RPB3 SPOILERS Bismarck of India (regoarrarr, darrelljs, sooooo, sunrise089)

[regoarrarr]

Another thought I just had is that we could settle ON the stone. Still needs Masonry to get credit for it, but don't have to spend 6 early worker turns hooking it up. It's on the river too. Those 6 worker turns could be used to chop 2 forests and all but knock out the Great Wall

We lose the ability to work a 1/4/1 stone, but it is a 2 hammer plant, and we get a 1/2/3 wine as well as keeping the plains hill and adding grass (good) and desert hills (not great) and all 3 flood plains in the 1st ring. Also more forests (SE of stone has 5 unique forests - on stone has 7)

[regoarrarr]

So, I did a bit of playing around in the sandbox. I thought that I would try to see how fast we could get a settler out. With our workers chopping 4 forests, I could get warriors on T25 and T28, and the settler on T29 (no forests into Henge). This was with no delay on the farm, which completes on T30 (Ag on T28, 1t farm on T28, 2t on T29-30).

Masonry scheduled T38.

With stone, Henge (120 hammers) goes from 80 hammers (with just 50% Ind bonus) to 48 hammers (150% stone and Ind bonus). So that saves us 32 base hammers.

We could chop out GW in the capital and Henge in the 2nd city (Happy Hour? Wet T-Shirt Contest? ). Kind of depends on what GP we want first. If we go spy first, that lets us avoid the religious branch. Since it will take 50t for the 1st GP to be born, we can probably adjust things if necessary by hiring some scientists once libraries are up, down the road. And I'm sure we would not be opposed to a GSci popping first at low odds, right?

We do need to be at least slightly concerned about other civs going for Henge. Specifically Kathlete / Inca. They are the other Industrious civ, are not Creative like us so Henge is useful, start with Mysticism, AND we know that they did NOT go worker first. So they could have built a 2nd quechua, or they could have started putting hammers into Stonehenge. They went Mining first, so if they are going BW now (would be done around T25-26), then they can start chopping it out.

I'm not worried about it if we nail it down quickly, but if we start talking about sandbagging / delaying it at all, then we need to be wary.

[SevenSpirits]

Surely Inca would not need Stonehenge since they have Terraces?

If you do go for settler/masonry first, settling on the stone is probably excellent. But how much are you setting back normal economic and defensive development?

[regoarrarr]

Surely Inca would not need Stonehenge since they have Terraces?

If you do go for settler/masonry first, settling on the stone is probably excellent. But how much are you setting back normal economic and defensive development?

Excellent point!!! And thanks for posting so at least there's SOME breakup to me just sitting here replying to myself

Well, going for a settler doesn't really delay our economic development, since we'd instead be developing a 2nd city. Going for Masonry instead of things like Animal Husbandry or Pottery does delay us hooking up the sheep and building cottages of course. But if we're committed to Stonehenge, it also saves us 32 base hammers, which with Expansive is nearly an entire worker.

[regoarrarr]

I also did a test with only building one warrior before the settler. We can do warrior T24, settler T28 (one turn earlier) and warrior T29. If we do that, we have to work the 3/0/1 rice tile instead of the 1/3/0 mine tile for 3 turns to ensure Agriculture still on T28.

Or we can accept the one turn delay on Agriculture, spend 2 worker turns chopping a forest, and be up 3 hammers for a 1t delay on the farm, or 2 food.

[sunrise089]

I like settling on the stone, though even if we do that I worry we could loose the wonder if we don't chop those two first-ring forests rather quickly. But don't we need The Wheel before we will have stone access in the cap, or does the river connect both cities?

If the river does provide stone access to both then I like regoarrarr's plan, provided we research Archery (via hunting) after Masonry, and play very nice with Ruff.

