Wow, that's a lot of new information, with more soon to come! Let's see:
- There are 932 total land tiless on this 42x34 map. That means it's slightly less than two thirds land, so there's no circumnav bonus, and naval power will likely be less critical than in either PB37 or PB39 while still retaining some value. It also means there are less than 135 land tiles per player, not counting lakes and coast of course, and we already knew there were barely more than 200 total tiles per player, including ocean.
- That gold/stone/floodplains zone indeed looks very important and very like a midpoint between neighbors. I would guess that lake represents roughly the center between three neighbors: Us, another player somewhere to our west or somewhat south of west, and another player probably south and a bit west of us.
- Based on the above, I think all locations are going to be important and relatively contested, and it's going to be interesting to try to prioritize them correctly. The map does seem to be pushing us to scout and settle generally (South-)Westish first, but further scouting may indicate that this is at least partly an illusion.
- The plains hill 2NW of our Scout looks like it be an amazing city, but it also looks like it would likely be an extremely aggressive plant (either for us or for our presumed neighbor).
- In lesser news, Donovan has the same number of water tiles in his BFC as we do (three).
- Thoughts about the microplan:
I think the first realistic variation in the microplan posted above would diverge on T11, when we grow to size 2. The problem with going Workboat -> Worker directly (without growth first) would be that we wouldn't be able to grow until T20 that way anyway, and getting even a single Warrior out before the Settler would force us to either grow with a bunch of food we'd rather put into the Settler or work at least one non-resource tile for at least one turn just for the hammers, and especially with the extra commerce we get by growing early, all of that amouts to a net loss compared with Workboat -> Warrior -> Worker. But we can put the Warrior on hold after growing to maximize our total yields, depending on how important it is to have that Warrior out between T12 and T20. Delaying the Warrior by those 8 turns would give us 3 extra overflow from the Settler into our next build, and might net us one extra worker turn (in the form of a partial mine on the grassland hill) depending on whether that worker turn and 4 immediate hammers are worth giving up to preserve a forest for future chopping - and whether we decide to plant our next city 3W of Gower after all. Right now, I think I incline to delaying the Warrior, in part because we would be able to change our minds and get it earlier after all on short notice if desired - but I may be undervaluing the possibility of using it to help scout our surroundings early on.
I don't think it's worthwhile to deal the warrior for that long just because there is a lot of value in getting out a scouting warrior. Especially because we are so close to everyone else I think it's important to start immediately scouting the area to our North and South East. It looks like Tundra and Jungle in those areas respectively but double checking it never hurt anyone.
The Plains Hill plant you're talking doesn't look that aggressive? It looks like a natural choke point to set up a city that would wall off the rest of our empire. It looks like the river might be the dividing line so anything further out might be extremely aggressive. I think that location might be our 4th city location because we probably don't want to settle it until we connect either copper or horses.
Another strong food tile was discovered this turn. That Pig makes a city plant on the Stone a better city. Lots of floodplains down south of Gower (yes, our capital has been renamed) and we have a very difficult decision of where to send our Settlers. Unlike the plains hill next to the river far west there isn`t any standout city tiles south. We really want our cities on hills if at all possible of course.
@BaII: Of the two pitbosses I`ve played we`ve been settled up on by three of our four "close" neighbours so I`m not sure if we can delay that strong city out west as long as city number four. If we`re lucky we`ll have Copper within our borders. If we`re not - we`ll have a decision to make!
I do feel like getting our first Warrior out quick is worth the trouble as having information on the surroundings is ever so important. But the decision can be put off for a little while yet.
@Refsteel: I think you are right that we have more than one neighbour that will contest each of the fertile floodplains valleys and we should make sure that we get more than our fair share of the cake (or at least a stable border). I`m expecting the first contact any turn now and there is no way around it - neighbour luck matters. Also, having no circumnavigation or islands in sight does indeed make Sailing slightly less of a priority, though I feel that it is one of the most underrated techs on RB as it allows for early island trade routes on a normal map.
