[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[Sullla]

I was typing a message earlier, and lost it in a browser crash. Then it happened again. Hmpf. Anyway, here's the short version of those points:

* Did we offer a map trade to Nicolae? I think we want to do so, right? Nicolae is in the same civics as mackoti (HR, Bur, Ser, Mer, Pac) and also saving gold. Possibly also going for the early Academy in the capital?

* We're still missing too much map information to make any big conclusions about the overall map. I'm pretty sure there are more ways for teams to access each other than just those single desert peninsulas. There's also a good chance that there's more land where no one started (islands? small subcontinents?) We'll see with time. There's also likely at least one more team we can reach easily, not just Nicolae and mackoti. I would definitely check the northern edge of the map to make sure it's a dead end. There's a good chance that there's a landbridge up in the far north.

* We should be thinking about where our fourth city will go, since it's not all that far off with the current turn pace. Two ideas for suggestion:



Here's a good northern spot. It has bananas, floodplains, spices (for combined +7 food), brings in another luxury to raise the happy cap, adds iron and horses for great production, still on the river, and has 3 forests to chop. Great terrain although located in the "back lines" and less important from a strategic perspective.



Still good land here although lower quality. The grassland wheat is +6 food (post-Civil Service gets free irrigation spread) and the plains cows takes it to +7 food, still has 3 forests for chopping. However, there are no other resources to boost this city further. We would settle here because it pushes out control towards that area where we met mackoti, and it gives us a port city to get a galleon out on the water and start poking around there. This is the strategic location, less of a strong city in and of itself.

There's probably other potential sites to the south too. What does everyone think?

[scooter]

I'll have a report for the new turn and some thoughts about the discussion later (either tonight or maybe tomorrow), but the good news: it appears that we have a coin flip shot at circumnavigating. I did offer map trade with Nicolae. He rejected and re-offered, and we have enough visibility now for circumnav. Fingers crossed. We should know sometime tomorrow.

[NobleHelium]

I believe the earlier guy in turn or player order always wins.

[scooter]

I believe the earlier guy in turn or player order always wins.

Well, IIRC the turn order is randomized every turn, but the player order is not. We're 5th in player order, so... I'm hoping it's the turn order?

I should note that we clearly got a few player maps, so it's possible we aren't the only two players to complete circumnavigation this turn. Nicolae has definitely met at least one other player. So we'll see.

Turn 196

Let's get the boring stuff out of the way.



Full EPs into Mackoti, and he's returning the favor right now. On to the maps!



So here's Nicolae's setup. Their strategy seems pretty clear - wait on the chops and focus on hooking foods, growing, and whipping. I think these guys arae in pretty good shape.



RMoG's setup on the other hand is mystifying. That eastern city looks downright terrible. Their capital will be amazing obviously. But yeah, this looks pretty rough.



Here's Alhazard's Gandhi. Looks like he went for the wider setup we considered where you get slightly better cities that are more spread out. To wrap it up, here's us:



Bunch of pop and tile improvements incoming. I'm all done for the night, so tomorrow I'll have some more thoughts.

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 194–196: THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HILL

Remember the previous discovery of the Byzantines (Mackoti) as a neighbour of the Aztecs? Their leader has declared war and barricaded the isthmus bridging their continent with the Aztecs', precluding further scouting efforts in that direction for the foreseeable future. The intelligence resources of the Aztecs and Byzantines are being fully redirected towards each other, a contest the Aztecs should win eventually thanks to their affordable sacrificial altars. In the meantime new neighbours have revealed themselves, and in the space of three turns the Aztecs' knowledge of the Earth has more than tripled, the result of beneficent map exchanges with the Dutch, Ottomans, and the Khmer which reveal each nation being situated on their own continent, connected by narrow desert arteries. From this new-found intelligence it is now clear that the Dutch have had a terrible start, with a superb capital and middling second city whose prime export is the ivory trade. The Ottomans and Khmer have more sensible city starts, similar to the Aztecs' own. With the knowledge gained from these exchanges the Aztecs now have a nonzero chance at winning the circumnavigation bonus, a random roll to be resolved next turn.

---

Additional reading: Sullla's player analysis, Scooter's thoughts on Mackoti

[Epoxy]

Scooter, you would've seen this: the isthmus between RMoG and Alhazard mirrors that directly west of The Pilot. It looks like a T junction connecting two continents horizontally and one vertically via a landbridge—that's my guess, it's hard to tell from the minimap. Is that land strong enough for an early (fifth+) city?

