RB Pitboss #3 [SPOILERS]- Suryavarman II of England

[haphazard1]

Only Prince and below has free wins against barbs.

Thanks, plako! I remembered reading something about that, but had no idea what conditions applied. Another one of those undocumented things....

Too bad it won't help us here.

[antisocialmunky]

Gulliver doesn't need help. Gulliver eats bears.

[Cyneheard]

: :

(The elephants are happy that Gulliver doesn't eat them)

[Cyneheard]

Gulliver is at 0.9/2 health, 1xp. 6 turns to heal. I tentatively set him to heal, but did not end turn. Do we have any reason NOT to have him heal? He's going to be there a while, but I don't think that can be helped. Clearly, we'll need to be checking for barbs, like that lion, showing up next to us. Also, according to the XML data, Animals have an attack probability of 90 percent. I assume that means that any animal sitting next to us has a 90% probability of attacking. To all you wonderful lurkers out there: Is this correct?

Demo screen:


Techs discovered by:
Kyan's team (Pericles of Babylon): T1 found, Agri/Wheel. Discovered AH.
Sockboy/Adhoc etc. team (Zara of Ottomans): T1 found, Agri/Wheel. Discovered AH.

This explains the 4k power increase.

The 4 teams left to discover a tech:
Elizabeth of France (T2 found, Agri/Wheel): AH, likely due next turn
Willem of Portugal (T1 found, Fishing/Mining): BW.
Bismarck of India (T0 found, Myst/Mining): BW.
Kublai Khan of Rome (T0 found, Fishing/Mining): BW. We're going to see power levels jump when these guys get BW, since it's 8k points.

I think (haven't fully tested it out) that we can get 2 warriors out while growing to size 3 in just 2 extra turns. Not sure how that messes up the rest of the development plan, but if I get time today or tomorrow, it's certainly worth pursuing. It doesn't do anything different until we hit size 2; being at size 1 any more than necessary is clearly sub-optimal.

[haphazard1]

Excellent news with Gulliver surviving.

I am not sure if we should alter our plan at all. Having so few warriors (1 per city, essentially) will involve some risk, but we knew that when we made our plans. Assuming Gulliver is left in peace to heal fully, I think we will be OK. If we do want to change, I agree with Cyneheard that we should still max grow to size 2 and then go for more hammers.

So the next few turns should be pretty boring for us, unless another civ or more barbs show up. Farming rice, Gulliver healing and resting, London filling the food box.

[antisocialmunky]

He should heal, he deserves it. Afterwards though I think we need to get onto the forested hill N NE

[Cyneheard]

I went in, grabbed demos, and ended turn. No score increases, and no power increases (Demo's same as last turn, except that our rank shifted in crop yield to 4 from 5. Not sure what that signifies, and am not keen to guess). There's a bear roaming off to our SE (I put up a sign). The woods are not safe.

I tried to run a 2-warriors-grow-to-size-3 plan, and we lose about 2t on everything, but can let Gulliver continue scouting. Is his permanent scouting worth 2t of civ-wide development? We do want to contact civs eventually (not too soon, of course), but they can't all be in no-scouting mode, can they?

[antisocialmunky]

Gulliver's primary job as I see it is to defog the north for bronze. We can keep him around for a while until then. Not that much incentive to make contact super duper early.

[haphazard1]

By "bear to the SE" is that SE of London, or SE of Gulliver?

I do not think losing 2 turns of civ-wide development is worth the extra scouting. Once the new city is founded it can build a warrior while it grows. Pottery will not be finished for a while yet, so maybe it can build a couple warriors, with the granary being chopped once Pottery comes in.

I am more concerned about the lost turns of exploration before our first couple settlers finish -- less map info means potentially missing an excellent site for our early expansion. Contacting other civs is useful for diplo and the per-civ-met tech bonus, but that is about all at this stage. Might get a trade route from a river, depending on where everyone is, but low odds for a while yet. We can get more units out on permanent exploration a bit later.

If we have horses, a couple chariots would be perfect for the job -- faster and more durable than warriors. If we don't have horses, then axes are likely to be the best longer-term explorers due to survivability. I don't know if sending warriors for long-term scouting is really worth doing. Maybe if we could get Woody II on one, but that would mean surviving quite a few battles.

Other people may be exploring, but they also have to deal with barbs -- at least one unit was lost earlier, maybe more. And this is a very big map, apparently with a lot of (mostly?) land. Contact with distant civs may take a long time.

[haphazard1]

Crossposted with ASM again.

I agree on Gulliver's role mainly being scouting for the first 2-3 city sites, and especially for locating copper and horses. I would like to explore more than just the west and north -- "our" copper (if there is such a thing on this map) could be east or south. This is why I hate losing time for healing from barb battles -- fewer tiles will be uncovered by the time our settlers are built, and we might plant our core cities on less-than-optimal sites.

But Gulliver has to survive to explore, so healing it is. At least he is still alive.