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

[Cyneheard]

Thanks, T-Hawk. Maybe we should refer to our warrior as The Quarrelsome?

Right, barbs are last in turn order (open up a WB file, and it always has the human first, and then the AIs in order, then the Barbs last).

[haphazard1]

I like option 1 as well, but am confused by the proposed movement. W-NW-NW will put us in a plains forest by the river, not on a hill. This is what we want though -- forest defense and hopefully across-river defense as well.

I also favor bringing Gulliver back, going SE this turn. Much as I would like to keep exploring northward, getting our settler safely to the second city site (wherever that turns out to be) is by far the most important task of the near future. Wolf might lose, or be badly injured and require many turns of healing. Having to delay our second city for lack of an escort would be a big setback after we have optimized so carefully to get the settler early.

[Cyneheard]

Right, I misspoke about the tile, but that forest was the intended target.

Gulliver therefore moved SE:


SE or S?
Pro of SE: Reveals more tiles.
Pro of S: We can keep to forest cover the whole way back; SE either costs us a turn on the way back (manageable), or we almost certainly risk 1 turn on flatland.

I'm torn on which one's better.

Wolf moved west, and the sign for the forest is up. Borders pop next turn for crazy visibility!

[haphazard1]

Can we afford the one extra turn for SE-SW-W? SE rather than S next turn will give us at least 3 additional tiles, plus maybe hills. Hate to miss those.

We could do SE-SW-SW. Before moving onto the flatland, we should be able to see all but two tiles around that flatland: the W and NW ones. Might even be able to see the W tile from our newly expanded borders, not sure. That would leave us with only 1 or 2 tiles where an animal might be lurking.

Is it worth the risk? We will probably not get another unit back this direction for at least 25 turns, and maybe much more. But are we likely to push a city this far out during that time? Only if we decide to go for the gold/corn city as city #3, and that does not seem likely. We would probably send a unit ahead if we did, to check for other resources to the north, etc.

I vote for S-SW-SW if we can not spare the one turn in getting Gulliver back. Hate to miss those tiles, but we need Gulliver to make it back alive.

[Cyneheard]

We can spare the turn. We would get back to the cap on T33 by adding the turn, and that's enough of a lead.

I was thinking of the gold/corn as more like city #4 or 5, if it's going to happen. City 3...we'd have no axes, since that'll be by T50.

[haphazard1]

City #4 or #5...I am assuming that site will no longer be available. Depending on the exact spot chosen, it would be 9 or 10 tiles north of London. Do we really think there are 18-20 tiles between us and the closest civ in that direction? Unless this area is former Korea, I really doubt it. This map is big, but not that big.

I suppose the map makers might have put the nice resources like gold between the civs, so we can race for/fight over them. But a site that good is going to go fast.

[antisocialmunky]

I like my original 4SE, 5SW to capitol move for Gulliver terrain willing.

[Cyneheard]

Sadly, 2SE is almost certainly flat and bare. I wish we could do that, though.

[haphazard1]

It is one of the standard choices when exploring: do you try to uncover the maximum number of tiles, or do you explore a smaller area completely?

A lot of this is personal preference, but I tend to focus on complete exploration close to my capital where the initial dotmap will be decided, and on maximum tile exploration with units which are being sent into the distant unknown. I've been burned more than a few times by single tiles left fogged, which turned out to have resources on them which my dotmap did not make use of since I had not known they were there.

In this case I am especially interested in knowing what is in those tiles directly south of Gulliver, since they could be part of a city east of the second dry wheat. If there is a strong city site there, we could possibly expand that direction with intent to grab the gold/corn site later.

But this is all a matter of playing the odds. There could be copper SE of Gulliver which we would not see if we take the safer, "complete" exploration path back to the capital. There just isn't any way to know.

[Cyneheard]

T25 (So much easier to play when everything's shut down from the snow):

I moved The Quarrelsome to the NW, but the Lion moved some form of west.

Our borders expanded, nothing that interesting:




Gulliver found some spices, but for forest cover he's got to take the haphazard extra-turn path:




Demos:



Techs discovered:
Elizabeth of France: Mining
Joao of Inca: Bronze Working
Ragnar of Maya: Animal Husbandry
Lots of land points.

The Ottomans have brought their warrior back, or finished a warrior: They no longer have 55% approval. I'm guessing they finished a warrior (someone did). Our demos look pretty good overall. Power's low, but that's because BW isn't in yet (T27, here we come!).