[SPOILERS] Rusten prepares to face the music

[Rusten]

Oops! I forgot about one of the myst civs, but no harm no foul. Dark Savant (fishing/myst) has grown to size 2 getting a work boat and just got Buddhism.

But *now* only one obstacle remains. And surely Donovan has to be teching BW. Mining/myst into Poly makes no sense.

[Rusten]

Successully first to Poly. Civstats couldn't have made it any more obvious. 

Perhaps I should share my settling headache. This is a map of nearby resources.

Now an ideal early city would:
-loan corn (or rice) from capital for the starting turns.
-have an independent food resource (2nd ring possible).
-be connected to capital through trade network (river+coast).

As it turns out this is not possible (seafood doesn't count for this purpose/at this stage), which is why it's such a headache. Not sure if this is unlucky or carefully manufactured by the map makers, but either way I'm struggling.

The ultimate power cities would be 1NE of pigs and PH 1SW of deer, but that means zero overlap which is not ideal for the early game and I'll be slow to the gems (biggest concern). The cities end up with more food than is necessary, but maybe it can be supported thanks to the extra health and luxury resources.
One alternative is so settle 1NE of silver, 1W of pigs and 1W of deer. I'll be worse setup defensively, but quicker to develop, although it feels terrible to settle a city that only gains clam as a food resource with 1st settler. It also feels wrong to delay the pigs (best tile), although it would be settled only a few turns after. I would like to settle the PH 1SW of deer to seal off what appears to be a dead zone with a high culture hill city. I may not want to settle further SW than that. I think that's the direction of naufrager too. Maybe scouting near crab lake will provide dotmap answers, there are still many turns left until settler is out. Just need to be careful with my scout. Bears and other animals are lurking so I'm just moving 1 tile at a time now. Keeping the scout is important to me.

TLDR: seafood is trash and causes headache. 

[Rusten]

Maybe struggling to decide is not so bad. I'm still missing information on perhaps the most important resource, copper. Its location will help me decide.

Now watch copper being revealed in the capital BFC to the NE.

[Rusten]

Looks like we're set for the 3rd turn out of the last 5 or so where it just rolls automatically. On top of a slow pace in general. Good stuff!
I refuse to believe that people can be so busy. War-time and larger empires I can understand and I would respect the full timer, then it may require attention and focus, but this is getting ridiculous.

[Rusten]

Found another nice city spot NW of crab lake. Would have pigs+gems in 1st ring and wet rice+marble in 2nd. That goes well with my plan of getting the GL (poly already invested). The remaining tiles are very poor for the most part (desert and plains), but at this stage it's the resources that matter so that's OK. If I keep finding spots like this (N-NE) then I don't have time to overlap the SW section anyway.

Naufragar has met BGN now which reinforces my belief that he is located to the SW and BGN to the NW. BGN's scout was headed down there last I saw.
Next turn I will be able to see naufragar's graphs too which will comfort me. Then I can start allocating some EP on BGN.

[Rusten]

Mutual visibility of graphs with naufragar now. Really hoping he pays attention and allocates EP on someone else otherwise we'll both waste resources. 

Found furs right outside of capital borders. Luxury count is obscene.

[Rusten]

Accidentally clicked the no players thread trying to open tech issues thread. Touchpad was uncooperative. Exited immediately (realised my mistake while loading).

[Rusten]

Looked at a GM bulb plan because of the seafood but wasn't too convinced. The two targeted techs would be CS+guilds, but sadly CS is preferred over guilds and once CS is completed then paper becomes available. There's no way to juggle because currency is needed which opens up CoL (high preference) which open up CS, so we're looking at max 1 tech with a lot of pre-reqs to be made beforehand. Wasn't there a time when this mod required optics before paper? That would've been real nice right now.

I may end up doing it anyway because the pre-reqs are all useful and because I can see a path of starting a golden age upon discovering CoL and then adopt religion+OR+caste+HR --> get a GM to bulb CS --> adopt bureaucracy+other wanted civics after the 5T wait or end of GA. A much less impactful/strategy deciding bulb, but still useful and plays to the start/leader/civ overall strengths. Bureaucracy+academy will be impactful with capital river cottages and carry me to guilds.

If only those seafood resources were a little less central I could make a case for delaying fishing and temporarily settling without them, but as it stands I don't think I can justify it. A shame really. Most of all to the lurkers perhaps.
Maybe I will consider it if the NE is as rich as the other areas and my neighbours are not close. Still have at least 14 turns to scout and decide.

[Rusten]

I'm due for an update here.

I've ceased hostilities with the seafood. It's taken me through the 5 stages of grief but I've reached bargaining/acceptance. New plan is settling rice+crab first, but my thoughts around that will have to wait until tomorrow -- first I need some sleep.

[Rusten]

T0-31 already covered. In short worker-worker-settler.

T31-47. If all goes according to plan then:

Dotmap

First off the boring dates and calculations:

Settlers: T33, 35, 39, 43 (1-pop whip).

Cities settled: T34, 38, 42, 46.
After those there will be a short gap where I refill on workers/improvements. 

1st warrior is in place to fogbust/scout city #4 after city #3 is settled.
2nd warrior will be in time to scout/fogbust city #5.
City #2 doesn't need.

T43 clam (chop), T44 crab (whip), T46 dry corn, T47 silver, T50 pigs IIRC.

This path also gets by without hunting right away, which means that I can tech the wheel first to connect copper. Improving clam-silver-pigs is not ideal in a vacuum, but doing it this way saves worker turns and allows for earlier wheel.

BW-fishing-wheel-hunting.
Slavery T36.

Why is this good?

I already touched on how it's good to have 2nd city immediately connected to capital. Settling for a fishing resource is not what I wanted but it ticks the other boxes. Furthermore it's a city which requires 0 worker turns! That goes a long way in the beginning, especially when I want to spend time chopping forests for the IMP bonus. It's essentially a freebie as it hardly delays my other critical cities. Pure net gain. The city will simply take rice (which capital has no need for) and then whip its wb 1 turn before size 3. Beyond that it's quite flexible. I really wish the corn and rice had swapped locations though.

Looking at the dotmap city #4 and #5 are both very important, but they offer nothing if settled first and it's a long track with the settler. Settling in this order still gets them down way before T50. I'm not exactly sure where BGN or naufragar are, but these spots are 5 tiles away from my capital so I'd be surprised if they're taken before then.

I'm not going to bore myself or anybody else with the worker micro. Safe to say it's pretty tight. Every city will have worker ready to improve tiles when settled except maybe #5 for 1-2 turns, but that's okay. At that point I just want it settled and secured as BGN could be nearby.

There is a second path which delays city4 a tiny bit and puts a chop into city2's wb instead of a settler. I may switch to that depending on what happens. In that variant slavery may be postponed until ~T50.

All I can remember right now, maybe I'll fill in some more info as I remember. I'm mainly writing this for my own benefit.