uSuthu!: A Chevalier Story

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 1

Overture:






So here's our start. I'm not exactly blown away, but it'll do. Not a lot of production outside the 1/3 hill, but the copper mine will be handy. I DO like that there's lots of inspirations - Masonry, the Wheel, Irrigation, Craftsmanship are all easy to come by with just a single builder. Not bad. So, where to settle?

SIP: This keeps the cotton and the PFH equidistant, both second ring. Can't work them for a while, but I have the 3/1 jungle hill to grow off first, and they SHOULD be the first two tiles taken. An early tile purchase of the hill MIGHT be in order - I know gold will be precious, but so will those cogs, and I want them quickly. Which brings me to...

Move to the wheat and settle: Brings the PFH into the first ring. I'll have the 2/2 (once improved) stone, as well. However, I lose the Irrigation inspiration for my Cotton, I push the Cotton to third ring, and I push the copper to second ring. Ugh, no.

Move to the mountain valley? No, don't want 3 mountain tiles first ring. Gross. Move to the wheat and settle on the stone in 2 turns? Takes al ong time and I don't see the payoff. 

No, SIP it is, and so we found our capital city of Chard:




My second city's name should be pretty obvious, I hope.

I queue up Mining first, since I'll want it available for the copper, it leads to Bronze Working for my district, and I'll also want the quarry. 2/3 of my builder tiles, then. AH next and then perhaps Pottery last to grab Irrigation for the Cotton - don't need the luxury quite yet, but again, gold is precious! 

Send the warrior to have a peek on the other side of those peaks (hehehe). The 1/1 tile north of the jungle there can flood, so I am near the coast. Is it a Pangaea, or a Continents, Archipelago? Unknown at this time. Honestly, I could do a lot with Archipelago! No one has any naval bonuses, but a small Corps-centered military is great, and I get automatic fleet upgrades at Nationalism when I capture cities. It's not a lot, but it's more than anyone else has. Pangaea can also work. I just hope no Continents - don't need Archduke overrunning Newbie Island over on the other side of the world and leaving me in the dust. 




Sun Tzu will be mildly useful after the Ancient Age to improve my culture. Otherwise, meh. No one's going to be bee-lining Euclid, I don't think. He was kind of nerfed in R&S when the Government Plaza made the Mathematics Eureka almost routine to get. 

Scores, which will go into the sheet:




Gameplan is to get the warrior out and send him east, then crank out a settler probably for that river valley to the north. First district is probably Ikanda, but I also probably want a Campus in that mountain valley to fuel research through the classical age.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Quick update before class, so no screenies (sorry):

We squeezed in two turns. It looks like I'm on the western coast of a large landmass. There's a little island or peninsula visible just off the coast, with religious city state borders :o

We'll make contact on turn 4, which will save me God-King and get me a pantheon on turn 17, really early. Need to start thinking about pantheons.

First choice is probably a culture pantheon, because PP and Mercenaries are two key techs. I need those more than faith or anything else, really.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Yesterday and today. Nothing much to report:


 

Was about to turn around as a bad job when I spotted those borders in the fog. The channel hides them from settler view. 

This turn:




Not only do we meet Armagh (Monastery improvement, I believe) we also get some era points for finding a foreign continent. Huh. 

Well, first to a pantheon, it seems - no one else is leading me on the religion view. I think I'm going to turn my warrior around and pass him around the north, this way looks like a dead end. I need a view of the terrain to get a good idea for a pantheon in the next 13 turns.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Poking around. Ioan and Ljub both grew over the previous two turns, so Ioan has a 4 food tile and ljub has a 5 food tile. I grew this turn.

Given the city state to my northwest, I figure best guess for more city states or neighbors is northeast and south/southeast, so I'm sending my two warriors out in those directions. After the warrior completes we'll start a settler and probably send him north, near that 1/3 PFH I see on the river.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

So Armagh is really interesting. I've never seen anything like it before:




It's on a 7-tile island, off freshwater. Now, city-states always spawn on water of some kind, unless they're hand placed. I remember Cornflakes going over this when I did my stint in mapmaking (Darrell's advice is best, though). That means Armagh was hand placed there, and unless I'm totally insane Kaiser gave it a custom island. In turn, it seems likely to me that each civ ALSO got its own private city-state. Did he give us all different types, or just let random chance decide? 

Anyway, if I were making a map like that, I'd put the "pocket" city-state in a pocket. With the coast, and the CS where it is, I think it's safe to conclude I'm in the west, near the jungle belt - just a shade in the northern hemisphere, if I had to guess. Forest north of me. (But forest south, too! ...but also more jungle). So, my two scouting warriors should head east to find other players and our 'neighbor' city states. I got lucky finding mine, because the warrior spawns west of the settler. We'll go northeast and southeast with our guys and see what we can turn up.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Continuing to nudge my warrior along. Nothing new in sight yet as we backtrack away from the coast and over rough terrain. 

Ioan gained 4 era points, new continent most likely. No change in rankings, though he did finish CoL last turn, naturally. The Grand Admiral gained 3 era score, probably a natural wonder.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 9




I finish my first build, a second warrior. After my experience with barbs in prior PBEMs, and with Nubians, Romans, and Persians prowling around, the muscle of a warrior is absolutely a requirement for security. Next build is a settler - with so many good tiles around we need to start grabbing those on the doublequick. Even Nubia won't be able to put together a horde of archers to show up by the time I settle my second city ca. turn 25. But I will probably go AH->Archery after this just in case, at least to the eureka. 

