[spoilers] - Pindicator makes America great again!

[pindicator]

Turn 022

We got Bronze Working at the end of last turn. So did TBS & GermanJoey. They also grew to size 2, and I think they were the ones that built that warrior t20 instead of REM, because the top power is now 15 and REM was coastal and went Fishing first so he'd probably be building a work boat instead of a warrior anyway. REM did tech something too, and I think it was Mining. Which makes me wonder about my prediction of giving him The Wheel on t15 -- Agriculture is the same beakers, but then that would mean 2 civs built warriors on t15 which would be very unlikely. I mean, we're assuming worker first (possible but unlikely is also work boat first) for our vet opponents, which means that they are finishing their first worker somewhere between t11 and t14 depending on if they got that plains hill plant or not. Not much time to build a warrior in time while still growing at a decent clip. I suppose our EXP friend could pull it off by t9 if he got a plains hill plant and a forested plains hill to work though...

Anyway, the lesson is that C&D is not to be trusted, merely a tool to give you an abstraction. In fact, I envy the people who have played this game without it, because IMO they've developed their intuition much better without this crutch of having to "know".

But like I said earlier, we got Bronze Working:




And we got copper, although I'm not sure this really helps because that's one less tile to farm for food in the future In all seriousness, I'm not sure if I eventually want to plant the copper city 1W or 2W of that copper - depends on how greedy I am with concentrating food in one spot, and also if I think I need the Fish in it's BFC in order to have it be a useful city before Iron Working.

Somebody out there has 11 food off 2 pop. These starts are nowhere close to balanced, are they?

[scooter]

First time I've EVER been annoyed to see a riverside flatland grass copper before. And hopefully the last time.

Somebody out there has 11 food off 2 pop. These starts are nowhere close to balanced, are they?

If this is true, we may be looking at a very early concession. That drastic of a difference with this player roster is kind of silly. There is not one single tile we could have started on in all of the land you've uncovered that would have yielded that at size 2.

[scooter]

I'm starting to think IMP is going to be a shitty trait to have this game:

At least you didn't pick Financial. Yeesh. Over/under 80 cottages built by all players the entire game?

I was thinking about this a little - why do you think it'll be bad in this game? I was actually sort of leaning towards the opposite in that between slavery nerfs and slow development, the faster settlers will be a bigger boost than normal. Not to mention the Custom Houses which could be a pretty big deal later.

[pindicator]

I was thinking about this a little - why do you think it'll be bad in this game? I was actually sort of leaning towards the opposite in that between slavery nerfs and slow development, the faster settlers will be a bigger boost than normal. Not to mention the Custom Houses which could be a pretty big deal later.

Well, my thinking was if there's only very few decent spots to plant a city, or if we keep failing to find better than +4 food tiles, then spamming cities is not going to be very strong. Brennus of China and SIP/growing tall was probably the best combination for this start (but sadly it had to be China and i have no regrets about passing that up) just because the payoff for a new settler doesn't look like it's going to be really nice. I mean, what have we uncovered so far? City #2 is still definitely going to be the cow/rice in the southeast. City #3 is likely the copper in some fashion (which makes Stonehenge even more desireable IMO), and city #4 is the gold in the far south. There aren't any other maybe sites, that's literally every decent possibility uncovered, and we're 22 turns in.

One of the reasons I was all for moving the capital onto the sugar was that while it's a shit long-term site, the idea was going to be to grow it to size 5 and just spam 4-turn settlers. Guess I picked the wrong game to assume the RB-map meta was going to hold, but it should also be an adventure (assuming it's the same for everyone).

Custom Houses will be a nice boost in the late game assuming 1) that we're able to expand at least at a similar pace to other civs, and 2) that we'll have intercontinental routes to lose. Right now I'm not too convinced about 1, unless we see some food pop up.

