[SPOILERS] The Rise and Fall of Whositania (all glory to Whositania!)

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So, uh, I played the same opening I played the last three times. Heh. Haven't ended turn, but I will before the evening is over, or if I see most people have ended turn. I'll try to rebuild my little sandbox in the new mod version.

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Is it me, or is it much less common for people to rename their Civs? I've seen only a couple other people do that so far! You lurkers should encourage everyone to give their civs interesting names!

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I've probably already discussed this, but I want to spam my thread a little, so: I am going to beeline that hut with the Scout, even though that won't do much for the actual scouting for the next few turns, I'm hoping for a tech, so I won't put any beakers into a tech before I grab the hut. In order of preference: Tech > Scout > Gold > anything else.

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Well, turn rolled at last, and so I got to spend 5 seconds moving the scout for the glory of Whositania (all glory to Whositania!).

Crabs are nice. Could probably plop down a city on that plains tile and it could swap the Wheat with the capital. Can't wait for civil service so I can irrigate it. Will grab the hut next turn, then start teching Agri.

I think I had something else to say, but was distracted by a disastrous shower drain clog.

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Oh, now I remembered what I wanted to ask. With Trading Posts and Circumnav both being nerfed, I'm trying to think of ways I can get fast boats. TPs will at least give me the ability to promote right into the Navigation promotions, but I need boat XP, which is hard to come by before the industrial age, I think. Besides Vassalage, Theocracy, or Drydocks, what options are there? Assuming lurkers are allowed to answer that sort of question.

And of those options: Vassalage is probably not better than Bureaucracy. Maybe there are situations where it is better? I would not be good at picking that out, unless I really, really want promo boats. Theocracy requires religion which I probably won't get, and also the Theology tech which always seems so out of the way.

Dry Docks come very late.

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Trying to judge how good a Bureau capital Willow Lake could make. With appropriate buildings and tech, could get +11 food surplus from the 3 food resources. 5 riverside grasslands, 3 dry grass, and 1 grass dye (worth a town, more or less). Up to 4 hills if I want production. So it could easily get to size 12 and still have a large food surplus (though food resources could be meted out to other towns). Could work some coast, I guess, but as I'm not FIN that seems less than ideal. Still, I think this has enough tiles to be a decent Bureau research capital. I just need to locate enough luxury resources to allow it to grow that large. Oh, and I could cottage the river plains that I don't farm.

Vassalage on the other hand... I messed around in a world builder game just a moment ago to try and get a sense about that. I'm still not sure. It seems like that bonus to free units is static no matter your civ size? The main draw is the extra XP, but I was just curious if the bonus to unit cap was much of a draw, and I'm thinking "probably not," but to be honest, I'm not really sure how all that gets calculated. I'm assuming it's based on number of cities and the size of those cities. Theocracy would probably be preferable, but that requires I acquire a religion somehow, and I would have to spread it to desired cities. I'd most likely need Monasteries. If was was SPI I could swap between OR and Theo as necessary, but I'm not, so....

Besides faster boats, 5XP Aggressive Berserkers are very appealing.... We shall see what comes, but I expect I'll go for the typical Bureau come Civil Service.

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Oh, and something else to make a note for myself. I was playing a SP game last night in the mod just to kind of practice the "REX" mindset (I wasn't this civ/leader combo). Something to note is that in my effort to expand frequently, I may have skimped too far on military (especially strong military, but to be fair I didn't have copper anywhere near my start, though I didn't start building archers until barbs were already entering my borders), and producing enough Workers was tough, even with EXP (I was sury). I think I'm so used to expanding at a snail's pace that I tend to under build Workers and I'm not used to experiencing the Worker crunch more aggressive (better?) players experience. The other thing was my tendency to want to build infrastructure when it becomes available. Granaries are kind of something you just build, but stuff like Libraries, Markets, or Courthouses, I tend to want to build as soon as they become available.

Judging from some of the threads I've been reading in other games, I suppose it's better to continue to expand, focusing on Settlers, Workers, and military garrison units, until I hit the point where I decide it's time to consolidate. That's where I build the infrastructure (and maybe extra military) before I start my next expand push? Kind of sad that I'm still pretty noobish at this.