Note also the weird jungle tiles. Between Don't-Tread-On-Me Island (only 2 landing spots for melee units, absolute immunity to all ranged units prior to Frigates make that city a tough nut to crack, although I'll probably put two corps with a ram on the island as soon as I can) and these jungle grasslands I feel like this is a pretty heavily tinkered with map. What other surprises does Kaiser have for me?




I find a pretty good expansion at Bromhead just to the north, beyond the PFH, with deer, bananas, cotton, and some 2/2 tiles available. I also buy the 1/3 hill and work it and the cotton, which adds 2 turns to my growth but shaves 3 turns off the settler, seems like a worthy tradeoff.

Thrawn gained 1 era score, ljub gained 4, need to look up my table to figure out what that means.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Boy, reading the werewolves' private thread was a blow to my ego, and no mistake. Basically I'm a huge patsy. But my logic seemed good at the time - it's just that my criteria for finding wolves was bad. I thought low effort posts = easier to do = more likely to be wolf, which misled me on scooter and Charriu. Now I know. The next set of wolves will find me slightly less gullible, mark my words!

Two new turns, nothing much. Thick terrain makes my warriors slow. 

In the north, we have vast fields of production but little food.

In the south, lots of food but NO production at all. :




We're actually up to turn 11 but nothing new on the screenshots. 

To do a bit of micro here...eh. No, growth won't affect the settler due date, I'll just overflow 8 production instead of 0. Oh, well. Anyway, settler pops out on turn 19, short walk, then Bromhead should found on turn 22. It'll race to size 2 by turn 27, then pick up the deer and be a productive city. Meanwhile, I'll get out a third unit, probably a slinger for security, then a builder to go after Craftsmanship. Then hopefully I've got either Writing or Bronze Working inspired for the State Workforce district-eureka ready. 

A loose plan, but given how much things are in flux these first couple of turns I don't believe in more detail than that. I keep my micro focused on short-to-medium term goals, beyond that uncertainty makes it a wasted effort.

[Kaiser]

How are you liking the map so far?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

How are you liking the map so far?

It's interesting. It's obviously artificial to anyone who's played on a fair number of maps. I wonder, was the food-heavy south and the production-heavy north deliberate? I've never seen so many high-food but zero production tiles. It's going to be an interesting exercise in citizen management when I settle that direction, for sure.

The other intriguing part is the city-state. You gave it its own island, surrounded it by mostly cliffs, and made it a huge PITA to conquer. Interesting solution to the "rush city states and eat them ASAP" meta. The open artificie of the CS makes me ask a lot of meta questions, though:

1)Does everyone have their own island city-state? I must assume yes, right? Easiest way to balance is symmetry. 

2)Given that, everyone must be near a coast. So how is the land shaped? 

Continents would be hard to be symmetrical with an odd number of players, although newbie island and veteran thunderdome would be an interesting setup. But let's assume Pangaea for the moment. The map is either a circle or an oval. Circle's hard to do. Figure oval. Each player near the coast, each coast with an island...so we either find the city-states between players, one contested city state per player pair, or there's only 5 on the map and you didn't place any. That seems boring. So, figure we have city-states in between players somewhere. I scouted to the edge first, so I've unveiled little ground, but I SHOULD see signs of life in the next 5 turns or so if I press east. A shortcut through the center would also probably be the fastest way to contact all players for the era score. 

I'm curious to see what other surprises there are, since so far the thick terrain and the dead end have kept me from roaming very far from home. Here's what I've unveiled as of today:




Marsh and jungle every single tile south from Chard, with no visibility. x_x To the north, the terrain is more open. Deer and forest, confirming my guess of the northern side of the jungle line. It looks like early settlers are going to go north, into the lake country, to start taking the deer. Honestly, Goddess of the Camp wouldn't be a bad take. I can already see 4 eligible tiles. But Goddess of Festivals is also good - gets me culture on lots of visible plantation tiles, AND plantations get me culture/gold, which are my two most important currencies! Those are my two frontrunners for the pantheon choice in 5 turns. I won't have a plantation for a while, and GotC would be a more immediate impact...hm. Need to mull this one over. 

In the south, the volcano gives the first prospects for settling. I love volcanic tiles since they improve themselves, more or less, and as long as you don't build on 'em they rarely do harm. -knock on wood- 

Basic plan is to keep sending the warriors east by north and east by south until I see loyalty. I'm nervous about sending Bromhead's settler unescorted, but it's such a short walk...need to turn a warrior around soon though if I'm going to escort him. Ugh. Punt on that decision, too.

Ioan has grown again, so he has good food at his capital, as does ljub. ljub hasn't finished a tech yet despite his high pop - either sandbagging or going for Astrology. Sandbagging seems dumb with the starter techs. Figure Astrology -> Lavra is the play. Thrawn leads in military score - warrior -> slinger opening? Get ready for his potato rush? No idea what Archduke is up to, scoreboard gives no clues on Persia.