41 Vice: Commodicator/Pindore

[Commodore]

Boldly Space Going Tyrant Nowhere Xenu are, like all identical twins,

Wait, what?  I knew they were brothers, but I didn't think they even have the same birthday, let alone...

Nope, they're just a single overly ambitious blastocyst with delusions of grandeur.

[pindicator]

Now that we have our combo I've crunched a bit of opening turn theory out, and Comm and I have some choices ...

Biggest choice is whether to improve the pig or the cow first. Normally I would just do pig without thinking, but cow first will only delay the forest settler by 1 turn while allowing 2 warriors to be built. Or even a scouting work boat and no warriors. So I think it may come down to whether we find a great 2nd city with the initial scout or not.

Tech path is looking more and more likely to be Hunting > Agriculture > Pottery for early fast granary and cottages. There's some thought for Fishing in place of Agriculture for even faster cottage placement - but both paths get pottery done by the time that settler finishes (either cow or pig varieties). Counterpoint: there isn't any thing notable for our worker to do after the cow and pig are pastured, so maybe we do want to save every tech turn we can. (Or maybe we place a farm...)

It probably will depend on what we uncover in those first few turns.

[darrelljs]

lol @ the Carter analogy...and all of them.

Darrell

[Commodore]

GAME ON! And our choices are easier:

River connection, wet wheat, shares floodplain, grows capital cottages. This is a gimmie.

[pindicator]

Neat crop yield.  But we weren't expecting mirrored starts, were we?

About 170 tiles per player.

[pindicator]

Quick idea for the first 30 turns.

t9 - hunting finishes, start agriculture
t10 - worker done, moves to pig. work fp and grow
t14 - pig pasture done, work the pig
t16 - size 2. work pig & ele. warrior is at 14/15, but swap to settler anyway, worker starts on cow pasture
t18 - agriculture finishes, start pottery
t19 - cow is pastured, swap from the ele to the Cow
t20 - worker starts a road on the flood plains
t22 - road finished
t25 - settler is done, swap back to warrior. Settler moves along road to plains hill
t26 - warrior finishes with 7h overflow, pottery finishes, start granary. Work the cow & elephant for max hammers. Found city #2
t29 - granary finished. Capital is at size 2, with 12/24 in the food box
t31 - size 3 12/26 food for capital. City #2 is working a flood plains and still size 1.

Still not sure what to do with the worker after turn 22. Whether we want to farm the floodplains or build another road and then cottage it after pottery?

[Commodore]

My gut says cottage; we are going to be unable to share the cows or pigs for a while, so no need for another food tile. Additionally, this start feels like it lacks incidental commerce. A pair of early hamlets would do wonders for us actually getting AH in time.

My instincts say this opening is optimal, I'll look real quick at Bronze Working and/or worker-worker-settler opens.

[Commodore]

Oh yeah that's our next city.
   
Next unanswered question: Nice as the plan is, is it still better to go the traditional Bronze Working?

[Commodore]

We're on a Small, or a weird peninsula on Big.

[pindicator]

Those trees by the scout - are they snow-capped?