[Spoilers] RFS-81 - Anubis? More like A-noob-is!

[Emperor K]

Your start!

To be clear there are 8 total City states and this is a tiny map.

Good Luck!

[RFS-81]

Thanks for taking the time to make us a map!

Hmm, I'm thinking scout with the warrior to the wheat, then settle in place unless there are some truly mind-blowing tiles over there. Otherwise, that's going to be the location for city 2, probably. I can build the Pyramids, Stonehenge and Petra next to the river, so that's great. I might be able to find a better spot for a Petra city, though. No luxuries in sight, but I'm sure they are around somewhere.

This place has enough food and production that it probably makes sense to go settler first.

[shallow_thought]

I rather like the new thread title.

My wife and I are just getting ready to go away for a few days in the run-up to Easter, so this all getting started so fast has caught me a bit on the hop!

A very quick look at the start makes me think you have choices - there's four four-point tiles around which makes me think settler before builder.

FAKE EDIT: beat me to it! Initial scouting suggestion makes sense to me. SIP seems right given current information - unless that plains hill to the SE is still on fresh water? PH plant + access to first ring mountain-adjacent tiles might be worth the move, but I doubt that it's actually on fresh water.

What do you think as actual first build? In SP I always go scout; even here that might be correct to try go meet city states and get inspirations/eurekas.

This is a good-looking start for a wonder-focused strategy.

As for looking at your opponents, rho21 is a mystery, I really like Japper's blithe optimism in the face of disaster - which I kind of hope carries through to this game , and suboptimal seems really sound on micro and mechanics, but has struggled on strategy and combat. This field looks wide open to me.

[RFS-81]

I think the SE tile is not on fresh water, but I'll double check when I get the save. For the actual first build, I'll go with scout to have a better chance at getting first-to-meet envoys. Plus, I need to say hi to three city states before they get eaten by Eagle Warriors.

My planned build order is Scout, Settler, Builder, Slinger. Unless, there's some emergency, of course. What do you think?

[RFS-81]

And we're off!

I moved the warrior to the wheat and this is what I found:



Two luxuries, but a bit scarce in production. Maybe there are some more hills in the fog. I settle in place, as planned. I randomly decide on a Vorkosigan Saga naming scheme and call my first city Beta Colony.



This unveils another stone resource and another luxury. Wasn't it the plan to play on a less lush map? Not that I'm complaining! It's especially nice that both stones are on hills, so I can harvest them without regrets: Stone + quarry = mine, after researching Apprenticeship. It should be easy to collect the various tech boosts here, quarry for Masonry, wheat in my planned second city for Irrigation, if there's any water near the copper tile, I can mine it for Wheel. This should also be an excellent location for Petra. Well, before I get ahead of myself, there's still that "if".

I already planted two pins for prospective wonder locations, although they're still far off. I think I'll want to start on the pyramids relatively early, maybe as soon as Monument to the Gods comes in, because I think this wonder most likely to be sniped by other players. Stonehenge seems less urgent. There's room for three religions on a tiny map, and Japper's Kongo can't get one. Still, it would be good to get a religion early before anyone else can pick the Wat as worship building.

That's far future stuff, though. For now, I start working on a scout and start research on mining. And I just realized that I forgot to tell my city to work the floodplains for the fastest possible growth Score tracking shows that suboptimal also settled on his first turn.

[shallow_thought]

Cap looks good - potential production monster. Might hurt using up those floodplain tiles for wonders and districts - I'm not seeing much other food . Several other flat river tiles though. Just wondering whether you'll end up having to quarry a stone in order to get improved tiles lined up in time; depends what the picker does.

I don't think I rate Petra at the capital; too many good tiles anyway. Good spot on there being no need to rush a religion unless there are specific beliefs you want.

Warrior keeps moving along the river to keep looking for more city sites?

[RFS-81]

Yeah, sacrificing one of those floodplains for pyramids isn't great... I don't plan to put districts on rivers though, unless that makes sense for adjacency bonuses. The 15% bonus for districts is too small on its own, so I'll knock out most of the production with overflow chops, as usual. And if I do that anyway, then it doesn't matter where I put them.

I'm beginning to reconsider my plan about building pyramids early, though. I also have to build a district to get the boost for State Workforce, and once I unlock the colonization policy, those are probably better spent on settlers at this point.

The warrior will follow the river. Following rivers and the coast is how you're supposed to find your way to civilization if you're lost, right? Anyway, if I won't find a city state, I'll hopefully find a good place for a coastal city later on.

[shallow_thought]

Aiming for 'mids is sensible. Distorting entire game to get them at first possible moment not so much. Thinking about early civics path, settler first means either delaying craftsmanship or hard-researching it. FT boost is luck based, although we can max it with sensible scouting. Looking at food situation, we may well end up getting no boost for EE. I think you may have time to look at getting a mountain district down to boost State Workforce if you want to.

So much depends on early contacts and other luck, although map should be balanced.

[RFS-81]

Do you think that delaying Craftsmanship would be a problem? When I go builder-first in my SP games, I'm usually not done with God King by the time it completes, so I can't swap in Ilkum and I usually prefer to have Discipline slotted in at that time, though maybe that's inefficient.

My plan is to research Craftsmanship until it's one turn before half-full - CQUI includes a convenient notification for that - and then switch to Foreign Trade. Once the boost comes in, I switch back to Craftsmanship for an immediate policy switch. I might reconsider this if I find a religious city state, though.

[shallow_thought]

Do you think that delaying Craftsmanship would be a problem? When I go builder-first in my SP games, I'm usually not done with God King by the time it completes, so I can't swap in Ilkum and I usually prefer to have Discipline slotted in at that time, though maybe that's inefficient.

My plan is to research Craftsmanship until it's one turn before half-full - CQUI includes a convenient notification for that - and then switch to Foreign Trade. Once the boost comes in, I switch back to Craftsmanship for an immediate policy switch. I might reconsider this if I find a religious city state, though.

No, no problem - that sounds good. As you say, unless you get lucky with some form of faith you're stuck with god-king for a while anyway.