[69] Ginger and Miguelito do as fortune commands

[Ginger*]

Scout Scrying
Take a unit with the ability to fortify (ie a scout), wake it up if it’s out of movement, right click to activate go-to and start scanning tiles. The fortify button will light up blue when you hover over a city. It’s similar to the settler map hack that reveals culture (and possibly mountains, idr), except it’s available much earlier in the game. It’s base BtS behavior.

The information gives us the range of a capital to the west (presumably Naufragar’s), as well as to the east of the gems, which is why I consider it unlikely that we will be able to hold the gem city

[Ginger*]

   
In the north we have uncovered duplicates of the precious resources inspiring our settle-up plan on Naufragar. We also see a very very defensible border with mountain ranges and a narrow path into the jungle belt. 

Despite the duplicate stone and ivory, seeing the safe border has renewed our main objective: claim as much land to the west as possible, then back fill. All this requiring military, workers, lots of workers, and roads, would've been nice to start with Mining and get BW/chopping right away but Celtia is what it is. We're in such a production crunch that I'm half tempted to try to build Great Wall for the barb defense.

In our discord chats, Miguelito and I are discussing whether to settle the stone north first or try to deep dive for our desired sites. Mig is in favor of hooking up stone to chop out Duns on arrival, I'm in favor of planting the city first to invalidate any plant within 2 tiles.

[Miguelito]

lovely discoveries!


Might as well share my stream of consciousness from Discord:

I had a look at the saves and man our techs suuuuuuuuck
needing wheel hurts
maybe rather go for cow/rice/stone first, that connects over sea
I kinda like the clam because of the 2 commerce. But apparently in your size 4 sim the workers were much slower to connect food in the south, is that due to the mine?
ie, is there a middle of the road size 3 approach?
I'd try the following: move wheel behind BW, and hopefully agri as well although probably unviable. found by the rice, then get another settler (whip?) for the southern city. That does not strictly need a connection, as no TR means losing just 1gpt if it's the third city. A second workboat is required. Possibly go masonry before wheel/pottery, although the first cities require no culture so we'd just get the quarry as value, and yeah pottery seems stronger. Then push west
do you have an up to date sandbox? I wrote in Gaming Table that I just killed my PoE char so I have more free time ?
I logged in for dotmapping but I think we know too little yet
scout should at least uncover everything around the ivory
of course bears are out but just have to cross fingers

[Ginger*]

Could not decide between the wheel first or mining first sims so I flipped a coin and it came up wheel

[Tarkeel]

That's really in the spirit of the game. Hard to tell, but wheel movement might be important.

[Ginger*]

Well Hunt/Mys is just really bad for this start. The only combination that could have been worse for us is Wheel/Mys.
Imp and Exp are kicking in 10 turns later because of the slow pickup of Bronze Working and Pottery. Very much not a fan of the Joao/Celtia combo. Joao needs good techs.

Wheel gives something for our worker to do, although admittedly I'd much rather he be chopping, the sim that lets us start chopping is quite awkward.
Another reason I do not like Imperialistic as a trait is that it forces you into weird tradeoffs if you want to maximize it. You want to build Settlers with whip or with chop and slowbuild your workers, where I typically like whipping workers (can be done immediately and quickly maximize OF into other projects) and slowbuilding settlers (nice and expensive way to dump F/H when you are happy constrained)

I think Expansive is much better because you'll always be getting the full bonus, as it's only built with hard production not food
Also, you always need to build one more granary than you do settler, since the first comes free

[Ginger*]

Fuck it nvm I changed my mind, the mine is worth more than the 2 commerce trade connection, grrrr I'll figure out the sim kinks later

[Ginger*]

I've decided to grow the capital to size 4, delaying our first settler until turn 36
Also forbade myself and Miguelito from running any more sims, as this random game frankly does not deserve our best efforts

Demos have come in on Naufragar, confirming he had a very nice capital with a plains hill, forested plains hill first ring, and a fish first ring. Combined with him picking up Mining from the hut on our doorstep (and us discovering 0 huts in the entire vast south), early advantage of IMP is effectively annulled, and we will actually be on the back foot in the early game, despite our leader. We probably won't be able to claim "more than fair" as a result >

Not entirely sure what the hell we're supposed to do with the midgame then except crawl to math and hope nobody beats us to mids. At least there's no PHI opposition.

[Ginger*]

Nauf grew to size 3 turn 23, we're something like 4 turns behind our main competitor 
He's too volatile a neighbor to trust over such a long border as ours and Monte starts handily beating Joao past turn 100.
Cottage land is all plains, and the possibility of REX containment looks sad given the state of our capital. If any barbs or Spanish chariots come, we can't really get Bronze Working until turn 40

If I ever am tempted to sign up for an unbalanced map again, I need you to hold me back Mig 

[Ginger*]

c&d
Magic Science completed a chariot a couple turns ago, and Nauf finished BW early. Nauf has been sitting on a size 3 cap for a while now so I expect a second city soon, although maybe he was allowed to go double worker with his Mining-from-a-hut-enabled early BW

I'm actually very nervous about stray chariots since horse difficult to hook up (would require fucking up the placement of our very first city) and we have no idea where copper is because lmao hunt/Mys AH opening

Magic Science doesn't have incentive to attack us but Nauf very much does. Also i remember from watching PBSPY that Magic Science conducted a number of random border skirmishes in the earlygame of PB66 while ignoring his own interest in defending (although AGG Rome with no other neighbor*... yeah)

*this map might actually end up being more balanced than 66. Not saying it will be, but it might. And the fact that that possibility exists certainly says something