[Spoilers] Lazteuq and RefSteel's PB51 Adventure

[Lazteuq]

Here we go, Thanks for being open to a new person! I've never done pitboss before and I'm new to RB. I'll probably need some help with the technical side of just how pitboss works. 
I do play simultaneous turns MP with friends, but not much, so this is a pretty new experience for me. Please don't hesitate to tell me if I'm being stupid.

Leader and civ choice: I'm already questioning my Pericles of France, but here are some reasons I picked him:
-I didn't want to try an obviously warmongering combo, because I doubt my own ability to pull off an early rush.
-I've heard the Musketeer is really good with knights/cuirassiers for fast warfare. That sounds fun at least.
-I really like creative for freedom with early city placement. Maybe I have a problem of using creative as a crutch...
-Creative libraries go well with Philosophical for getting early great scientists, even if I don't get any wonders. Since there is no tech trading, I figured extra early beakers will be even more valuable.

I've been wondering: Why is PHI only worth one point in the picking system? I thought PHI was arguably better than FIN, at least for singleplayer.

[Gavagai]

I've been wondering: Why is PHI only worth one point in the picking system? I thought PHI was arguably better than FIN, at least for singleplayer.

Because PHI is garbage in MP no tech trading environment. Most of its value comes from the ability to bulb expensive techs early and trade them to clueless AIs.

[Raskolnikov]

As Gavagai says... hopefully your capital has a nice river you can cottage so you get something out of an early academy. Good luck with the game

[RefSteel]

Checking in!!

I wouldn't call Phi trash, even though it's true that No Tech Trading costs it a lot of its SP strength. We'll have to wait to see our start and surroundings to decide for sure how best to leverage it, but there are always possibilities. Pericles should be fun to play, especially if you enjoy figuring out (or want to learn on the fly) how best to leverage your Great People! (JR4, whom I'm also dedlurking, is playing him in PB39, but RtR Pericles is a whole different animal from BtS Pericles.) And France has great starting techs, a great bonus on its UU, and a UB that not only exists but also has a graphic and a civilopedia entry!

This'll be a fun game! (Unless superdeath's random targeting spinner lands on us, I mean. If we end up as his neighbors, we can talk about how to counter aggressive praets, but really there's no good solution: Aggressive Rome isn't actually a good civ, but it's a really lousy neighbor. Kind of like the guy who's piloting it this game.)

[Lazteuq]

Here is the start. We're standing on a plains hill right now, thats nice. These are some promising floodplains, except for the suspiciously lonely desert tile where the rivers meet.
Looks really good to me, but I guess settling 1E might be better long-term. Or we could even wait a turn and scout to the west! I'm inclined to settle in place though.

(not sure if I've embedded the image correctly)

[Lazteuq]

Settled in place because I didn't think it was worth losing a turn.
City naming theme is Mexican food:

• Floodplains....to the east and also northwest!
  
• Fog gazing reveals water to the north, I wonder if its inland lakes or ocean? I think its more likely ocean, because it extends across such a long distance
  
• Forests aren't too common, so early bronze working isn't absolutely necessary. But of course I will still want it for slavery and copper.
  
• I chose Animal Husbandry for improving the cows first, then rice, then probably cottages a couple floodplains. I didn't think Pottery first was necessary because I see the cow as a higher priority to improve.
  

[RefSteel]

Looks like we're underway; cool! (And thanks for the map, Commander of a Fleet in the Absence of an Admiral!)

Great start, Lazteuq; I like the naming theme already! Founding in place was definitely the right move; a two-hammer plant (to say nothing of another turn's food, production, and research on top of it) is worth many times more than a better sixth tile to work and another calendar resource. I also approve of going for Animal Husbandry first; we'll reveal horses early, and we'll definitely want a pasture for those cows soon. Whether we want them before the rice is actually an interesting question, but we can get to that later on; there are advantages and disadvantages both ways.

Until then, while the worker is being trained, the most important early decisions will be our scout moves: Information is power, after all, and these first six turns, before a bear could first eat our scout through no fault of anybody's, are our surest chance of uncovering many tiles and learning about our surroundings. As often as possible, especially now, we want the scout to be making two moves - so going to flatland with the first move, looking around, and then taking a second move that we expect will allow the next turn's first move to be onto flatland in a useful direction.

