[SPOILERS] JR4 tries his luck in PB 37

[JR4]

After typing in the name of the capital I realized that our first city is to be called Borte, which means "away" in Norwegian. That`s strange.

[RefSteel]

I'm glad you were able to get the tech issues sorted out - it's cool to see the game up and running! Thanks for the screenshots too; I love seeing what we discover as we go along!

Are you from Norway then? (I'm way out in California myself...) At risk of mangling the grammar, hopefully our rivals will stay well borte from Borte this game....

The jungle gems is interesting for the future, and so is the tile-bleed, suggesting jungle to the southeast and maybe one of the inland seas to the east? Hmmmm ... I think we can find out whenever you're next in the game actually! Does the grassland tile 2E of Borte have fresh water? My guess is no, which would mean that's indeed the edge of an inland sea to the northeast. (I'm guessing it is and that it continues and includes the water tiles just visible to the southeast, but we can't confirm that this way because all the visible tiles to the southeast would have fresh water either way.)

By the same token, we could check to see if the grassland tile southwest of the cows has fresh water, and the plains tile just west of the cows, but in this case my guess is that both do.

I think the answers to these questions have some bearing on the scout's next move: If my guesses are right, we might want the scout to back around the south (maybe S-SW to that forest hill?) unless you want to do an early check for seafood in the east (and/or confirm how far south the inland sea really extends). If I'm wrong and that grassland north of the rice has fresh water though, scouting SE or NE (then the same direction again or E onto one of the hills) starts to look more attractive, especially if my guesses are completely wrong and there's no freshwater on those western tiles.

(On a strategic level, snapshots of the demographics screen can be useful for tracking our rivals' progress, but less than half-way through turn 0, with mirrored starts like these, there's not going to be a lot of information there we couldn't already guess for ourselves.)

And to repeat: I called myself the Spirit of Overplanning in the story with good reason. If you don't want me to spam the thread with minutia like this, I'll gladly stick to storytelling, answering questions, and such tips as I can offer on the mod and the RB metagame! (Or whatever types of advice you think would be most helpful, obviously!)

[JR4]

Are you from Norway then?  (I'm way out in California myself...)  At risk of mangling the grammar, hopefully our rivals will stay well borte from Borte this game....

Yep, I`m from Norway. That`s just about right!

I`ll check out if those tiles are fresh water tomorrow. My first thought was to go eastwards with the scout to one of the hills in order to confirm if there is a sea there.

All suggestions are welcome of course. How else are we going to win the thread war with Krill?

[RefSteel]

An excellent point; we're second in both posts and views, and pulling away from the pack, but Krill is way out ahead - practically in his own galaxy over there!

I'll post some more thoughts as the opportunity arises then. (Probably a bit sparsely for the near future though, as my parents will be visiting.)

[shallow_thought]

All suggestions are welcome of course. How else are we going to win the thread war with Krill?

Unfortunately, there's only one sure way to win a thread war with Krill: take him out of the game. Otherwise the mix of old war stories, ranting and complaining vociferously about the map* is pretty much unbeatable.

*I'm only guessing in this case, of course - staying unspoiled.

[JR4]

Does the grassland tile 2E of Borte have fresh water?  My guess is no.
By the same token, we could check to see if the grassland tile southwest of the cows has fresh water, and the plains tile just west of the cows, but in this case my guess is that both do.

You are right. The only visible tile that does not have fresh water is the one 2E of Borte.

[RefSteel]

Cool - thanks for checking on that! That means the northeastern water is definitely coast (so 10+ contiguous tiles of water, probably/hopefully 20+ to allow boats) and the southeastern water is likely part of the same sea, but still not guaranteed, whereas both western water tiles are lakes (9 or fewer contiguous water tiles, but my guess is just 1 tile apiece). I'll try to post more general stuff about scouting (with an illustration!) later - one key point is that on normal speed, we have much less time to get our initial scouting done before it starts to affect our plans than we would have on Marathon speed, where the scout has the same movement per turn but everything else takes three times as long to complete.