Now, the other factor to consider is that there are 234 tiles per player: that's a crazy amount of land: pretty much a 15x15 square for everybody. Which would mean that capitals are on average 30 tiles away. But they're probably even farther than that: consider how much the land we've seen so far has snaked about. So I'm thinking our nearest neighbor is FAR away. I mean, FAR FAR FAR away. (Did we get map dimensions? Actually, I think that the sandbox will have the map's dimensions to be able to map maintenance correctly so maybe if I decide not to be lazy I'll go open that file up and take a peek...) So it could be that there is the normal amount of food in a spaced out amount of land. And in that case, it could be that IMP still manages to shine...

[pindicator]

Looking at that screenshot, I have half a mind to settle every city on top of a sugar...

[pindicator]

Turn 023

Commodore joined the Bronze Working parade with his own float this turn.

Found some more food:




What do you think scooter? Looks like more jungle in the fog to the west, and I'm starting to suspect that it's a dead end anyway. Do we scope it out to make sure or turn the scout northeast to check out the trees north and east of the copper. On one hand, if we do find something in the jungle it's still close enough for a 2nd city, and even if we find something by the copper I'm not sure it's good enough to warrant 2nd city status due to distance and the dirth of food we already have in that area -- on the other hand, it doesn't seem likely to find anything but more jungle and a coastline that deadends.

[pindicator]

Turn 025

I decided to press on with the scout because there probably aren't that many turns left before barbarians kill the poor guy anyway. So we might as well map out the west instead of spending 4 of it's last 10 turns backtracking. As luck would have it, we ended the turn next to a panther. Since it is turn 25, let's do an overview of all that has been laid out so far:




Worker #2 finished at end of last turn, and we moved both workers onto the forested hills by the grassland. This is why we chopped the forest we did before: so the workers would be in place to chop the forested grass hills and then in turn we'd be in position to mine those hills first and get the extra commerce. Little things help, and they need to help because right now we're sitting at last place in both GNP and MFG. Food was the saving grace of this start, but even that has turned into a middling fourth.

We'll finish our first warrior this turn, though I need to work the farmed sugar and a forested plains hill to do so. Next turn we'll start the settler and in 4 turns it will be finished.

C&D stuff: people are growing to size 3. REM & Commodore did it last turn, and OT4E followed suit this turn.

We'll do our growing after the settler comes out.

[scooter]

Was planning to reply sooner, but you settled on what I would have suggested anyway. Absolute best case scenario is that scout survives long enough to make it close to home and can serve as a fog buster for awhile. Speaking of - it seems that we're so far away from anyone that the real challenge will be fending off barbarian axes. I did a quick count and you've only uncovered 101 tiles so far, which is only halfway to our rough allotment of 200 land tiles that we're expecting.

Where are you thinking for city placements? We're not likely to be in a land rush for awhile, so it seems to me the goal should be to just maximize expansion. Capital isn't very fast, so 1N of the rice still strikes me as the best first spot because even though it's backfill, it can be useful far more quickly than any other spot.

Really wish the area between the ivory and copper had even a single food.

[pindicator]

Yeah, when you list all the food unovered it looks pretty bleak:

• 2x dry rice
  
• 3x clam
  
• 2x fish
  
• 2x jungled sugar

I was going to say we should consider settling 2W of the copper as a 2nd city, because even though it will take a lot more to get it up and running, at least it will have 2 really good tiles it can work: the copper is 6 yield and the fish is 5 yield. But then I remembered we don't have a good way to pop borders yet: unless we want to sink 60h into a barracks first. That just ... no. So I think it's still the rice first, and I'm really considering going for that Stonehenge. Because we're going to need border pops just to use a lot of of the bad spots we've uncovered so far.

New turn came in overnight. Scout is dead, but we already knew that was going to happen; that's why we spent all those turns dodging the bear. I sent the warrior southeast but we can still reverse it if there's a reason to settle for the copper first. It and the plains cow are the only 6 yield tiles we've uncovered - I just wish there was a decent spot to settle with the copper first ring so we could use it.

[pindicator]

Oh, C&D shows that half the field has grown to size 3 before their first settler. I plan on doing it immediately after the first settler and then starting another settler.