Definitely a dead end. So do we send the scout NE-SE or NE-NW or NE-NE next turn? Checking out NE-NW or NE-NE means we'll get back to the capital on t25, looking at both means t26.
Score changes for everyone this turn, mostly for the 8 or 9 tiles we all settled on t1. It's obvious that 2metra, Dark Savant, German Joey and TBS have a lake by their capital, who the fifth is is just beyond me. Demos.
Of course the fish is there, meaning we can't settle anywhere other than where the settler is standing.
And more importantly, who should we meet?
I think William is about as good a neighbour as we could hope for initially - he's very unlikely to go on the warpath, and even with AGG/PRO Japan I don't expect to see a lot of Samurai heading our way at any point in the game. Unfortunately he's a tenacious defender and with PRO (and AGG) won't be a tasty morsel for us. Let's just hope Aretas is his other neighbour. Demos.
So here's an attempt to outsource our micro to potential lurkers (or at least internally help us solve one of our remaining questions in the early micro). Namely, where do we exactly settler our wheat-gems city. E or SE of gems? Here is the position where we potentially find ourselves in 10 turns (everything irrelevant is deleted from the pic):
I'll put the rest of the stuff in spoilers as this is otherwise a bit of a wall of text..
What makes the comparison tight:
Southern city spot: E of gems (“A”) vs. SE of gems (“B”) Key things to take into account:
A is settled one turn faster. That translates into roughly a benefit of 8 foodhammers in the opening.
B has crabs in the first ring. At size 2 that does not truly be an improvement as working improved gems tile is more or less equally strong
At size three A could work a riverside grass mine 1/3/1 instead of 4/0/2 crabs
Getting the mine up costs 5 worker turns. Building a worker boat costs 4 worker turns (chop) & 10 hammers
Value of tiles at size 3 depends on the build:
When growing, crabs food is clearly stronger and provides an additional commerce
When building a worker, equal foodhammers, but crabs provides an additional commerce
When building a settler, mine is in essence a 1/5/1 tile and stronger
Settling B leads to a net loss of 2 forests (city tile + potentially a chopped WB)
As a simplification: City A starts 18 foodhammers ahead, but is the ability to work crabs over mine significant enough to prioritize B
What to do in this micro challenge:
Put our civ into best possible position by EOT55
Techwise you should just finish Wheel, tech Pottery and then collect as much money as possible
Capital should just build settlers at the crappy tiles selected.
In my quick attempt, gems city had produced a worker, settler, granary and warrior by eot55. Items like that probably should be a part of your consideration too. No need to try to figure out where the settler is going (or what workers are doing if they are done at the gems city)
How to report the outcome:
All values should represent the situation end of turn 55. And provide a eot55 screenshot!
[*]Settlers produced: eotXX
[*]Workers produced: eotXX
[*]Granary: Yes/No
[*]No. of warriors:
[*]City size:
[*]Food in the box:
[*]Hammers in a build/overflow:
[*]Crabs improved: Yes/No
[*]Other stuff worth nothing:
William promo-healed and stayed in place. I left our warrior on the hill as we don't need to make an immediate decision. Moving 1S might scare him off to the south, or it might send him NE towards our rice, which he could sit on and cause us untold micro headaches. Our second warrior is out eot25, so he'll be able to cover the rice from t27, so I think we need warrior 1 to stay put until t25.
I had a look over the oceans to the north and west. Lots of trees and hills to the west. What looks like sea ice to the north (see pic). Odd on a toroid - is that to give us backlines even after Astronomy or just for flavour?
Copper is in a very handy place indeed. I don't think we need to redo any of the micro. Just add an extra hammer to the spreadsheet for city 4!
Anyone want to dotmap in earnest now?
Two questions unresolved for the turn.
- Fishing->Wheel or Wheel->Fishing?
- Which forest does our second worker start chopping?
I'll end turn when we've decided on and actioned those. Meanwhile William's scout should be healed in a couple of turns. No need to hassle him yet.
William stayed still. I moved the warrior to menace the fully-healed scout. He shouldn't be able to get around him to scout our back lines. The warrior in the capital was completed with a chop (that gets it to 30 hammers and so will overflow 15 into the settler that we start next turn) so it can move to protect the rice if William moves that way.