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I didn't sleep at all last night, by the way, but I still feel like playing armchair thinking about this game when it's too early to really know anything. First up, and most solidly, is what I plan to do with the scout:

Gonna visit the hut, hope for a goodie, and then do a counter-clockwise pass, west to east. I'll certainly want to explore north into that jungle at some point, but I figure a spare Warrior can do that later. Once the scout has made the pass and I have a decent idea of what my immediate surroundings look like, the scout will head off in a random direction until it finds someone.

Oh, I don't have a naming scheme for my units yet. I'm not sure if I will bother with that, but anyone who is lurking by virtue of not actually being in this game somehow can share ideas.

Second, I'm not a personal fan of doing C&D (but I do like D&D), but this game will make even a brief perusal of the demos useless. Also this:

Not entirely sure if that is a weird reference to 1984/the apolyton demo game. It does remind me that I've seen a couple more people name their civs something interesting, so that's positive!

Now, on to heavier and trickier matters. I need to think about my second city (I'll need a name for it, too, and that might be the trickiest part!). So, based on what I've picked up, prevalent wisdom is that the typical second city is often a hybrid destined to help out in the early game but will often wane into irrelevancy later on. I suppose it depends on land. From what I have uncovered so far, the corn spot to the southeast looks most appealing for #2.

I'm also thinking about what I want it to do for me. Let's assume that there are no more resources in the corn city's radius. I was going to settle 1E of the corn, so that would put the Corn and Ivory in the 1st ring. My plans up until now assumed I'd build a Barracks first and whip to get culture going, but I've become more aware that popping borders super early is not always the best plan and can be a waste of time. So, what might I want this hypothetical city to do for me?

I think I would like it to supply me with some early and cheap MP, and to help round out my work force. I think there was a third thing I was thinking 10 minutes ago, but I forgot..... Oh! Yes, it could also work some cottages for the capital. However, the location I'm thinking of settling could only really work 1 cottage for the capital, but that's something to keep in mind, I suppose.

So, suppose I start with a Warrior build. Hm... if it was whipped at size 2 into a Worker, I'd lose a lot of overflow, wouldn't I? I'll test that later, but a bit of lost overflow could potentially be worth it, but that all really depends on whether I plan to improve anything besides the Corn quickly. Depends on when I get Animal Husbandry, then. I might get the Wheel first, anyway, since I can't connect that Ivory without it. Anyway, point is, I could spam some cheap units out of it and stagnate on Workers. I'm not sure if building a Worker at size 1 with just 1 improved tile is good or not. That's a 9 turn worker without any overflow. Well, something I'll surely look at in my sandbox later.

No idea where city 3 would go yet. Something by the crabs would make sense eventually. I marked out the possibilities.

As far as I can tell, those are all the spots that could get the crab. Purple and blue I like best. Purple is the only spot that can get it 1st ring, but blue looks like it will have the fewest coastal tiles. Both can borrow Capital's wheat. Red is probably terrible unless there's nice stuff up there. Same for green. I'd favor blue, but I'm not creative and would have to whip a barracks out. We'll see, of course.

I think that's about the most I can speculate on at the moment. Maybe my time spent thinking will help me make city 2 more effective from the get-go, though.

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Working in sandbox now and I thought of a little thing to avoid missing a worker turn! When the wheat farm finishes, there's still 3 turns to go on Bronze Working, so the Worker could move to the forest and just spend a turn sitting there because there's 1 turn left on BW. I realized that since I want to irrigate it later anyway, I could put 1 turn into a farm on one of the plains tiles. Whoooo, optimization.

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OK, fussing around I may have come up with something better than my initial plan, if slightly. City 2 will go Warrior > Worker. No whip because that's obviously stupid as I found out. I'll just swap some tiles around and finish Warrior naturally. Now, after the 1st worker farms the corn, it can chop into the 2nd worker, which also gets whipped. This produces 45 overflow for the settler, and the new worker can also get a chop in at the last moment to get the settler to finish EoT48, a turn earlier than it would have otherwise. Overflow can finish a Warrior in 1 turn. Meanwhile, the 1st worker has chopped into the Worker at 2nd city, which finishes EoT49 and can probably improve the Ivory since I intend to have the Wheel and AH at that point. (After those techs it's Archery if I lack resources, or Pottery if I have 'em. I guess that's a late pottery?)

The one problem is that city 3 almost certainly won't have a road network laid down ahead of time. However, I am not sure if that's really a big deal, or just something one optimizes for if possible.