[SPOILERS] Fire and Blood: Nyles Standish and Zalson watch the world burn

[NylesStandish]

[quote='NylesStandish']
Agreed. I would favor circling back toward the capital and sending one of our warriors/another scout out that direction once we've defogged a bit. So we're in agreement there too.

Although: are we that likely to find another monster site nearby?

Unless this map is exceptionally lush, that's probably the best site that close to our capital. Mapmaker's words:

mapfacts

size: what you get if you roll a large fractal, idk the exact number of tiles
water presence: significant
lushness: fair but not extreme (IN MY OPINION )
difficulty: prince

"Fair" seems to imply to me "slightly/somewhat more lush than average", but this is heavily dependent on greenline's opinions of what is "extreme lushness".

[Zalson]

That is quite a collection of food resources there. I think we know where our first two cities are going?

[NylesStandish]

Yeah, that fish makes planting the uber city and another on that plains peninsula look even better.




We found Pindicator/Commodore. They're awfully close at 9 tiles from our capital.

I think that's a lot closer than the civs should be to each other. This map has 2663 land tiles, and that works out to an average of 221 land tiles per player. If you imagine each player's territory as close to their capital as possible, that makes a square with 14.89 tiles to a side. The distance from our capital to the edge of our imaginary square is half of the side length, and then that same distance to the rival's capital, so about 15 tiles is what you might expect. Obviously, we've got coast and ocean tiles closer than that, so our 221 tiles are somewhere else outside our ideal theoretical square in a kind of irregular shape. Obviously it's irregular since it seems they just modified a fractal for balance, the point is that the distance should be even greater than this prediction, which is greater than the actual distance.

What does all of this mean?

A. Our distance to our neighbor is typical, everybody has roughly the same amount of territory, and the continent or continents that everybody's on are very irregularly shaped such that the territories are really wide compared to the distance between capitals.

ex:



B. Our distance to our neighbor is typical, everyone has roughly the same amount of territory, and the extra land is not connected to our original territories in the form of a bunch of offshore islands or a 'new world'

C. Our distance to our neigbor is typical because capitals are paired up close together, and everyone has roughly the same amount of tiles, but our neigbor on the other side is further away, giving the players kind of lopsided territories

ex:



D. Our distance to our neighbor is not typical and we've just got less intended territory than everyone else

After getting eliminated from PB27, I read some of the mapmaking thread and one of the things they did was give more land to people that had more neighbors, the logic being that it'd be more difficult to hold the larger plots, so it would even out somewhat. I really hope that's not what happened here.

This could also be a situation similar to where HAK and Jowy were in PB18. Basically they were stuck on a small island together and basically forced to duel to the death, since they couldn't just subsist on half a small island and be competitive with their land based rivals with bigger territories. IIRC there was copper in both of their original BFCs, and when the inevitable war popped off, Jowy got the worse of it because he moved his settler away from the copper instead of settling in place.

I'm thinking irregularly shaped is most likely, followed by new world/islands, then death duel island, then clustered capitals.

[Zalson]

I just noticed their border to the south. That reinforces that mining > bronzeworking was a fortuitous choice. We may need to axe-rush them if they're really that close.

However, we can't slow down expansion or neglect scouting our western border.

Maybe we try to get that settler out ASAP? Warrior rush? It's a little late for that...

Did we make contact in game yet?

[Zalson]

Nyles, this is probably a good time to mention that I'm going to be away for the next week or so, probably until Friday, the 8th. I should be here and available until the 4th, so just a few days away.

I'm free to play now. Did you want to make contact with pindicator/Commodore?

[NylesStandish]

Nyles, this is probably a good time to mention that I'm going to be away for the next week or so, probably until Friday, the 8th. I should be here and available until the 4th, so just a few days away.

I'm free to play now. Did you want to make contact with pindicator/Commodore?

We've already made contact; if you look closely at the last screenshot I posted, you'll see pindicator's scout is standing on the same square as ours. Also, this game is AI diplo, so we're not allowed to message them to conduct diplomacy in or out of the game.

Thanks for the heads up regarding the absence.

Gonna log in and move the scout now. Sorry for the late reply.

[NylesStandish]

Moved SE-SW with the scout; pindicator moved his N-W of where he was last turn (the sheep tile).

With regards to rushing, I think they might expect that. I know Commodore's read at least some of my PB27 thread, and I was pretty aggressive in that game. I planned an early chariot rush that I didn't execute (but described in great detail), and then actually went to war with Plako and Elkad (with disastrous results). Then in PB32 I razed 4 of Yuri's cities because they were weakly defended, and one of BGNs. I've literally been to war with all of my immediate neighbors in all of my Realms Beyond Pitboss games, so they'll probably expect some aggression out of me at some point. Not that they're 'scared' per se; I haven't been able to turn any of those wars into any sort of permanent territorial gain or eliminated anybody (directly). Scared that I might waste a bunch of their resources by forcing them into a war and making them fall behind, maybe.

