PB81 - Continental Drifters (TBS)

[The Black Sword]

In defense of Cre, I went and took some pictures from the last game I played it(PB59):



Settling on those jungled gems was pretty important here, and Cre gets us the 2nd ring pigs.

The northern city gets 2 extra resources from Cre. You might say we should settle first ring pigs and then the marble doesn't count. But we didn't have the tech for the pigs yet and it was the best city to get up and running.

Probably a non-Cre civ splits this up into 3 cities, and Cre has saved us that.



The southern fish city gets 2 resources and two LH lakes from the pop.

The gold city could be moved 1SE but then it still loses the copper and the plains hill plant. There's also some horses north of the X still to be revealed.

Probably a non-Cre player is again looking to settle 3 cities here instead of 2, settling a sheep/copper.

[The Black Sword]

Regarding leader I think we do not want IND with Ameeica as idea is to use GE for Mids + any other wonder we really want. So rather Phi/Exp I think.

Yeah, I hadn't thought it through before, I think this free GE is too good to turn down, and we don't really mind focusing expansion a bit and delaying the GS slightly while we wait for it. So Ind is not offering much then.

[Hitru]

My aim was not to say that CRE is bad, I think we have reasonable balance in place. I'm ok with taking that if we want to go with America

[Hitru]

We can pick America and get PHI leader on the way back. Naufragar is looking to kill someone fast with AGG/CHM pick. Need to keep that in mind.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, grabbed America. If anyone has strong feelings for Cre vs Exp here, this is your last chance. I'm on the fence, going to play through a Cre sim to see what it looks like.

[Zed-F]

We can expect Zulu and Boudicca are on the vet continent with us so early defense will probably need to be a factor. We aren’t likely to be able to grow tall with wide spacing between cities; instead our cities will need to be placed defensively. It seems like CRE would let us get away with picking more defensive spots even if food is not first ring and give us better vision, whereas EXP might let us grow faster and whip more reliably in very new cities.

If we suppose someone will come after us in the ancient or classical era, which is better for holding them off? CRE might be slightly better there. But it also encourages us to spend early hammers on libraries, where we might be better focused on growth and defense. I guess we will see what results the sims have.

[Hitru]

Yeah, need to settle border cities on hills if possible.

[thrawn]

Even though EXP is hard to turn down here, with PHI America I'd definitely go CRE because it's better to incorporate the food sources in fewer bigger cities. Culture also helps defensively including the third ring and the faster EXP growth is more likely to trigger a 3vs1 which is the main threat to not winning the game.

[Zed-F]

I think we have a target painted on us regardless of how fast we grow, and I doubt we will be given opportunities to grow tall.

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, dangerous neighbourhood around here.  

The Cre sim looked quite nice to me. Even though the granary is obviously good, it delay the WB for the fish and delays AH to hook the cows, so there is some compensation. And we do get 45h off our library on ~T45 to catch up too.

Pretty much did the obvious stuff: 
Worker -> WB-> 2 warriors. 
Worker improves Wheat -> Cows-> Ivory.
Tech: Hunting -> AH-> Mining-> BW



There is a bit of question of whether we take Wheel or Mining with our free tech. If we take Mining instead, we could get BW in time to revolt when this settler is in transit. That saved turn is possibly lost by not being able to speed the settler along with roads though. I think the most important thing gained is probably getting earlier vison of copper to know where to put the 2nd city. We can also chop instead of road. Wheel is 15b more expensive.