If the river doesn't connect the resources then I guess I favor Masonry now -> Wheel -> Hunting -> Archery -> AH -> Agriculture

[Jabah]

Darrell

afaik, if you settle on the stone, you need either sailing or road or border expension to have stone connected to capital.
if you settle W (or SW) you will need 3rd ring from capital (or road or sailing).
if you settle E (or Se) it should be connected once the quarry is done (all inside border river)

Also, regarding your 'copper' city you mention 1N of the lake to be the 'perfect' place, but 1W of the lake seems even better (copper+pig as well but shared rice, plus closer if you are worried about 'aggressive' settlement )

[regoarrarr]

Here's an updated T21 sandbox with the stone area included.

[regoarrarr]

Note that sandbox is missing a forest near the stone.

But the turn rolled over again and we got to play our 3rd turn today.

Nothin doin. England and the Ottomans have grown to size 2. No other soldier count information this turn.

[regoarrarr]

And in diplo news, emails from Ruff. Some good musings about the map.

Greetings India,

Oh come on - of course you called me a liar. You comment was identical to a robo call that says "Would you vote for so-and-so if they were a sheep loving pillow biter?" Sure, it doesn't say that so-and-so is those things, but the intent is there. Not that I am worried either way ... because I did lie to you a little

I heard that you were interested in pursuing a long term alliance. So am I. I know full well the benefits of such an alliance and I believe that some of your team does too. You can also see the downside of not forming any form alliance in other pitboss games. As such, I am looking for a very long term, 100% reliable, sharing alliance - full tech sharing, resource trading and sharing, information combining, etc. Ideally, I would like to have 4 civs total in this alliance (see map musings below) and form corners of a square. That way, each of us could expand outwards without cramping the others in the alliance.

Is there anyone in this game that you would prefer to work with? Is there anyone in this game that you will not work with at all, no way? I know that some of you have run into other players in other games (pbem1, pbem2, pitboss1, pitboss2) - will these affect your dealings with the players in this game? This is not just ideal curiosity on my part. If we really do want to form a long term, strong alliance, ideally with 2 or 3 others, then we need to share these up front.

From my point of view, I have compartmentalized pbem1 by saying that it is India that hates Greece and Greece that hates India. I did post ages ago that this will only have a hold over to another game if I am playing India and Sooooo is playing Greece. I didn't think that 3 of the 4 of us (Ruff, Sooooo, India, Greece) would be involved again so quickly .

Note that I have scouted further West and found 1 other civ and that I am in discussion with that civ too. I cannot share details yet as I will not play you off against that civ or that civ off against you. Unfortunately, my scout died at 25% odds and so any further map information / civ contact will have to wait.

Our capitals are 12 tiles apart. As you know, your 21 land tiles owns 0.52% of the available land tiles. Based on that, the most likely number of land tiles is 4038. From the part of the map I can see, I estimate that there is less than 2% water tiles, thus there would be approximately 4120 tiles in total. I actually think that the 2% water is high. If it is 1% then there would be 4079 - lets call it 4100 tiles at the moment. With 17 teams, that means that each team would get 241 each of a square with sides 15.5 tiles - so feel free to write a letter to the map maker complaining about the 12 tile gap!

I am assuming that the map wraps NS and EW and that Sullla has placed the teams thus ...

OOOOOO
.OOOOO
OOOOOO

or

.OOOO
.OOOO
OOOOO
.OOOO

I am leaning towards the bottom set-up as it would be fairer to each team - ie given that you don't want to start next to Rome. Given that our capitals are 12 tiles away (less than average) then I think we are in a row of 5.

Now, 4100 tiles means a map grid dimension of something like:

20 x 12 (3840) - too small
20 x 13 (4160) - a little too big
16 x 16 (4096) - will you look at that!

The map sizes are in the map scripts. For example, Lakes is WorldSizeTypes.WORLDSIZE_HUGE: (21,13)) which is a little big. Other non water maps are typically 1.6x wider than they are higher. However, don't think that Sullla doesn't know how to edit mapscripts. Remember, Speaker was just playing with the TeamBattle ground script to make it greener. Maybe this is an edited script with grid (each grid is 4x4 tiles) of size 16 x 16.

and

Just a short note. I've stopped spending EPs against you. The current ratio is 48/44. I am not sure of the magic number. Have you met anyone else yet? If not ... how are you going to stop spending EPs against me?