TBS finds Superdeath's title Ominous

[The Black Sword]

A lot more people picked Agg than I expected. Including Mack! Makes me think I'm missing something but going back and looking at Charriu's data, I still have a real hard time seeing it be useful. So to get myself off the 2nd page, here's a combo tier list, based almost entirely off my previous trait valuations.

Tier 1
 Miguelito + Rusten Pacal of France
naufragar Joao of India
Automated Teller Justinian of Khemer
The Black Sword Catherine of Chinese
Frozen + Dulland Victoria of Babylon
Piccadilly + Flunky Willem Van Oranje of Mali
Cornflakes Pericles of Native America

Tier 2
 Tarkeel Hannibal of Egypt
Mr. Cairo Darius of Aztec
Ramkhamhaeng Cyrus of Arabia
Mjmd Zara of Portugal
General KilCavalry Julius Caesar of Mongolia
pindicator Lincoln of Dutch
Charriu Ramesses of Greece
Joshybravo963 Asoka of America

Tier 3
 Jowy Kublai Khan of Byzantium
 Amicalola Roosevelt of Ethiopia
civac2 Shaka of Sumeria
Elkad San Martin of England (Cre/Cha ?!?)
superdeath Charlemage of Inca
Lazteuq Montezuma of Persia
Donovan Zoi Sitting Bull of Spain
mackoti Ghengis of Ottoman

Tier 4
Commodore Lieu-Ye of Rome
Ichabod Hammurabi of Germany

Of the top tier picks, Cornflakes seems like the best player followed by naufrager. The German guys are total unknowns to me, but they apparently know how to pick good combos, so it's a strong first impression.

Pindicator would be my top pick from the tier 2 combos.

I would have flagged mack and civac as two top contenders before they saddled themselves with the Aggressive trait. Well, they can prove me wrong during the game.  You never write off mack, even with Agg/Pro anyway.

Sorry tier 4 guys, you're both great but your picks still suck IMO. 

[The Black Sword]

The northern silk wasn't forested in the screenshot btw. I'll happily pay a scout turn for a future forest though.

[The Black Sword]

Lewwyn was very generous with his resources.





So I settled on the sugar, mainly due to not having the tech for the pigs. A 3f plant is usually slightly better than a 2h plant too.

I teched BW first so I can whip out my first IMP settler. There was no point going fishing first, since I couldn't build it in a decent time frame without either chopping or whipping anyway. 

Now my first city will go for the first ring corn, since I can't get to AH in time to unlock any other resources. Otherwise I would settle 1W. The city is nuts though, immediate trade connection and 5(!) resources. It's a bit far away for the first plant but I usually settle a bit further apart with Cre, as you can see with the rest of the dotmap. I'll only have the scout to cover the area but that should be fine with lots of vision and only animals around. In the worst case we can settle in our 3rd ring borders.

I should get AH and see horses by the time I'm settling city 3, but the other 3 dots already look very nice. I think we have to settle on the gems, allowing us to skip IW and still access +1happy. Losing the tile down the line is a small price to pay. Once I've settled that I can plant on the plains hill by the gold and use the cows to grow that city while we wait for the borders to pop. In the south I should time a WB ready for when that city is founded. We get great value from the Creative border pop in all of the cities so far.

Once the long slog to Pottery is done, we'll probably want to whip in Granaries and grow on lots of cottages with our 3 happy sources. Hopefully that will help us deal with the tech costs.

[The Black Sword]

I lost my original scout to a 25% Panther ambush.

That forced me to chop out a new scout to cover the settler(as opposed to completing a warrior instead afterwards), and delay the settler whip by a turn. A warrior would be too slow to get to the city spot in time. Hopefully the scout is useful and a turn delay on the 2nd city is all this costs me.

I thought about settling a closer city to share tiles with the capital instead, and not need an escort. It just doesn't seem like it can make up all the extra resources from the planned location though.

[The Black Sword]

The 2nd scout was more successful than the first, and won his own 75% vs a lion to clear the area. So we're looking pretty good. I think the cost was 3gpt in my sim, but I never bothered fixing the actual dimensions. 

Demos have looked like this since we settled, new corn improved next turn.

[The Black Sword]

Commodore is apparently my southern neighbour. Now I just need superdeath to my north and Mack horchering someone on the other side of the world, then it will be a true PB38 reunion.



I actually took advantage of Comm's scout, let him fogbust the gems area for barbs and moved my own units further out.

After the first settler, the capital built a worker. It then grew to 5->3 whip the current gems settler, while that worker chopped 2 forests, to combine with the whip overflow and finish a 2nd settler for the gold site. That site had a nice horse spawn too, so it now has a total of 7(!) resources in its BFC. Pretty sure it will be my main military pump, despite the gold.

I haven't firmly decided on my next plan yet, but we probably need another worker before pushing for the southern fish and the floodplains spot.

Shanghai has just been getting its power tiles on line, and it's almost ready to contribute.

