed down the snowball: won't it catch up with the hammers gained from chopping the forest eventually?

The various info we have very much suggests everyone has the same start.

...and playing it the same way, too?

We had that 15f/4h setup last turn before the cows improved. Looks nice that we are the first to improve all 3 resources, despite the forest slowing us down.

One possibility for all those forests ...

Ooh, nice. Does that make Stonehenge a one-turn build? How long does Mysticism take to tech in that run?

Possible dotmap:

Nice map! I think brown -> red and reevaluate after Bronze Working sounds good. The other sites look good too, but you say you're leaning away from the grey diamonds; how come? Just thinking out loud: the grey diamond by yellow enables food-sharing with the capital, which will otherwise have two unshared foods for quite a while. And if we do that, then dark blue is out. Then probably the red star under the red circle looks better. But that doesn't have any first-ring food. Hmm.

With regard to culture options we have 3 religions and Stonehenge available still. Grabbing one of those would be great. We have 3 Cre civs, so hopefully that's possible, though given Oxy starts with Myst, he's also a religion competitor.

OK, so who would like Stonehenge and/or religions? The three creatives probably neither, although CRE/SPI wouldn't mind a religion, right? CRE/PHI Maya might go for one just because they can, but don't see it as a priority either. IND/SPI might go for religion (Monotheism?) but should save their hammers for the Pyramids. EXP/CHA would like Stonehenge, religion not as much. IND/ORG maybe Stonehenge, but I'd definitely try to save the hammers for...

The only wonder that I'd consider powerful enough to divert for at the moment is the GLH, look at all the coastal sites here. I'm inclined to think we'd need to settle our second city on the coast to beat the Ind civs to it though.

Not sure second city on coast would be enough with IND/ORG in the game.

And please, do tell me if I'm way off base on any of these: I much prefer being told I'm wrong over not improving.

[The Black Sword]

Running into some barbs with risky moves:



Scout should be pretty safe, warrior has the 20% animal bonus for probably something like 70% odds I guess, which isn't great.

We witnessed Oxy's second city being settled as we passed by:


Thoth settled his a turn earlier too, we're up next turn:


Need a name . Next few turns are pretty set, switch to the plains hill when wheat goes to new city, take it back when the gran completes for 10f bonus, that coincides nicely with the sheep being hooked. The workers then come back and cottage around the capital. After that rather depends on whether we want Henge or not and where Bronze pops up.

On to your points!

That sounds good; I never feel comfortable figuring out how to lay down roads properly (cue lurkers: "Have you tried pressing R?"). One thing about the forest growth that slowed down the snowball: won't it catch up with the hammers gained from chopping the forest eventually?

I'm actually not sure about that road anymore. Playing on further, I realised it was pretty hard to get onto our road network because all the roads are on forests and hills. So, maybe one on the flat would have been better. It's done now anyway, I think we'll put a road on plains 1N of the capital instead to let the workers on the network, that should fit with our long term plan.

As for the forest, yeah, it might not be as bad as I make out. But our last forest would probably be chopped a number of turns down the line, hammers now and the extra worker turns might outweigh it. I was just annoyed because I didn't get much of a bonus either on the workers or the settler and the only point of the plan where I felt I was really leveraging the traits well was in fitting that granary in.

Ooh, nice. Does that make Stonehenge a one-turn build? How long does Mysticism take to tech in that run?

Yeah, 4 chops and whip overflow to 1t Henge. Tech is the limiting factor and I couldn't beat the T47 shown in the picture, Mysticism being 3t. Here's a quick summary of our 4 culture options, we probably need to decide on 1 of them around the time we hit BW:

Judaism/Hindusim + OR/Monarchy revolt
375 beakers for Mono, 40h for each border pop after the first. Religion. 375b for Monarchy.

Buddhism+Monasteries.
100 beakers for Meditation, 100h for 2nd border pop, 40h for rest. Religion.

Stonehenge
-120h
-save lots of beakers, do we plan to go for monarchy anyway?

Monuments and race to music.
-Estimate no. of monuments
1500b for Poly, Aes, Lit, Music
958 for Writing, Maths, Currency(500) (do we pick these up first?)
185 for Fishing, Sailing
-Can we live without any extra happy for this long?
Wonders: HE,NE, GLib, Parth, Paya?

I'm not sure yet, need to think it over, it's quite possible people will rule out one of the options in the meantime. I do feel pretty confident in our ability to pick up Judaism if everything else is gone. I doubt any Cre civs would spend that many beakers on a religion, I doubt the Ind civs want to spend that many either and rule themselves out of various wonder races. Then Pindicator has Carthage, with Fishing/Mining techs that are much worse than ours, so we should be able to beat him(Commodore's Rome has same techs btw).