What can they really do if they expect a rush, though? Build extra warriors and maybe squeeze in archery. I expect their tech path to be about the same as ours, since they've got fast workers and one of the big advantages to fast workers is the ability to chop forests without wasting a worker turn moving into the forest square. That advantage is blunted by the fact that most of the forests in our BFC (and probably theirs as well) are also hills, which increases the movement cost and forces Indian Fast Workers to waste a turn entering the square like everyone else's workers. Bronze working is also important militarily, so I doubt they'll be paranoid enough to delay a tech that is so important for so many reasons to research Archery.

Warrior rush's only chance of working IMO is if we're somehow able to walk one into their capital undefended. If we build a warrior right now and max out production, we'll get him on Turn 7, and he'll be able to enter their capital on T15. If they went worker first (which everyone pretty much always does around here) and if the scout doesn't see our warrior before he gets to the deer forest tile nearest their territory, they would be screwed - if they weren't expansive - because they would have just finished the worker in 12 turns with no overflow, and probably be working a 3 food tile while putting at most 2 hammers into a warrior. They'd be unable to put all of the necessary hammers into a warrior before ours walks into their capital. However, since they're expansive, they've got the worker production bonus and they'll have the worker done in 10 turns, and if they start a warrior then, they'll have enough hammers into the warrior to finish it before our warrior gets into their capital.

[Zalson]

Yeah, the warrior rush was more throwing an idea out there. I agree that we should have gone looking for it from the beginning -- but who expects in a year-long game that you're going to start so close to one another? In retrospect, max hammers on the warrior is the right move but c'est la vie.

While I'd like to scout the rest of their land, the danger is that we need to continue to scout west of our starting position. It might be as you said: an aggressive first ring for both of us with backlines to fulfill.

I think we have to go for that uber-site to stake our claim. It's on a hill and it's 5 tiles from their capital. It also secures us the fish and second cows site.

I think we chop out the settler and forgo the worker. And then we chop out the deer forest and the GH forest into ... workers at best and axes at worst. We can get/3 axes in as many turns -- if we've got them nearby. We also need animal husbandry, too. For camps and for horses. Plus wheel.

I think agriculture might have to wait.

Going to start simulating now.

[Zalson]

T0-4: Same: worker first + mining
T5 - T7: nothing
T8: Mining done, BW (16)
T9 - T11: Nothing
T12: Worker, Start Warrior. Worker 1S to pasture sheep.
T13 - T14: Nothing
T15: Pasture Sheep. BW in 8
T16: Move to Cow
T17: Pasture Cow
T18: Valyria Size 2 (warrior T19 if we swap to +1 hammer)
T19: Warrior 1 with size 2 hammer tile swap.
T20: Warrior 1 with max growth. Pasture complete. Start warrior 2. Cow Complete.
T21: Worker to forest grassland hill 1 west of cap. BW in 2
T22: worker arrive at hill. Max shields for warrior 2 complete end of T22 with a bunch of overflow. Valyria Size 3. Warrior 1 starts walking over to Volantis spot.
T23: Start settler. Revolt to slavery. start chop. Research to wheel (we'll need it if we have copper nearby).
t24: anarchy over. Settler in 8T with 6 overflow and 12 production. Wheel in 8T.
t25: chop 1 into settler (50/100)
t26: worker to se grassland hill
t27: worker chops hill.
t28: first turn we can whip. will whip on t29 for overflow into a worker.
t29: chop comes in. whip settler. 116/100 + 31 = 147/100
t30: overflow to worker. Settler path is up for debate. Worker mines hill.
t31: moving. Worker mines hill.
t32: moving settler. wheel comes in. worker completes. start warrior (14/15) in volantis. Research set to archery. Both workers start the dragon road to Volantis.
t33: settler founds volantis.

that seems a little late. we get:

3 warriors
1 worker
1 city

What was your path for your T28 city? I think we might need to do that one.

[NylesStandish]

What was your path for your T28 city? I think we might need to do that one.

T0: Start worker and mining
T7: Finish mining, start bronze working
T12: Finish worker, begin pasturing sheep, start building worker
T15: Finsih pasture on sheep
T16: Move to cows
T17: Begin pasturing cows
T18: Grow to size 2
T20: Finish warrior, start settler, finish pasturing cows
T21: Move worker to forest
T22: Worker skips turn because nothing to do
T23: Bronze working finishes, begin next tech, revolt to Slavery, start chopping forest
T24: Anarchy over
T25: Chop goes into settler at Valyria
T26: Whip Valyria to size 1
T27: Finish Settler, begin building something else

The turn 28 founding was on the grassland tile between the plains cow and grass cow east of the capital. Founding Volantis on the uber-site can be done on T30 with this plan. It gives 2 warriors , 1 worker and Volantis if we start the warrior after the settler and work the plains cow.