Regarding the city sites, Red Dot would be my vote. Sustainable cities with the best medium- to long-term potential should be settled first, assuming no competition for land. However, Red Dot followed by the site south of The Pilot would make our cities collinear, extending logistics if either end is attacked, which is fine if we're safe in the short-term but inadvisable if we're not.

[Sullla]

Epoxy, these writeups are fantastic! Thanks for putting them together.



I took a look in-game to get a better sense of how this map is put together. Sadly, we appear to have lost the coin flip for circumnavigation, or however that is determined. The text printout said "another team has circumnavigated" rather than "Nicolae has circumnavigated", so I suspect that means a team out in the fog got the bonus? Maybe?

Anyway, it looks like we border four other teams in some fashion. Nicolae is off to our southwest, and thanks to the map trade we can see directly how far away his cities are located. RMOG are located to the southeast. Alhazard is the only team that we do not border, on the opposite side of the world from our start. By process of elimination, mackoti must therefore be to our east and plako must be to our west. From a map draw, it's probably the worst draw possible, having Alhazard as the only civ we can't reach. I know we thought Gandhi was the leader we most wanted to be near, due to his poor expansion traits and possibility of capturing highly developed cities with possible wonders inside. But that's the luck of the draw, and we do have the weak-looking RMOG to our southeast. It's just too bad that our other three neighbors all look very strong so far.

I also love looking at the other teams and how they chose to play the same start. Nicolae's team looks great, taking the same city spots we did (in reverse order) and rushing out to the current pop lead. We actually have a trade route defogged to Nicolae, so here's the resource screen:



Note that we're going to finish a farm on the corn this turn when scooter has a chance to play. So that's the same two city spots, and our workers improving virtually the same resources. Nicolae chose to grow first followed by chopping, while we were kind of doing the opposite thing. His cities are therefore ahead in population, but Nicolae is *NOT* ahead in worker labor, which is a good sign for us. I think our 6 workers are likely more than they have, although they have Serfdom turbocharging the ones they do have. All in all, two strong openings making use of our different traits.

Oh, and Nicolae also has a library in his capital, as we suspected. Mackoti likely has the same.



By contrast, here's RMOG. As scooter said, they have bundled this start badly. Their capital has the corn, pigs, and horses connected and that's it. None of the forests have been chopped yet, and the second furs is still buried under jungle. Neither city is using the deer resource. The second city is even worse, with only an improved dry rice for food. They need two farms to spread irrigation there, ugh. None of the ivory tiles have been improved yet either, although that's not such a bad call. The whales can't be improved at all.

This is a disaster in the making. If we're going to make gains in this game, it's going to have to be at the expense of this team.



Here's Alhazard. At first glance this doesn't look so bad, as his civ has the same population as our team and the cities are similarly placed. However, mousing over the resources shows a different story. Alhzard's capital is in a poorly chosen spot. He gave up the 5/1 pigs tile to claim the 5/0 banana tile, and even moved off the plains hill and away from the whales tile in the process. While the bananas and the corn tile have both been improved by this point, it's taken so long that everything else is critically behind. The horses and furs at the capital are unimproved. The second city inexplicably has spent 10 turns of worker labor farming to the rice and irrigating it, while leaving the 5 food deer resource completely untouched. None of the forests have been chopped so far. The whales and the ivory are both out of reach, so I guess it's a good thing that Alhazard is Spiritual and can use Hereditary Rule and his religion for happiness.

This is really just as bad as RMOG from a development perspective. At least they're Imperialistic to get a settler out quickly. Alhazard is way behind on worker labor, and he doesn't have that to help him. I really wish we had him as a neighbor; too bad we don't have mackoti or Nicolae's starting spot...



One last image. This is the area in between our team and Nicolae/RMOG/plako. It's extremely fertile and we definitely want to claim some or all of this. The third city is going to take the resource cluster nearest to our civ. I think we want to push further west for that other resource group quickly. Probably not with the fourth city, but definitely with the fifth city.

Oh, and scooter, let's pull that explorer back from mackoti's blockade and send it across the little desert peninsula towards RMOG. That's where we'll also be trying to expand. If mackoti want to sit on the one-tile choke point with his explorer and get no more scouting information, he's welcome to do so for a very, very long time.

[antisocialmunky]

What do you think about those ridiculous all gold/all silver islands?

[NobleHelium]

When I said player OR turn order, I really meant player order. In PBEM, the two are the same, in Pitboss it isn't. I didn't mean to say that it could be one or the other. The point I was trying to make is that it's not random from what I remember.

[Sullla]

Hopefully there's some food for those islands, I guess?

Final point for now about our explorers: I think the mackoti one goes south to map the way to RMOG, and the Nicolae one turns around and heads north to meet plako.