Gaspar & Noble make their triumphant? return; mostly just get asked about "The List"

[scooter]

I do wonder who the lurker consensus on winner is, though?  Feel free to share if you can do so without any spoiler information, I would be curious.

I'm not sure about lurker consensus, but I think I can do a version of my own opinion. The way I would answer this in a non-spoilery way is talking purely of perceived player ability, ignoring leader/civ choices. Coming into this game, I felt if we're talking all players in this game at their peak, I would very narrowly bet on Serdoa to win and probably your team as runners-up. Obviously though there are varying levels of rust and a new mod here, so that potentially shuffles it a bit. I think it's a very evenly matched field where 4/6 players can feasibly win. I think you're maybe underselling Rusten/Hitru a tad by placing them at Bob's level - I consider them the 4th team that can win. I don't have a clear winner/favorite though. I would place nobody's chances at better than 50%.

[NobleHelium]

I already told Gaspar that I consider Rusten to be on par with everyone else. I am skeptical of some of his strategies but I can't argue with his results so far on RB.

[Gaspar]

If everyone could please take a look at the horror show that is the resource placement at our capital and gape in awe, I'd appreciate it.

*notes*

Players do not like when their resources are much apart, make sure they don't have enough resources for this to be a problem...

I mean, maybe just put one first ring? Or at least not make it so it is impossible to travel to without hitting a forest/hill/both?

[Commodore]

Events should be on, you could hope for the forest fire...

[NobleHelium]

Events are not on. Thanks for getting me to double check the game settings though.

[Kurumi]

If everyone could please take a look at the horror show that is the resource placement at our capital and gape in awe, I'd appreciate it.

*notes*

Players do not like when their resources are much apart, make sure they don't have enough resources for this to be a problem...

I mean, maybe just put one first ring?  Or at least not make it so it is impossible to travel to without hitting a forest/hill/both?

*keeps noting*

... it can be disregarded if the surroundings are flat and deforested, generous river deltas should keep players happy...

[NobleHelium]

Demos are VERY interesting.  Since we are last in turn order we see what everyone has done on their first turn. (This is mostly a disadvantage because it is basically impossible for us to deduce which demo numbers belong to whom.) The most interesting takeaway is that nobody is working a PFH like we are, which means that we may be the only team doing a work boat open!  Not entirely sure what to make of that, I'll have to ponder it some more.  I honestly expected multiple people to be doing work boat opens because it seems obviously better than a worker open for our start.  One possibility (for people other than us) is teching BW with a worker open and chopping the work boat.  Three people start with Mining (Maya, China, Russia), so that is something they could all be doing.

One thing we do know for sure is that pindicator put a 3f tile in the inner ring for somebody but not us, so presumably that player does not have our super awkward resource placement.

Some (probably useless) C&D:

1) 1 opponent has 3 coast tiles (6 land tiles), 1 has 2 coast tiles, and the rest have 1 coast tile.
2) Everyone settled next to fresh water.
3) At least 1 opponent is researching a tech with a prereq, which is either BW, religion, or AH. I don't think anyone is teching Masonry or Sailing. Nobody can research Pottery.
4) At least 1 opponent is working a 3f tile.
5) At least 1 opponent is working a grass forest. Nobody is working a plains forest.  So I think this means all our opponents are building workers.  It also means nobody started with inner ring forested plains deer.  Inner ring forested grass deer is still possible. (Don't do this unless absolutely everyone gets it - inner ring forested deer is an incredibly overpowered tile at 4 foodhammers.)

[Gaspar]

I do wonder who the lurker consensus on winner is, though?  Feel free to share if you can do so without any spoiler information, I would be curious.

I'm not sure about lurker consensus, but I think I can do a version of my own opinion. The way I would answer this in a non-spoilery way is talking purely of perceived player ability, ignoring leader/civ choices. Coming into this game, I felt if we're talking all players in this game at their peak, I would very narrowly bet on Serdoa to win and probably your team as runners-up. Obviously though there are varying levels of rust and a new mod here, so that potentially shuffles it a bit. I think it's a very evenly matched field where 4/6 players can feasibly win. I think you're maybe underselling Rusten/Hitru a tad by placing them at Bob's level - I consider them the 4th team that can win. I don't have a clear winner/favorite though. I would place nobody's chances at better than 50%.

I missed this first time in cross-posting.

I think there's probably not much between the top 4 teams. I don't think we're best or even second best probably, though I appreciate you suggesting as much if for no other reason than you're in my thread.

I think that means optimistically that whomever plays the best of those 4 teams will win though apparently we got the raw end of the stick with the capitals since it certainly seems like not everyone has to untie the Gordian knot to get their resources improved as we do. So the winner will probably be the player who gets the best slice of map AND the best set of neighbors, while playing well enough. That seems as likely to be us as anyone else so I'm gonna go with it.

[pindicator]

If everyone could please take a look at the horror show that is the resource placement at our capital and gape in awe, I'd appreciate it.

*notes*

Players do not like when their resources are much apart, make sure they don't have enough resources for this to be a problem...

I mean, maybe just put one first ring?  Or at least not make it so it is impossible to travel to without hitting a forest/hill/both?

Can I count this as the first map gripe?

[NobleHelium]

The beginning of the Work Boat open feels very good to me, but the positioning of the forests (and hills) around the capital is extremely awkward.  Not only is it awkward for improving the tiles it's going to be awkward for the settler to move to the second city location, wherever that may be.  In fact it feels like they were strategically positioned for maximum annoyance. I want to get BW to chop the forests to reduce the annoyance but I also want to get Pottery for granaries if we are EXP.  So I feel like we're going to end up with Victoria as a result of this.

This was the first map gripe, you just missed it because I was being nice about it.

In all seriousness, the details of the capital BFC matter and it is definitely not obvious, so I don't blame you for missing it given your lack of mapmaking experience.  But things like whether resources are first or second ring and how many turns it takes to transition a worker from one resource to the next are important.  Small differences can snowball out to meaningful advantages, so you should balance them.  I'm not saying anyone will win or lose the game because of this - and I think we might have gotten an advantage from having the PFH in the first ring that at least one other player didn't get - but it is important to think about and balance these differences in addition to the resources in the capital.  I'm not even necessarily saying that it's unbalanced on this map, since we don't have enough information on that yet.