[SPOILERS]Brian Shanahan comes late to the party.

[kjn]

Ok. Sitting with the game open now:

Moving worker to camp deer is a no-brainer, and will take 1+3 turns.

It will take six turns to research Agriculture, and Spock will grow in 5 turns working the corn.

However, if we work the village instead, we will get Agriculture in 4 turns, and the worker can improve the corn directly without waiting. We will trade 8F now for 4H, 6F, and 12C (since we get the corn improved two turns earlier).

I think that's a good tradeoff. As soon as the camp is finished, then we should work that instead.

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm looking at the game now, and thinking early religion, yes/no? It's a tough one but I'll plump with no for now, as I want to get my economy going.

Other than that warrior first for defence, no need for worker out the gate. Scout goes N/NW and worker moves to the deer.

Ag>Mining>BW I think for chopping and whipped axes. After that I can go back and grab the other techs, or not.

[kjn]

With CRE, we have no real need for an early religion. That's a real REX advantage for us. And on Noble we have plenty of early happiness.

The tech path is exactly what I was thinking of. We want to start whipping ASAP. Then probably tech towards Pottery (for granaries and cottages).

Have you done any check on what is best to start with: the village or the corn?

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok save is played. All actions as posted above.

Some pics for you:

Stand-Idle:

Food first. I toyed for about 30 seconds with going on the cottage, but want to grow quickly when in max science. When saving gold the grocery gives us extra gold over and above again so we'll be using it a lot (without cottage 0% science is 12.75 gold).

Units:

Just to show what I did. No comments here.

Land:

Oops on the lack of resource bubbles, was doing something else and forgot to turn it on. So what've we got that we didn't see:
1) Corn being worked, nice and wet. 1W of city
2) Deer on the tile marked by worker. 1N of city
3) Stone under Jungly 1W 2S of city.
4) Crab 2E of city. Ignore as we're 1 off coast.

Now for what is outside our borders:
5) Pig on grass 3W 2N of our city.
6) Desert incense, plantationed 2NE 1E of our city.
7) Fish on lake, 3NE 1N (cannot see in pic, 2N of incense) of city.

Without knowing much more yet, I'm thinking a plant one south of the pig and another 1 south of the Incense would be decent sites of what we see. But much more scouting needs to be done.

Demogs:

Interesting, joint top in GNP. If I were in-game I'd have a better idea of why, but I'm not. Somebody lost culture, so that skews the land area a bit until turn 2 (including turn 0). And I'm not too sure what first line tech gives 4,000 extra soldiers, Mining? but somebody has it anyways.

And I've just read your post on the advantages of the cottage. We can still move next turn.

I think time for a bit of a sandbox test now.

[kjn]

For the scout, I'd probably do E-NE followed by NE-E, and then go clockwise around the capital. With no barbs, and plenty of land, I think maybe we should open with one or two scouts before building a warrior. There is plenty of time before anyone else can reach us.

I think a good metric on if village first or corn first is best is to reach size 3 in Spock. We need 31 food for that.

Corn first:

T1: 3F
T2: 6F
T3: 9F
T4: 12F (camp finished, work deer)
T5: 16F (size 2)
T6: 21F (agriculture in, start farm)
T7: 26F
T8: 31F (farm finished, size 3, work deer, corn, village)
T9: 38F

Village first:

T1: 1F
T2: 2F
T3: 3F
T4: 4F (agriculture in, camp finished, work deer, start farm)
T5: 8F
T6: 12F (farm finished, work corn)
T7: 18F (size 2, work deer and corn)
T8: 26F
T9: 34F

I think this is mostly a wash between these two.

[Brian Shanahan]

Seen your metrics on the first to size 3. If it is a wash then I slightly prefer the corn. If we were saving money then cottage is a clear winner but pushing food early is what we need, especially if warrior first is kept (I think it needs to due to the free worker).

VIP, the Password is (hopefully) set as Ryan (capital R). kjn could you please check that next time the save swings around.

[Brian Shanahan]

Turn 0 test save is done. I think it is accurate for what we can see, but we've visibility on 3 tiles to the north that we don't have in the game. And we've no strat resources.

The original start was a 3 gold start with horse and iron just outside the BFC.

The WB'ed save.

It can get more accurate with time. I'll play around with it for a while this evening. After the work just done I think I need a small break.

[kjn]

If we had some more time to strategize and set up a long-term goal, then we could've decided on some other metric, but first to size 3 is a good and easy one.