[The Black Sword]

I had a bit of a think about how to settle this floodplains area, whether to split it into 2 cities or just settle the one. The benefits of 2 cities would get the wine and whales in the 2nd rings and settle on the river to set up for levees later. I would have to leave out either the deer or the fish from this first plant though and decided it wasn't worth it. All that stuff is way too far out to care about. Let's just snowball into conquests and take those resources anyway.

The settler will come from the recently settled gems city, which will grow to 4 ASAP to whip it, only giving up the corn for 1t for micro reasons.

At the capital, I'm going to whip a WB into whip a settler for the southern fish spot, and then get out the next worker. IMP settlers with pre-improved fish tiles are just too good. The limiting factor in getting all the central resources on line still looks to be growth rather than worker turns. I'm also happy enough stacking 1 whip unhappiness while we still haven't discovered Granaries yet and have 4 happy sources available.

Unfortunately, I'm 1h off a slightly better micro plan at the capital and I could have gotten that hammer if I had realised earlier. Maybe I shouldn't have stopped simming so early? I don't know what came over me. 

The northern city can just slowbuild a worker to start transitioning towards the south. No point whipping that city when it has so many good tiles.

[The Black Sword]

It turns out Comm is to my north, not my south. So the body of water to the East is some sort of inland sea.



I also just realised that Praets have precisely 0 nerfs in CtH.   That's ok, we can always rush our southern neighbour right?



Another unnerfed early game UU down there. They both have slow starting traits, but there's no clear target here anyway.

Beijing just whipped its latest settler. A barb showed up in the way, but it looks like I have enough units around to deal with the warrior and cover the new settler. The demos still look good, despite the whip. Next turn will be one of those beautiful early game scenarios where every pop will be working an improved resource.

[The Black Sword]

Scouts just love the views through this southern passage.



But it turns out both Tarkeel and Comm were taking some long distance trips, it's Joshy playing Spi/Org of America to my south. I hate to pick on the new guy, but I count 0 early game traits, a mid-late game civ, and missed turns in the tech thread. Certainly looking like an easier meal than Commodore of Rome to my north. We'll get some graphs anyway and see how well he's doing.

I'm settling away. Granaries going up next.



Going back and forth on the location of my Eastern city. I like the look of my food stat.

[The Black Sword]

We got Joshy's graphs this turn, here's what we know:





At first glance he looks to be doing very well for having no early game traits. 5 cities to my 6 and his graphs look good. On closer inspection though he doesn't have any granaries in the cities I can see, while I have a full complement. Commodore only has 4 cities, but likely has granaries up to - at least he has in the one city I have vision of.

He's giving me OBs, which is much appreciated and will start earning me money next turn when I get Sailing, assuming he doesn't cancel. He's been a bit more trusting of his neighbours than I would have been. He left a worker vulneruble for me, and an ungarrisoned size 1 Crab city behind it that didn't look like it could have got a defense in place if I had declared war. The potential of free money, even for just a few turns until I get an island city, was worth more to me though. Also, I still didn't really feel like ruining the new guy's game.

So I'm leaning away from a quick HBR rush, though it is not completely ruled out yet. He looks like he can put up a bit too much of a fight for my liking. There are two other big factors - first, there's actually quite a lot of islands out there for me to settle instead. I'll settle as much as I can as Cre/Imp. Second we have a LOT of food. If I'm going to keep that food working efficiently, I'll need the gold to unlock more happy sources, not cratering my GNP for an invasion.

Next up, I spent a bit of time considering what I could do instead:


Wonders were the first thing on my mind, because with all the water, GLH and Colossus look really good. But it is really hard to guarantee a wonder in a 24 player game, especially as a non-Ind. Ultimately, I don't think I can afford to go for a tech only for the wonder it unlocks in this situation. On the other hand if there is a good wonder on a tech path I already like, I should go hard for it. So I had to rule out the Colossus first. Forges are good with 2 metals, but I don't think they're good enough for my first Classical tech unless I can guarantee the Colossus.

The GLH was more tempting since Masonry is a pretty decent tech that improves my stone and marble. I put together a rough plan though and a T76-77 GLH seems a bit late. I'm slightly behind on tech, since I improved food-hammers first over the gold tile, and due to my quick settling. Regarding hammers, my capital is no longer a great place to build it - I moved off the hammer heavy location and I've chopped a bunch of forests already. The southern city of Xian is probably the best bet with 5 forests, but it only has 2 hills to contribute the other 100 hammers. So I pulled that one too, but feel free to throw it in my face if it doesn't fall by T76.

Instead, my outline post Sailing is the following:
Get Writing, build a pair of cheap libraries and run 4 scientists.
Consider teching Maths/Archery/Masonry, while saving gold for an Academy and some more Libraries completing 17t after that.
Burst through Calendar, which unlocks 3 more happy sources(incense/silk/sugar).
Set up a good Mausoleum attempt in my main hammer city of Nanjing.
Second GP is racing the first for the golden age.

Currency and Mids are also considerations. Mids just take so long to build that I'm not sure I want to put in the effort. Only Nanjing really has the production to try and I'll likely want to set up an overflow chain for the MoM instead.