[Spoilers] PBEM 63 - Ichabod's Thread, feat. a big crew

[Ichabod]

Agreed, let's go with Inca. Early game flexibility for such a start is worth more than the minor boosts from the other Civs. And quechua are good too (they can be built for military police even with copper, right?), considering barbs are on.

Thanks a lot for the help, Serdoa. Your analysis is way more in depth than I'd have managed to do.

[Ichabod]

Do you guys want to be added to the tracker to receive the save? If so, just post your email in the tech thread.

[Gaspar]

If there's a tracker page that I can just d/l the occasional save from that would be ideal.

[Serdoa]

Thanks Ichabod. I do hope I didn't do any errors, though I'm certain there are several points that are worth discussing and / or heavily depending on playstyle.

Anyhow, I've made a screenshot of my excel-table for the micro that you can find below. Maybe someone with a sandbox would like to run it through in-game to check if everything works out as I believe it does? And also to see if it can't be made better (I believe it can).

[Ichabod]

I'll sandbox the start a bit today, before playing the save.

Some ideas, is it feasible to delay religion until we have the second city settled? This is more an exercise in trying to read your opponents than anything else, so it's not easy to do (Gaspar, help!). I believe that since we are the only ones starting with Myst, we'll have a bit of safety in this play from the expectation from other players that we'll go for it. Considering we have Mack vs. Seven here, I highly doubt one of them would ant to "waste" beakers on Myst + medi only to be beat by us.

That being said, we aren't getting the quickest settler in the world, considering we have to build a WB. I think C&D will help us here, if every Capital has water, I think is a reasonable expectation that the starts are pretty similar. That's what I'd expect from plako, by the way: a micro puzzle as the Capital, that everyone gets the same (Mack and Yuris picks seem to indicate this). So, if everyone is on the same (work) boat, I wouldn't expect a settler much faster than ours, so the religion delay idea gets a bit more strenght.

Finally, where do we scout? rememeber that our scout has only 1 movement to start. I'd go NW, explore a bit of coast and than circle around the Capital. The ideal second city would share one of the Capital food, while being pretty close, so going W first makes sense, I think.

[Serdoa]

As for scouting, W and S is jungle, though obviously it is not certain how much. On the other hand west is the most likely city-location for city 2, just by virtue of sharing the food. On the other other hand, do we actually want to share food or whip the capital every 6 turns due to the Terrace being in place?

As for the first point: We should get a little bit better idea when the borders pop the first time (EOT4). But we are constrained pretty heavily due to the change to the scout and our warrior being late (again because of the workboat...).

As for waiting with Meditation till the second city is founded: Probably doable, but C&D will be necessary (take screenies of the demos and score at the end of each turn please, and keep the saves, I might have to try different configurations on our worked tiles to figure it out). Tech-wise there is no problem with delaying it. All the techs in my micro-plan after BW are anyhow just placeholders.

[Ichabod]

When I receive the save, I'll settle the Capital and post another picture, so we can discuss where to scout with more information.

[Gaspar]

I'll try and psyche myself up for opponent analysis at some point in the next day or two. Doing that will help me get a better sense of what everybody's plan is. I must confess I haven't been paying much attention to anyone but us so far.

[Ichabod]

I'll try and psyche myself up for opponent analysis at some point in the next day or two. Doing that will help me get a better sense of what everybody's plan is. I must confess I haven't been paying much attention to anyone but us so far.

I know, I know, we're magnetic like that.

Seriously speaking, I also need to get my focus on this game, otherwise I won't be of any help.

[Ichabod]

Save is in!




I think I rather go E with the scout now, at least there's a river and grass there. W is looking really bad...




No such luck as mirrored Capitals. There's at least one landlocked one and at least someone with a plains hill start (considering best production is 4 and worst food is 3). Looks like we are already playing catch up.