What are your plans for the scout?

Also, should we set up a chat channel for us? You can find me on AIM (as kjnoren) and on Google chat (with my e-mail address). I'm not much for chatting, but for quick plannings it's very useful.

C&D:

Serdoa is the one with 8k land (starts with Fishing). 2k power from Tech (Hunting).

Scooter gets 6k power from tech (Hunting 2k and Wheel 4k).

Commist gets 4k power from tech (Wheel).

Lewwyn gets 2k power from units (Quechua).

We get 2k power from tech (Hunting).

We get 2 more GNP than everyone else due to culture, and 2 more from the SA.

Culture: 4
Espionage: 6
Tech: 10

Everyone else gets a 16 baseline (2 culture, 4 espionage, 10 commerce). Doing a second-level tech boosts commerce to 12, or 15 if working the village.

I think the 20 is Lewwyn working the village, researching a first-level tech (Hunting or Mining make most sense, maybe Wheel). 2 culture, 4 espionage, 14 commerce (4 from village due to FIN). That'd make him one of two with 2H starts. I think one other player is working the village, researching a first-level tech.

[Brian Shanahan]

I'm on Gchat at briandmoseanachain@gmail.com, if you want to use that. I've no AIM account.

As regards chat, this evening when I'm testing the save I made up would probably be best.

For plans, I've nothing concrete yet. But looking at what we have I think high food cities and whipping will be king early. A few Jags out the gate at IW may also be a nice idea for a choking party as well, but I'd lean towards a horse based war machine for the longer term.

Goals for the game are:
1) Improve my play,
2) Enjoy myself,
3) Win
in that order. If I can tighten up my play and learn a few new tricks I'd be happy. As long as I don't get warrior rushed I'll have fun and winning is (IMO) a longish shot, but is the ultimate goal.

Not worried about the email just posted, set it up solely for chat purposes.

[kjn]

Chat with Brian:

K: Hi!
B: Hello. you see my message in-thread
K: Yes, nothing much to do here yet, but it's easier to chat with the save open than to communicate via mail or forum messages
B: it is, though I usually play with full screen. Looking at the save so far, I want to stay pretty open with plans. War is more long term and should be planned accordingly IMO. Early on we should go infra and defence.
K: Yes. And with 1600 land tiles, we have 320 each, so plenty of room to expand
B: Yeah get the resources online and then worry about the best way to kill everybody.
B: As regards the scout I was thinking going west rather than east. Just personal preference, and I think the pig is better early.
K: Yup. My reasoning was that I saw two potential city spots to the east, and also that the scout could cover more ground over there in the beginning
B: We can see tomorrow when the save comes in.
K: But it is early game, so no hurry. Next scout can go east, and we will get expanded borders soon.
B: True enough. 60 culture for quick correct?
K: The two spots I'm thinking of are the FPH 1E of the incense, and 2SE of Stand Idle (1S of the oasis)
K: I think it's 67.
B: Yeah they're good sites as far as we can see. I was looking at the pig site too (1S to get the floodplain as well).
K: But it's still too early to do our first dotmap :-)
B: Yeah. I'm using BUG in base Civ so I'll be having lot's of fun with that.
B: As regards builds I was thinking, warrior>worker>scout. Get the second worker out for better farming and then scout some more after that. It'll slow the first city site a bit but I think it's worth it.
16.27
K: I think it's more important to get the whipping started. We have +8 food with deer+corn, and do 5->3 whips.
K: Grow on warriors/scouts, whip settler, overflow to worker
B: Well whipping is a function of BW and the more developed we are the quicker we get BW. So skipping the worker may or may not be best. B: Remember we've extra happy from Noble (something which threw me for a minute) so can afford a bit more growth especially in the capital.
B: I'll be going down in a few minutes to cook the dinner so while Gchat will say I'm here I won't be.
16.41
K: On the other hand, the only really important tile for early BW is the village, which we will work from size 3, and by that time we will already have four developed tiles.
B: Yeah worker may not be necessary. Test it we shall.
K: Also, I discovered I had a small error in my earlier estimates: it takes four turns to build a farm on Quick, not three
B: 4 turns? then we'll lose 3 food correct.
K: Yes
K: Or rather 2, but gain a hammer
B: we need testing. I suggest putting our brave Russtecs into the lab and shaking them around, a lot. I'll be running games using the test map in about 3 hours. Gotta cook.
K: Sure, bye for now
B: bye.

(I'll have to look at some way to get better chat logs out of iChat.)