Team Gaspar - how PBEM47 was lost and where it got us.

[Gaspar]

So we have a shiny new save! The warrior was indeed atop the settler as advertised. As tempted as I am to go darting into the fog after whatever Commodore didn't want us to see, rego's presence reminds me of the pitfalls that befall those who try to outsmart mapmakers... First things first, though:



We're Mayan?!? Actually we are Malinese, just with Mayan colors. The game immediately reminded me of PBEM14, where I was Bismarck of Mali, played awful but got all the wonders and nearly won. Let's reprise a few of those roles, but not all of them, k?

Here's the settings:



I decided to move the warrior 3, with the thought being we can make a circle around the home before bringing him to a potential second site. Obviously, he revealed nothing we won't get by settling, but that's always the case here. I'm sure the team won't love these settings, but with 4 of us there's too many to make a useful moniker from our collective usernames:



Naming scheme is inspired by, ahem, "by far the greatest team the world has ever seen," The invincibles.

Leading to this capital city...







That's all the news fit to print. Lew, zak - you guys can feel free to grab and send then next few along, no need to wait for me.

[regoarrarr]

rego's presence reminds me of the pitfalls that befall those who try to outsmart mapmakers...

Is that a PB4 reference?

[Gaspar]

rego's presence reminds me of the pitfalls that befall those who try to outsmart mapmakers...

Is that a PB4 reference?

Yeah, sorry. I don't really want to talk about that game either.

[NobleHelium]

rego just didn't remember that Krill always makes you SIP in every single map he's ever made.

[zakalwe]

I took a first stab at an opening... no particular plan, but I somehow stumbled into going stonehenge first.




That's whip overflow from our first settler, and could have been complemented by a chop on T30 if desired. (The roaded forest E of the capital has two chop turns invested.) So maybe that could have been the oracle instead, with some optimization. (Skip hunting, perhaps.)

Our first worker action should be to move to the sheep and mine it. It comes on-line one turn sooner than the rice (one turn for moving in both cases, but the mine takes one turn less than the farm), and contributes just as much towards our second build, which should either be a worker or a settler.

I think worker-warrior-worker is a good opening, growing to size 2 just as the warrior is completed, aided by the mined sheep.

The second city might go on the sugar 2W of ivory, or on the bananas.

[zakalwe]

Our first worker action should be to move to the sheep and mine it.

Maybe Mackoti will come to the same conclusion and go BW first with India after all. We could see an extremely early stonehenge/second city from him.

[Krill]

rego just didn't remember that Krill always makes you SIP in every single map he's ever made.

Ever since PB2, it's that or make sure everyone knows what they get if they move on T0.

[Lewwyn]

So maybe that could have been the oracle instead, with some optimization. (Skip hunting, perhaps.)

Let's look into this.

[Lewwyn]

First attempt got us a Settler at T24 and:



Cool?

Dunno, maybe I can get it faster... At this point I have 3 workers and 2 warriors. Another settler in the queue at 15/65 and another forest to be chopped this turn. Tech went Agr>BW>Myst>Med>Priest>Pottery. This was hard on the workers since they sort of ran out of things to do.

I mined sheep first, but I'm not convinced this is the right move yet... Want to try again because with the rice farmed we can grow the city in 2t to size 3 and maybe do that before starting the second worker. As it is, I start the second worker as soon as we hit size 2 before the warrior finishes.

Going to play with it some more. The biggest issue is that we have so few beakers, but witht the second city maybe we could actually speed this up. Also we don't switch to slavery yet in this attempt.

[Lewwyn]

I believe farming the rice first is superior:

Here you can see I've farmed the rice and I grew to size 3 in 2 turns after growing to size 2. From there we move the worker back to the sheep to mine. I have a warrior here as the current build, but actually I switched it to a 4T worker. The 2nd worker finishes EOT16, then we finish the Warrior EOT17 and start a settler:

Settler finishes EOT21 (w/ one chop) which is a huge improvement over last sim. We get our 3rd warrior EOT22. Then start the third 4T worker while Priesthood is being teched (also 4t). Worker finishes and we immediately start the Oracle. I have to work the unimproved FP tile over the Rice in order to squeeze out some extra commerce and get Pottery in 5T instead of 6t. This would change with the second city. We have 3 workers who are not doing much at this point, but with the second city they would have lots to do.

We get to T31:



We are at size 4 2 turns ahead of last sim, have an extra warrior and finish Oracle + Pottery a turn ahead of last sim. Second city is 2 turns ahead and possibly this could be done faster again with the commerce from TRs. Actually I should have settled the 2nd city in the sim to see what that would have done, but I'm concerned about placement without any map knowledge. If we settle near that lake though we could easily speed the tech and therefore the Oracle by at least 1T by working that. I could also then work the rice in the cap and grow to 4 3 turns earlier, possibly to 5.