[spoilers] Something something horses - Tasunke of the Hippus

[Sciz]

And Selrahc is the only one who hasn't settled yet. Looking for a good coastal spot, obviously.

No surprising numbers in the demos. One civ with 16 GNP compared to 14, but that's creative Ethne.

I'm tied for first in both food and production, which means no one is working a 3 food tile, and everyone settled on a plains hill or something, which sounds pretty ridiculous, and i'm probably just looking at it wrong. But maybe, just maybe, everyone has similarly bad lands at their starts, which would be neat.

[Sciz]

According to civilopedia:

Cottage takes 6 turns to Hamlet
Hamlet takes 13 turns to Village
Village takes 26 turns to Town

Taxation adds 1 commerce to village and town.

So one cottage on riverside plains takes 19 turns to get to 1/1/4, which will be 1/1/5 after Taxation. That's... not too bad. At least not compared to 2/0/3 which aristograrian farms will be until sanitation when they will be 3/0/3. Only good thing with them is that they are 2/0/3 from the start, but it's one tech later than education, and cottages only take 6 turns to get equal with that (1/1/3).

I definitely have to test this.

[Sciz]

Did some testing and cottages had better eco early on, and at turn 112 Cottages still are ahead of farms by a small amount, like 6 beakers or something.

That's where I stopped on the cottage test, but on the farm test I continued to like turn 135 and my cities exploded up to that point, and even though i havent played with cottages until then yet, I doubt that cottages will keep up anymore. Besides farms have much better food, so faster expansion and more specialists and whatnot. As I suspected it'll be aristocracy again. It's gonna be really painful early on though. First slow eco until CoL. Then awful food until sanitation.

This test can be pretty misleading though, as I only expanded into the area I've scouted in the real game so far, so I only had four cities. With aristocracy i'll probably expand much faster than with cottages too, even though I have lower food on my farms.

Sigh. Why are cottages so bad in this game? Well I know why, it was a rhetorical question. Also I really misjudged Taxation's impact on a cottage economy. It's far down the tech tree and it takes too long time to reach for it to have as big an impact as i wanted it to have.

Anyways I scouted a bit more on the real game, finding more sand and plains in the NE. The scout will head northwest-west now, to see if there's any good stuff there.

[Sciz]

Do you know what makes me even more sad?

No nearby commerce resource

I mean okay I have tundra hill furs and desert incense, but seriously now. That desert incense is at a terrible spot (from what I can see now anyways) and since it's on a desert it's pretty fucking awful. Furs is useless as well, bad spot plus on a tundra hill makes it 1h/5c, which is terrible.

My early GNP is going to be so bad

Okay, who am I kidding, my entire game GNP will be bad

[Sciz]

lol i compared my results in my test games to the ongoing PBEMs and it's pretty depressing

Though I have to remember that I didn't expand optimally since I stayed at 4 cities for a long time, and there may be better lands North or Northwest that I haven't found yet

[Sciz]

I don't like that the other topics have more posts than mine

To be fair though they have dedicated lurkers and stuff

i think

[Caustic Soda]

Yeah us non-dedicated lurkers have to be careful not to spoil you players, so we can't really offer game advice and suggestions the way the dedlurkers do. There's not too much going on now, so there's not much for us to say. If you really want more posts, get in an early war with someone. Wars seems to draw the lurkers out of the woodwork

[Sciz]

yes well yes

i was just reflecting

[Sciz]

Borders expanded on the end of the turn and I get a view up north:



Cows! Still just plains, but cows is better than no cows! Next city will probably go here. Either on the plains hill 2W of the cows or on the plains forest 1SW of the cows. Both of those have no fresh water though.

Also scout in the NE found an ancient tower which he'll climb on the next turn.

[Maksim]

lol i compared my results in my test games to the ongoing PBEMs and it's pretty depressing

Though I have to remember that I didn't expand optimally since I stayed at 4 cities for a long time, and there may be better lands North or Northwest that I haven't found yet

I wouldn't worry too much about comparing yourself against other games. Terrain is king - if you look at FFH PBEM 1 alone, we have Calabim starting in the fertile crescent, with a dozen floodplains in the area, easy access to gold, plenty of rivers - in short, a paradise of commerce.

A civilization starting in such a location is going to develop much faster, both in terms of commerce and production, than one starting in a less better-off spot, without reflecting in any way the players' skill.

Furthermore, the Worldbuilder representations of the games are not perfect - as you said yourself, you may not be staying at four cities in a real game; another factor is meeting fellow civilizations, establishing trade routes and getting "tech known" bonuses as well.

Cows! Still just plains, but cows is better than no cows! Next city will probably go here. Either on the plains hill 2W of the cows or on the plains forest 1SW of the cows. Both of those have no fresh water though.

Hmm... Not quite sure but it's possible that the plains hill actually has got fresh water.