[PB56] Amicalola and Tarkeel are Feeling Spicy

[Tarkeel]

Yeah, moving houses can be a lot of hassle for quite a while. No worries though, I enjoy playing the turns, and so far there has been mainly strategic descisions we've discussed here beforehand. Speaking of which, what should we do with the scout?

A) Circle around the back of ElGrillo
B) Continue out in the world for more contacts
C) Go back and scout out the area we're likely to settle?

I think the warrior can do C, and I think the scout should do A then B.

[Amicalola]

I like exactly your proposed order I think.

[Tarkeel]

Turn 25 (3000 BC)

Pretty uneventful, everybody else popped third ring borders (if they hadn't already) and got score for their 2nd ring. Scout went west and is curving up to ElGrillo as discussed. It seems like Noble will have an absolutely fantastic copper city. If planted on the plains huill next to our scout, it will claim copper, marble, wet rice, wet corn and cattle! Not to mention that whole riverbed. He's likely to split thouse food resourced with other cities though.




BTW; According to the micro plan we should have finished The Wheel this turn, but that won't be till next turn. I suspect that Anarchy wasn't accounted for in research? Growth and warrior are still due next turn.

Animal Husbandry next, to spot horses and improve pigs?

Demographics

[Amicalola]

Hi, I am going to wait until tomorrow morning after I have had time to sim before making the turn moves final, but I wanted to propose my Alternate 'X' blue dot 1S of the original. 


Pros: 
- locks Noble out of the area excluding military action.
- That's it I guess, but it's a pretty huge deal.

Cons: 
- Noble will be Angry. Not just angry; Really Angry
- Not on a hill, which matters if Noble gets Really Angry.


I feel like it is a bit of an incredibly jerk plant, and if I were Noble I'd be really annoyed. Noble is also a lot more 'terse,' as he likes to put it, than I am, so he would DEFINITELY be really annoyed.  BUT: the map is just really not in our favour. Also, the other 'known quantity' of Noble thanks to Lewwyn and lurking some old games is that he doesn't like risks, so he could plausibly decide 'Amicalola is definitely going to die, but later' instead of 'I must kill now.' We have a better shot at winning later if we get this spot anyway though. I am tempted towards the path of taking these huge risks, because I feel that if we don't we will: 
A) Fall behind early, or
B) Keep up early, but run out of room quickly, plus have less good cities due to lack of resources. Thanks to IMP, this is probably more likely.

And woof, on that Noble copper spot. That was actually what made me propose this; we can't compete with cities like that without abusing IMP and getting far more land than intended (in my inexperienced opinion, at least). 

I'll stop tired-rambling now. I feel this is the kind of move that either loses us the game, or keeps us in it, but I'm not sure which. What do you think???

Edit: The other pro is that locking Noble out of the area is even bigger than I was originally thinking, because he is CRE and if he jams a city there it fucks our own city.

[Tarkeel]

Note that our capital borders will expand next turn and Noble's have already expanded. The old cyan spot will seal off along the coast with the capital, and will link up with pink dot when that's settled. Moving it one south will not do anything along the coast, will leave a gap between cyan and pink. The extra tiles it grabs will be useless to us as well. I don't see any reason for moving it south, at all.

In short, I agree with your reasoning, but I think the original spot serves your arguments better. Yes, it makes it impossible for Noble to build a fishing village just north of the pigs, but that city won't hold much appeal.

It's certainly demotivating to see that our highest threat neighbor has a second-ring city that's arguably stronger than our capital, while we can barely find any food for our second-ring.

Also, note that Vanrober settled last turn, which is impressively early.

[Amicalola]

So it's actually my exact worry that Noble crams in a fishing village near the pigs (he can't do this with the 1S dot), because of his creative borders. That fishing village, even if it was a 3rd or 4th city, would then steal our corn before we had Mysticism, and then it's game over. Bye-bye Amicalola/Tarkeel. This is exactly what I would do, and is my big worry.

Other than the hill loss, I'm not sure we get much worse. There is less opportunity for tile-sharing early, but if that fishing village is settled, I just don't know if it will matter.

Just to double-check: If Noble settles a city 3-tiles away from our city, and it pops borders while ours has zero-culture, it does steal our tiles right?

And yeah, congrats Vanrober! I really would like to see he and Gira do well this game.

[Amicalola]

The other option that occurs to me would be settling 1E of the original spot, to have copper ready to go in case of Angry Noble.

Also, while I do think the map is unbalanced, I am aware that I have been (for lack of a better term), coming across as a Whiny Bitch the last week or so. I am going to try to play this out, and seriously don't harbour any ridiculous grudges or the like. This message I sent to Superdeath was because I was worried I'd been harsh/unpleasant, but it also reflects my general sentiment towards this game and I'd rather lurkers not get that impression of me either.

Hey man,

I just wanted to say that I'm bitching a lot in my PB 56 thread and I don't want you to take it personally. I think you've almost certainly done a much better job than I would have with the map. Just with 11 people and a second-time mapmaker, someone probably had to draw the short straw, and it's disheartening to find out that's you, y'know? Anyway, seriously don't take it personally.

Cheers,
Amica.  

And hey, it's much more impressive if we do something relevant this game now. With the big risks that I think we're gonna need to take, it's going to be relevancy or first-to-die, with little in-between I feel.

[Tarkeel]

The capital culture will expand next turn to cover the copper, so don't worry about that part. I still think it's best to settle on the hill, but it's your call.

As I said earlier, I really dislike complaining about the map, and I see some strengths in this start but from what I can see our neighbors have it better. My main fear is that there's an unmet player between Ruff and ElGrillo.

Edit: I think the warrior should move that way as cover atleast, and the worker should probably follow once the camp is done.

[superdeath]

The other option that occurs to me would be settling 1E of the original spot, to have copper ready to go in case of Angry Noble.

Also, while I do think the map is unbalanced, I am aware that I have been (for lack of a better term), coming across as a Whiny Bitch the last week or so. I am going to try to play this out, and seriously don't harbour any ridiculous grudges or the like. This message I sent to Superdeath was because I was worried I'd been harsh/unpleasant, but it also reflects my general sentiment towards this game and I'd rather lurkers not get that impression of me either.

Hey man,

I just wanted to say that I'm bitching a lot in my PB 56 thread and I don't want you to take it personally. I think you've almost certainly done a much better job than I would have with the map. Just with 11 people and a second-time mapmaker, someone probably had to draw the short straw, and it's disheartening to find out that's you, y'know? Anyway, seriously don't take it personally.

Cheers,
Amica.  

And hey, it's much more impressive if we do something relevant this game now. With the big risks that I think we're gonna need to take, it's going to be relevancy or first-to-die, with little in-between I feel.

I honestly prefer map bitching in the threads. Helps me realize "hey, dont give soandso 3 gold tiles in their BFC vs someone else's dry rice!" Stuff like that ( although not THAT laughable ) does fly over my head alot.

[Amicalola]

Cheers SD.

I haven't finished the sims to be optimal yet, but just fyi it is 99% chance we are settling the noble and Grillo pink dots before the northern pigs city, based on what I've done so far. AH takes too long to research for city2, while city3 if the other pink dot is still available we need to claim quickly. Also, I'm pretty sure capital borders expand on T50 not 25, unless I'm missing something.