Our scout has a decision to make. The copper means our settling plans have changed and we're now planning to settle copper->gems->sheep. So do we get the scout to help with the northern site (where the settler will spend turn 31 vulnerable and outside our culture on a hill with just a warrior for company) or the southern site (the same, but on a forest on t32) or do we get her to uncover the NE coast, or head SE to find William/other neighbours? Up north we've only seen one wolf, so it shouldn't be too dangerous, down south I think William's scout has killed the lion we saw, so again, not too dangerous?
William ran away, I presume to the highlighted tile. To ensure he doesn't sneak around our backlines I moved the warrior to the forest, but he'll move back to the hill next turn to keep a close eye on the site of our gems city. The scout is on his way down to help out and our second warrior is making his way north to look out for copper city.
Some folks (including William) have size 4 capitals. Naufragger is first to get a second city. We only just started our first settler so it'll be another six turns before we join him.
As observant lurkers will have noticed, we're naming our cities after games we have played. For those that I've nominated, I'm going to write up a highly personal description of the game, what I enjoyed (or didn't) about it and what it meant to me. People are very welcome to add their own memories.
So, lets start with the capital, where there was a cross-team consensus as to the name.
Game: Civilization (series)
Released: 1991-
First played: 1996?
Personal rating: Undisputed Classic
Pretty much the only choice for the capital name, on this site at least. I'm not going to write much about this series - feels a bit pointless when you can just read the rest of RB ! Personally, while I remember playing Civ II briefly at university (artillery so OP) I didn't really get into the series until later. In fact, it wasn't strictly a Civ game at all that grabbed my attention - but that's a story for the second city...
I played quite a lot of Civ III, but the one I've spent most time with is Civ IV. I'm a mediocre player by RB standards (fortunately for my ego, those standards are pretty high). I didn't game much in my late teens and early twenties. Then, for over a decade, I played games, up to and including Civ IV as a way to relax, commonly with a beer, cider or wine in hand. Other than an occasional game as the Aztecs I don't think I used slavery; slavery is bad, right ? It's a sign of how good the design was that the game was so playable at that level, as well as providing a deep challenge for people who actually dived into the mechanics. Unfortunately, it left me as a bundle of ingrained lazy bad habits, as I was about to realise.
I was disappointed by Civ V (although I personally give the designers credit for trying something new and for the way that they looked at previous good games for inspiration). In fact, it was while looking for reviews to help me decide whether it was worth buying the expansion that I stumbled across a website by some guy called "Sullla". His review saved me some money, which was nice. Unfortunately, much of the rest of his website was dedicated to telling me that I was doing things wrong. The faint but pervasive sense of shame at how bad I was at Civ (and I'm considered a smart guy in my day job) has remained with me ever since . It did inspire me to at least try to take the game more seriously, fighting my way up to being able to cope at Emperor, although at heart I'm more of a Mucking about at Monarch (or even P***ing about at Prince, if I'm on holiday) kind of guy. I've really enjoyed lurking around the fringes of the MP community, but would never have the time or dedication to actually be a leading turnplayer. Being part of this team is the peak of my career so far, and I'm very happy in my roles of cheering the team on and rambling about stuff in spoiler tags to keep the post count up.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
! Personally, while I remember playing Civ II briefly at university (artillery so OP) I didn't really get into the series until later. In fact, it wasn't strictly a Civ game at all that grabbed my attention - but that's a story for the second city...
? It's a sign of how good the design was that the game was so playable at that level, as well as providing a deep challenge for people who actually dived into the mechanics. Unfortunately, it left me as a bundle of ingrained lazy bad habits, as I was about to realise.
. It did inspire me to at least try to take the game more seriously, fighting my way up to being able to cope at Emperor, although at heart I'm more of a Mucking about at Monarch (or even P***ing about at Prince, if I'm on holiday) kind of guy. I've really enjoyed lurking around the fringes of the MP community, but would never have the time or dedication to actually be a leading turnplayer. Being part of this team is the peak of my career so far, and I'm very happy in my roles of cheering the team on and rambling about stuff in spoiler tags to keep the post count up.
