[SPOILERS] Ghostpants buckles up for PB39

[WilliamLP]

It looks like this game is on, that was a fast setup!

My main advice for the first turn is, don't move the scout right away, the path he goes can be really important to the whole opening. Might as well use some of the first 100 hours? Can you post a screenshot of everything you see after you settle? (Safe to say, settling in place is obvious, right?)

What I also like to do turn 0 is look at the F8 screen after settling and noting the percent of land toward domination. From there, we can estimate the number of land tiles on the map and what percentage of water it has. And also estimate how many tiles away neighbours are likely to be.

Another good thing to check is the exact beaker count for Agriculture, to make sure the sandbox is in sync with the real game.

Probably obvious but, having learned the hard way, you want to make sure you take time to think and view everything possible before you make any move at all. I used to have a checklist for this (something like check log, diplo screen, espionage screen, demo screens, then scan the full vision of the map), but too lazy now, haha.

[Ghostpants]

Honestly if the naming scheme is left to me I'll just end up making something obnoxiously Australian. But hey, I'm alright with that

Steve Irwin theme confirmed.

I'm sure I could fit him in somehow.


It was really fast! By the way, I took a look at our new and improved start without ocean:     

I'm thinking we move the scout either to the plains hill to the East or the forest grassland hill to the West. Instinctively I go for hills with scouts whenever I can, is that actually smart on multiplayer?

Edit: Huh. Note to future self; try not to resize images quickly. By the way, are my images showing up for you?

[Ghostpants]

I just did a bit of simming. With the plan I just tried, we can have a worker out turn 11 that farms both corn, a second worker out turn 23 with a warrior for defense,two workers by turn 23 that can both immediately chop (BW also finishes that turn) seems pretty good to me? I'd then immediately chop two forests with those into a settler for a size two settler at turn 28, which seems pretty good to me (?). I'm not entirely sure of the pace we need, and obviously we should try some other things, but how does that sound to you as a starting point?

 Points to remember: the first worker wastes one turn roading (nothing else to do before BW), one worker probably stays and keeps chopping (but I'm not entirely sure what they do for 8 turns before pottery/AH) and the other goes to second city. Maybe both to second city.  Another thing: I didn't use the whip at all with this plan, maybe worth considering a way to incorporate slavery, eg. grow to size three, two chops turn I start settler and then whip the last bit?

   

Don't pay attention to what the workers are doing in this picture, i just faffed them about that turn to take a picture. Probably tomorrow I'm going to try again but growing to size three and incorporating slavery. Just didn't have time today. Plan to attach my sim file in case you (or any other lurkers!) wanna take a look. How do I convert the save to one that Realms Beyond can read? 
I think that should work but if it doesn't, let me know!

Also edited first page with password

[WilliamLP]

It was really fast! By the way, I took a look at our new and improved start without ocean: 

I'm thinking we move the scout either to the plains hill to the East or the forest grassland hill to the West. Instinctively I go for hills with scouts whenever I can, is that actually smart on multiplayer?

Edit: Huh. Note to future self; try not to resize images quickly. By the way, are my images showing up for you?

Images look good! I'd say definitely settle before considering the scout plan, just because I think there's no downside to revealing the extra tiles first? Unless you think there's some possibility you'd move the settler? I think mapmakers have frowned upon making that advantageous here for a long time though...

You might know already, animals won't appear until after turn 5, so you don't need to worry about ending a scout move on defensive terrain until then. One consideration is, we're going to get vision from those hills on turn 5 anyway (when capital borders expand), so it might be better to optimize pure distance traveled. So NE-NE may be slightly superior to NE-E onto the plains hill here just because it covers more ground, but only because it's the first move... Or NW-NW even with intent to go SW-somewhere next. Any further out, revealing the extra tiles by ending on a hill (better a forest hill for defense bonus) makes a lot of sense.

Consider where our second city is likely to go? There are a lot of advantages to having it share one of the corn tiles, and also the river gives a free trade connection like a road would, so it's really unlikely that city should go west imo.

I don't know if we can read much into the snow covered tree to the south. But if it were a natural map that would be a sign that we're toward the south edge and thus it might be a suggestion to scout north.

Interesting that there's no coast in sight, but the extra site from placing the city might inform a little more.

I won't have much time tomorrow but over the weekend it would be fun to play around with a little!

By the way, I checked and your sandbox loads fine for me, thanks!


Edit: Ah, looks like a SNAFU with starting techs? Maybe this game won't be off quite as quickly as we thought...

[WilliamLP]

But hmm, maybe you do scout NE-E first, before the settler, just in case the mapmaker messed up and gave us a third food source when we do that? That settler move would keep both corns but lose river placement (maybe big deal for future health), and lose the elephant in the capital.

[WilliamLP]

Hey Ghostpants, I played the first turn since the others were getting antsy. I trusted the mapmaker and settled in place.

After settling I chose SE-SE for the scout move. Notes:

- Settling showed coast to the south, so for long term scouting plan, it feels like we will hit contacts N.
- But, doing a quick scoop around the SE corn, to look for a potential 2nd-3rd city site. Looking for sharing the corn and also grabbing more first ring food. It doesn't look like such a site exists there, at least pre-Fishing.
- Next scout move NE-NE seems good?
- Everyone in the game has 9 land tiles, so no coastal starts or 1-tile lakes adjacent to the starting spots.
- Map dimensions are 64x40, so 2560 tiles. We show as 0.66% of land, so the world has 1364 land tiles or so. This is 170 tiles per player, which is pretty tight!
- 13x13 square would be 169 tiles so I think we can assume players are about 12-14 tiles apart.
- Jungle and tundra deer to the west is not exciting! On the other hand jungle is also a natural barrier and disincentive to settle toward us.
- The river plains hill to the far northeast has some potential for city #2, if there is more food up there.

[WilliamLP]

Keeping this game going since we're last to play.

Scouted NE-NE, and a forest grew in between turns! There's some good land here, and moving onto the plains hill sheep next turn seems logical. After that, strat is maybe split between circling back north to see the vicinity for dotmap planning, vs continuing to find the eastern neighbour.

[WilliamLP]

I decided to scout forward:

It looks like the scout is on a natural chokepoint, since it is a saltwater coast to the northwest.

Now is it worth spending 4+ scout moves to find who the contact is to the east? Or is it more valuable to make sure the scout can get back and look at the northern neighborhood? I have no idea!

One consideration is that scouts always have a decent chance of not making it back again, even with careful play.

If me, my gut here is to find the other player before turning back, start having EP to spend as soon as possible.

(And well, maybe it is me, but I still hope Ghostpants wasn't scared away!)

[WilliamLP]

I'm thinking about, we may be the front runners in this game for Stonehenge. There are some noobs in this field, but I don't know if there are any so noob that they would go for stonehenge before settler. I'm thinking to see how quickly we could get it (no bonuses), at the point of having, say, 1 settler and 3 workers. Free monuments would help this civ a lot.

[WilliamLP]

Scouting forward:

I see some culture bleed! It seems like it's Mongols and Wetbandit. I have the choice of contacting or not. On the one hand I have all the information right now, he has none. But then there are the simple in-game advantages like allocating EP and known tach bonuses. Then there's the choice of taking the time to see his city center or not. I could use some scouting closer to home too.

Wetbandit is far away vs what I expected, 17 tiles. This means we aren't going to scrap in the bronze ages, and there's a lot of nice land between us. He could be a terror with Keshiks, but we're Protective Mali, we'll be fine!