Also in the news: I think I said earlier in the thread that I should have known better than to disagree with Krill about the amount of land to be revealed around the capital. Well, he's apparently setting out to prove it. According to Civstats, Krill has finished his turn without founding a city!

If he scouted the way we did and uncovered identical land, the move would be either risky or straight-up terrible, as far as I can tell, and based on tile bleeding, I think at least the initial 7x7 squares are still perfectly mirrored. So what exactly is he doing?

1) He could have moved his scout e.g. 2NW, 2W, 2SW, 2 NE, etc. and found a ludicrous city site two settler-moves away that Mardoc and the lurkers somehow missed. I dunno, plains hill marble with a first ring river corn? Something.

2) He could have scouted as we did and discovered a superior city site that way if nothing beyond the third ring is mirrored. (Even the third ring might not be, I guess; at least one civ would still have the original set-up presumably, and there's a 1 in 9 chance that it's us. Or resource distribution could have been changed without affecting tile bleeding.)

3) He could have decided to go scout with his settler just to be ornery. Here's a thought: Check for freshwater the way we just did. Decide based on tile bleeding that the east is a back-lines sea. Deduce a basic layout of the map based on mirroring assumptions and scout with both units in search of a high-production capital toward the nearest expected neighborvictim, with intent to start with a forward plant and rush the first civ he finds ASAP. A less-(immediately-)violent version of this combined with option 1 is possible as well. Uh, note his thread title though. He might be telegraphing this! Which actually brings us to...

4) He could be psyching everybody out, or at least me, by ending turn with his settler still in place, waiting for a few more people to play, intending to settle in place as late as he thinks he can get away with it without the turn rolling on him.

5) He could have already settled in place if Civstats glitched out or something.

The reality is probably way less fun than guessing, but that's an advantage of not getting to see the other players' spoilers! So: Any other theories?

[shallow_thought]

Someone has dared him to skip the first <n> turns and still win and he's bitten the bait. Explains all the thread posts.

Stay on target - play the terrain. Although, the "identify the back lines already and move the other way" is seductive, if it can be done.

[JR4]

According to Civstats, Krill has finished his turn without founding a city!

The reality is probably way less fun than guessing, but that's an advantage of not getting to see the other players' spoilers!  So: Any other theories?

That is surprising indeed. I can not think of any reason to move with the terrain we have revealed so far. Assuming that civstats is working, I think the only reason to move would be an extra food somewhere. Hmmm, still he needs to compensate for the plains hill start and loss of one turn. Btw: Would there be any benefit of waiting to settle the first city until closer to the turn roll?  If he settles at the end of this turn we still would see it on the next turn. He could have taken a gamble by settling towards the middle of the map, but it would be incredibly risky.

Someone has dared him to skip the first <n> turns and still win and he's bitten the bait. Explains all the thread posts.

That would be hilarious if it`s true!

[RefSteel]

Btw: Would there be any benefit of waiting to settle the first city until closer to the turn roll?

None, unless there's some psychological factor: Getting us to talk about him instead of planning (actually just increases our post count; there's not that much to plan here yet, although I do want to upload the tactical map I just made to illustrate a couple things about scouting and early defense) or making one of the remaining players consider moving their capital "too."

He could have taken a gamble by settling towards the middle of the map, but it would be incredibly risky.

Especially since it would be an inferred "middle" of a contested zone only; on a map that wraps on both axes, there's no absolute middle toward which to move.

Someone has dared him to skip the first <n> turns and still win and he's bitten the bait. Explains all the thread posts.

Oh, that's definitely it! I should have thought of that!

Krill: I could beat you twice in the same game!

GermanJoey: You're on! I'll just create a sockpuppet account called Ventessel and play two civs in the same Pitboss!

Krill: Pfff, you'll probably forget and log into your sock puppet's game with your real screen-name on like turn 0. Anyway I've handled 2v1s before. Tell you what, I'll skip my first turn or two too, just to give you a chance.

Mardoc: Wait, what about the other players in the game?

Krill & GJ: What about them?

[EDIT: Of course this scene is totally out of character for GermanJoey. On the other hand, it would be a pretty accurate picture of Krill's forum relationship with darreljs!]