Nice map! I think brown -> red and reevaluate after Bronze Working sounds good. The other sites look good too, but you say you're leaning away from the grey diamonds; how come? Just thinking out loud: the grey diamond by yellow enables food-sharing with the capital, which will otherwise have two unshared foods for quite a while. And if we do that, then dark blue is out. Then probably the red star under the red circle looks better. But that doesn't have any first-ring food. Hmm.

Just a point on red I hadn't realised; we need to settle on the circle so we have access to that sea. The diamonds were something I thought about for a while. Ultimately, with regard to the Yellow location, what's stronger; a shared cow or first ring pigs and plains hill plant. Whatever border method we're looking, it's still 10t minimum till they pop. Cow is only 4f too, so not as powerful for swapping as Deer/Wheat. I am tempted to settled green earlier to abuse the food sharing, settlers are cheap after all. Plains hill Yellow also allows us to fit two very strong plants in the blue location.

[Becko]

Need a name .

Finally! Given our roading discussions, how about The Lonely Trail? Or maybe New Frontier? Or just Hondo? Incidentally, our next (horse) city is definitely Three Texas Steers.

On culture/wonders/tech/happiness:

T47 seems sort of reasonable for Stonehenge on normal. Just browsing through old Pitbosses, build dates seem to be anywhere in the T35-T60 range, so arithmetically at least, T47 is right at the average. And this is a fairly small game, so less competition (though if someone tries hard for it, they'll get it). And since we'd be on three cities by then (looks like the third one is ready to be settled in your sandbox), it feels like a decent idea hammerwise.

So about tech path then. We have plenty of food resources. For our next few cities, the happy resources available are fur, silver and wine. Early Monarchy seems like a good idea. So do we combine that with Stonehenge culture, or pick up religions along the way? Either way, seems like a better fit for the conditions than the Music path.

My spreadsheet has now caught up with the score changes for the last week, but I need to have a look and see if I can make sense of them.

Thanks for the dotmap explanation, makes sense!

[The Black Sword]

Lonely Trail blocking Oxy's scout:


Assuming he declares war to escape, should we kill him? Positives: XP+GG points, Negatives: good will.

Our scout escaped, needed to move south though rather than follow the panther east:


Our warrior survived to heal:


Maintenance is less in game than my sandbox, probably because I just rolled a standard map, whereas Xenu rolled a Large one, so my dimensions are wrong. I don't think I'm bothered fixing it now but that extra gold might speed Myst and hence Henge up by a turn.

I agree that the Music plan isn't great, I just put it in for completeness if we miss out on the other options. Ordinarily I'd feel picking up Henge as you build your third city is a pretty good deal, but the fact that we probably want Monarchy anyway, so the OR revolt is free is pushes me in that direction. I mean, if want to go directly Henge -> Monarchy, then we get 4 border pops for 120h and those 120h will be invested a lot later than the Henge ones. OR won't be much more than a monastery early on though, the extra discount on granaries is pretty small and I doubt we'll build many other buildings for quite a while. I do rather want to try the Henge path simply because I haven't done it before.

Btw, everyone had renamed their civ and I was feeling a bit left out, we're now the Duchy of Wayne.

[The Black Sword]

Depending how the maintenance costs rise as we grow(I should check how close we are to 2g), it looks like T46 Stonehenge is doable. If no-one has picked it up by then, let's take it. This map is quite big, we should have a lot of cities for Stonehenge to affect. I don't think we need to make an immediate run at Monarchy. Come T50, we'll hook up the furs, 10t after Stonehenge we get silver and we'll settle for 1 of the golds. 3 happy resources is pretty good, that allows us to 8->6 whip the capital or 7 ->5 other cities, there isn't a massive need to increase that. On the other hand there are islands available for IC trade routes, so currency could be pretty nice and we have a lot of forests for maths to benefit. Despite front loading the hammers Stonehenge should still be a lot cheaper than the religious method. I guess we should think about what we'd do with a T96 Great Prophet as well.

If we land Stonehenge, then I guess we probably go for Fishing, for a WB when Lonely Trail's borders pop and then Maths. If not, continuing to Polytheism still sounds good.

Our scout met Commodore a bit further south btw, I'll get a picture next time I log in, he still doesn't have a second city though.

[The Black Sword]

Man is that tempting. I believe that's 2xp and 6 GG points, thanks to IMP and him being in our territory. I re-offered the peace treaty, left the warrior in the city so Oxy knows how nice I've been.

Here's Commodore:


Pretty cool gems spot that. Commodore just settled his second city somewhere.


Off we grow!