And an important note about useful directions: Think about more than just how many tiles a given move will reveal! For instance, our capital will pop borders in just three turns, and give us visibility as though we had a unit standing on every tile in our BFC! And because we're Creative, our borders pop to third ring on T25 - which is soon enough to count on getting the information it'll give us, as if we had units standing on all those tiles too! So until the Scout gets out of that zone (and preferably far enough away that the tiles it's uncovering won't overlap with the ones our border pop will reveal) what it's telling us is redundant! (Especially with respect to tiles we'll be able to see from the BFC!) Right now, the only ways the Scout can move on the upcoming turn 1 that will reveal any tiles our third ring won't already see are:

a) 2NE to the floodplain beside the incense, to continue exploring that floodplain region, or...
b) 2SE to the plains forest below the peak, to look along that other river, potentially for cities that can share our cow.

Of course other moves are possible, and could be given strategic priority; those are just the ones I would want to consider if I were playing. And as for a basis on which to choose between them...

Fog gazing reveals water to the north, I wonder if its inland lakes or ocean? I think its more likely ocean, because it extends across such a long distance

You can find out quite easily, actually! If you mouse over the gold hill (or the desert right beside it) the text in the lower-left-had corner of the screen will say, "Fresh water" (among other things) if it's adjacent to a lake. If it doesn't, that's a sea! Similarly, if you mouse over the eastern Incense (or the grass hill just west of it, or the grass forest hill just north of that) it should say "Fresh water" because I'm pretty sure from fog-gazing that the tile north of that incense is a one-tile lake!

Thanks for the first-turn reports! This should be a really fun game!

[Lazteuq]

A few turns of exploration. Thanks for the advice. RefSteel was correct about the inland lake by the incense. The plains north of gold is not fresh water, so I do think ocean is nearby.

I think I want to move the scout across the northern edge of the fog. Then we might know what part of the donut this is. I'll try to make a city dotmap once a little more land is revealed. I wish I knew more about that river to the southeast.

I'm not a wizard at reading into the demographics screen, but here it is:

Does this mean we're the only civ who doesn't have water tiles in the capital cross?

[Raskolnikov]

Does this mean we're the only civ who doesn't have water tiles in the capital cross?

 

Here is a usefull link: demos explained

[RefSteel]

I think I want to move the scout across the northern edge of the fog. Then we might know what part of the donut this is.

Indeed. Looking at what we know right now: We have a deciduous forest to the south (plus another just visible a little further south in the fog) and evergreen forests everywhere else, and sea to the northwest. If this were a donut in shape, I would guess we were in the northwest somewhere - say around 10 o'clockish if we imagine the map as a clock face. But I'm not willing to assume that much from Commodore's description of "fractal pangaea with lots of lakes that looks sort of like a fritter."

I'll try to make a city dotmap once a little more land is revealed. I wish I knew more about that river to the southeast.

Yeah, indeed. The question is which is more important: Finding out what's down there soon, or finding out what's in the northern fog that you were talking about. The scout can certainly take an easterly or southeasterly route that will soon circle back around to there if early intel on the area is wanted.

Does this mean we're the only civ who doesn't have water tiles in the capital cross?

Not quite: Remember that we're Creative! Vanrober will have popped borders too, being Creative like us, but everyone else is only showing their first-ring tiles right now. So we know there are 5 water tiles in Vanrober's BFC (the 16K rival best) and at least one player has two first-ring water tiles (the 7k rival worst) and based on some quick math, either four or five other players have no water in their first rings - so we're by no means the only ones who are land-locked!

Thinking ahead to turn 12 and beyond:

Have you set up a sandbox/simulation to plan out moves in advance, or thought about what you want them to be or what to accomplish with them? I can see a few possibilities, such as:

- Improving the Rice first to produce a warrior T19 and a Settler T29 at size 2

- Improving the Cow first to produce warriors T18 and T21 and a Settler T30 at size 2

- Improving the Rice first to produce a warrior T19 and a Settler T30 at size 3 (with another Warrior complete T31)

- Improving the Rice first to produce warriors T19 and T27 and a Settler T31 at size 3 (with 6 food in the bin)

- Improving the Cow first to produce warriors T18 and T21 and a Settler T31 at size 3 (with 6 hammers in another warrior)

I haven't simmed any of these out myself (I did "mentalsims" instead) so I don't know for sure which I like best, if any. (It depends in part on Bronze Working timing, but also on where Horses appear; if they're in the capital BFC, that would change things rather drastically!) Do you have plans or preferences of your own so far?

(And if you want to try an exercise in good micromanagement, see if you can match or improve on one of the options I listed above!)

Note on the other hand that if you don't want to either create or follow an in-depth microplan, that's fine by me! One advantage of just playing a start by ear is that it gives you more flexibility. In that case, the main thing to bear in mind is that improving the Rice first lets you grow to size 2 slightly faster, and is slightly faster to get the second resource tile connected, even though the first is hooked up on the same turn either way, whereas improving the Cow first provides more hammers for warriors while growing.