[spoilers]Commodore is Darius II of the HRE, now with less excuse.

[Ceiliazul]

I'm pretty sure that's impossible, SE-SE would have the scout standing on the lake. Perhaps you meant SW-SW?

Yes, definitely. Unless there's crawfish in the lake...

[Commodore]

Hum. Flying camera ought to be able to determine the risk somewhat, but if there is a nice fish due north it'll still get missed. Going with the southern coast might yield a seafood, aye...not sure if it'd be worth giving up wet wheat for it, though. I wish there was an easy check to see if it was salt, but alas the river means that those tiles will show freshwater either way. Making myself dizzy with the camera it is.

[spacetyrantxenu]

With Noble's entertaining verbal abuse added, they'll probably win the thread wars too.

We'll see about that. I won the post count in 29g even though NoGas whipped me with their 29v post output...but that was with two ded-lurkers plus being a team, to my one sometime ded-lurker/teammate/replacement, which was patently unfair.

Ontopic, I don't know the details of how starting positions are normalized during map creation but shouldn't there be a third food resource in the starting BFC? I see the requisite minimum three hill tiles but only two foods, unless I'm mistaken and you only have to get a minimum of two food resources (or am completely wrong about all of it). Those three tiles look like grass / plains / grass W to E, two flat and one hill. So unless you have pigs or sheep on the hill you probably have some kind of food on one of those flat tiles. 1 SW of the settler's position looks to be coastal, would still have the deer and the (alleged) hidden food resource, and maybe seafood. That's a lot of maybes though. If it is coastal it would make the inland lake a really nice tile with a lighthouse. The downside is you don't know about hammers from that site but the commerce potential is delicious.

As for scouting, you could move the settler first, going SW and holding his second movement point. Then move the scout SW, SW to get a good look at potential seafood down there. The big risk here is that if this area turns out to be not very great you'd be stuck settling on your third turn if you have to truck the settler all the way back to where the scout started, and even then you won't know what's in the fog up there because you'd have sent your scout southwest to start with. This is a bit of a tough start to read, wherever you settle you'll probably have a moment later on and curse your early dotmap.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Ick, just noticed you're last in the turn order. You'll be singing the Lighthouse trade route blues, but at least you'll win your F9 tiebreakers!

[Commodore]

Well I think the TR thing may be moot given no islands. Sadly, I cannot assume the four resources that the script gives typically, because the start has been moved by Novice's balance tool. My general thought, then, was to go for the plains hill plant given I know it comes with two good food sources (assuming no fish orphaned). South even if there is seafood I'd rather research Agriculture and Mining/BW before Fishing...why not plant the first new city there, getting instant trade (river) and sharing deer already.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Perfectly valid points and certainly safer than wandering a settler into the fog.

[Commodore]

Perfectly valid points and certainly safer than wandering a settler into the fog.

I hope you're still happy with me after this turn. To recap, here's where we begin. Note that Davy and Yuri settled first turn, Gaspar and Miskebod opted to move too. 160.4 land tiles per player.



Not much can be gleaned from the demos. One of the settlers has all land tiles first ring, the other has one coast or lake. One of them is PH plant of working a 2/1 tile, the other either planted for 3-food (unlikely) or has grassland sheep, cow, deer, rice, corn, or pigs. Or sugar. Or banana. Okay, my C&D is pretty miserable.



Settings, as promised. High sea level probably to ensure good landform shape...comparative advantage? Low but not nill, thanks to spies on and lots of Fin coast. I like islands, but ah well.



Flying camera shows darned little about the nearby land, so scout went 1N, 1SW. And found not one but two seafood...both not orphaned by the plains hill plant. I listened a while to my tummy, went with it, and here's where we are:



Now I know Ceil, Xenu, and assembled lurkers, the reaction to this as a capital is probably a we bit underwhelmed...


But wait! Look again! First of all, the northern fish isn't where I could get it and the wet wheat, and until a lighthouse the wheat is better, same with the clam. The lower clam capital is way better long-term, but off to a much slower start. Realistically, our capital is going to be able to work at most two cottages early on...which the PH plant gets.

Also, though, the west and north look more and more like dead-ends. I'm a bit surprised about the north, given the lack of pine, but east and south are probably the rivals. The plains hill next to the wheat is probably honestly the best second city to claim land thataway. The three "C" locations are all great sharers, with the NW one elegantly using capital culture to reach those ocean fish. My objective is to get those cities down as fast as humanly possible.

With any luck, one of those junky plains tiles the capital grabs with have horse or copper, boosting the capital's early worker/settler output, but either way this is a solid early capital that we will abandon in the Bureau age.

[Commodore]

Next turn is a go! Hopefully we'll get a decent clip on these things. First of all, moved the scout, and the game obviously thinks I'm crazy for ditching one of the most amazing Fin commerce sites I've seen. To which I answer the game: Yeah, but where are the hammers?



So keeping the ratio of good advice to my ignoring it at a perfect 1:1, I plop down the capital. Is it not nifty?



Eight long turns until the worker out. Which will beat Mistabod, mostly likely, and be beat by Gaspar. I's assuming the hammer-focus is Team China on a moved-to plains hill working a plains forest. That would also make them top GNP, making one less commerce but getting the bonus on Bronze Working.



As seen above, first tech is Agriculture, naturally. I think the Mining->BW path is after that, then Wheel, then we can look at something in the religion/wonder/fishing/pottery department.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I see six tiles I want to work in the capital's BFC. Maybe we won't have any happy resources so we can be content with this settlement.

I'll post more thoughts later when wifey isn't rushing me to get off the computer.

[Ceiliazul]

To which I answer the game: Yeah, but where are the hammers?

The hammers, as always, are in the whip.

So keeping the ratio of good advice to my ignoring it at a perfect 1:1, I plop down the capital. Is it not nifty?

Nifty. And hey, you probably can cross The Lighthouse off your priorities list. Seriously though, this is pretty good land... you can definitely carve an empire out of this area.

Edit: actually, rival least land is 8k... is it possible that no one settled the capital on the coast?