The reason why I said it might be the 4th city is because if we lack strategic resources I don't want to be holding it with just Archers. I got hard punished for that in 1 of the PB's I played where someone planted an aggressive city but I wasn't able to do anything about it because I hadn't connected strategic resources.
But yah it looks like there is so much fertile land down there we probably desperately need to grab as much as we can without overextending ourselves.
Archers are pretty good at defending hill cities, especially whenever the city has a river in front of it. But, yes, ideally we want metal units to be able to safeguard our fronts. I still think that the spot grabbing ocean Fish and Cows after the border expansion is our best bet as it does allow our second city to grow quickly. Gower could make a Workboat for that second city by the time it expands borders, further speeding up our start. I like the fact that Cre will help us keeping pace with the Exp/Imp civs.
We still could use more information on potential city sites down south. Another food resource could make that area a higher priority.
I don't think the problem is losing the city more so that they could just walk past the city and start pillaging stuff.
Have we thought about after the first settler swapping to slavery and then whipping out a WB at 1 pop from the capital and having it run towards the fish. Although considering how close we are to everyone it might be more worthwhile to be putting those hammers into more settler/workers.
Good thoughts on whipping a workboat after the Settler from Gower, including the reason it's ultimately probably not the right call. I think if we plant Antiochus 3W of Gower as planned, we'll want to whip the workboat out of there, and whip a Worker out of Gower, but I'm still not sure about the details, partly because the location of copper could change a lot of things.
I'm not too worried about wandering pillagers from other players, but even cheap as the tech is, I don't want to tech Archery sooner than we have to. Tech and maintenance on this map are both going to be very expensive, and copper is a very good tile to work, especially in our hammer-starved position. We'll have to see where copper is before we know what to do about it though.
I looked at the possibility of teching Pottery before Bronze, by the way, and I don't think we can justify it; we're just too hammer-poor with neither chops nor slavery. We could get the first Settler out almost as soon since we'll be nearly done with it by the time our first chop comes in anyway, and get cottages down much earlier than in our current plan, but getting another worker and more warriors and another Settler and a Workboat for that ocean fish all in a timely manner is going to be a challenge even with Bronze first, never mind trying to find hammers for granaries with just forests, Worker/Settler overflow, and eventually a cow and a grass hill mine or two.
This map is more lush than I thought at first. A wet Rice straight south of Gower makes a city down there a powerhouse. So that is something to think about. But does it top that western site sharing Pigs with Gower?
We`ll finish Fishing this turn. Then we can finally work our Fish and get more commerce. Note that Cornflakes already has a tech as of this turn. Elkad is surely on a Bronze Working beeline. I expect most of the other players to go in that direction as well.
I`m not particularly worried about someone walking past a strong border city of ours. Very often people tend to de facto agree to the split of territory and civ 4 really is a defender`s game (as it`s hard to break defensive bonuses plus the visibility disadvantage when attacking).
We need to find a way of building (or whipping out) a Workboat for that ocean Fish. Maybe we can afford to let the second city build it itself. I`m almost certain that Mining - Bronze Working is our best bet at this point. Slavery does make a rush slightly less attractive and allows us to quickly whip out Workers/Settlers (or Workboats for that matter).
Still no sign of other players. Getting contact isn`t necessarily a bad thing as it allows us to start EP spending early. I kind of half expected to encounter a Scout today but no.
The rice is certainly a nice surprise. Where would you place the southern powerhouse city? (Or more generally, how would you dotmap the region so far?)
I'm somewhat inclined to play it safe with our units since we're going to have so few of them for so long, but if we want to meet neighbors and want to get that warrior out as early as possible for more scouting, the southeasterly course seems the most likely to help accomplish the first and get good value from the second.
I've been playing with possible extensions of the microplan above, but they depend quite a lot on what our dotmap will be, and realistically, they're likely to change substantially once copper is revealed.
