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

[RFS-81]

Not much to tell...Japper has not settled yet, everyone else is at 6 empire score for one city and one pop. First, I checked in on my capital:



I knew that it was going to work one of the four-yield tiles instead of the flood plains...the grassland-hill-stone was the best I could hope for. But now I switch over to the floodplains for faster growth.



Population growth in 4 more turns!

Note that the tile picker sits on a stone tile. I'd have expected that 4-yield + luxury trumps 4-yield + bonus resource. I don't think it would be too bad if I have to build a stone quarry for the boost, though. I don't think I'll harvest it very early and until then, I'd have a 5-yield tile.

I move my warrior downstream and uncover some more terrain around the citrus tile. Lots of food here, but the hill tiles are far from the river. With the floodplains wheat, I wouldn't have to worry about the EE boost, though. I'm thinking of putting my next city either between the wheat and citrus where it has the best access to all luxuries, or right on the citrus for a grassland hill in the first ring and plains hill in the second. Settling on the citrus would also have the advantage that I could swap the wheat to Beta Colony when it builds the pyramids.



By the way, about those screenshots: You can click on them to go to the Steam page and view a larger version there. I don't know if you need a Steam account to do that (and if anyone lurking here doesn't have one), so if anyone wants me to post the large versions directly in the thread, please say so!

[shallow_thought]

Screenshots seem to work without being logged into Steam (I have an account, obviously, but it's not logged in on the browser).

For the moment, on the Citrus looks like best second site. I don't think building a plantation actually boosts anything and they're not great tiles. Of course, this could all be turned on its head by whatever the scout uncovers once it becomes available.

[RFS-81]

Nothing much going on...I checked the score and everyone has founded a city now. I moved the warrior further along the river...it probably would have been more efficient to walk around the forest. Not sure if it's worthwhile continuing in that direction. I don't want to settle my first coastal city in the tundra!



I also took a look at the Great People screen. The first scientist is not very impressive, which is good because otherwise, Greece would just snatch it up.

[RFS-81]

I've played one turn before going to bed and one before going to work, so I don't have time to upload screenshots. It's really cool that we managed such a fast turnaround before the pause on Friday and Saturday.

The news are: Score tracking shows that several players are fighting barbarians and rho21 went up to 5 beakers so he must have met a scientific city state, the lucky bastard. I moved my warrior SW away from the river and found that there is a city nearby using the settler lens. Squinting at the border color in the fog, I think it's a cultural city state.

[shallow_thought]

I've played one turn before going to bed and one before going to work, so I don't have time to upload screenshots. It's really cool that we managed such a fast turnaround before the pause on Friday and Saturday.

The news are: Score tracking shows that several players are fighting barbarians and rho21 went up to 5 beakers so he must have met a scientific city state, the lucky bastard. I moved my warrior SW away from the river and found that there is a city nearby using the settler lens. Squinting at the border color in the fog, I think it's a cultural city state.

Fingers crossed for the first-to-meet bonus. Science may well be better mid-game, but in these early turns extra culture would be very, very nice.

Once I'm back home I'll try to actually put some more detailed thoughts together around what is needed to get pyraminds (sensibly) and thus what a reasonable timescale might be.

[RFS-81]

I didn't make screenshots for Turn 4 because all I did was move my warrior a bit.

Turn 5:

Putting on his magic SettlerScope™ goggles, the warrior discovers a city in the distance.



I move the warrior to the stone tile, but it's not close enough to reveal the city.

Turn 6:

Climbing the desert hill southwest of the stones reveals a city state and a natural wonder, giving me the Astrology boost. The city state is Vilnius, a cultural city state. It's suzerain bonus is a random civic boost everytime you enter a new era. As a quest, it wants me to train a spearman. I'm the first player to meet it, so I get one free envoy which grants me +2 culture. I'd have been happier with a scientific city state, but as shallow_thought said, early culture is great, too.



The city placement is just pure trolling. It's not next to the oasis, but blocks of all city spots around it. When I don't need their culture anymore, I might be better off just razing this city state and placing a new city in the area.

The natural wonder is Pantanal which is a four-tile wonder with 2 food, 2 culture.



And finally, my capital grows and starts working the stone-hill tile.



EDIT: It seems the tile picker can't decide what it wants. I hope that it can't change its mind on the same turn that the tile is added.

Am I the first one to grow his capital? All empire scores are still at 6, including mine, so it probably needs a turn to update. But my science went up and the other players' didn't.

What should I do next? I think I'll use my warrior to search for fresh water near the Pantanal and leave the desert west of my capital for my future scout to explore.

[shallow_thought]

It may just be my playstyle, but I value early free culture highly. I tend to build at least a couple of campuses fairly early (wanting the Recorded History boost, if nothing else), and reasonable science trickles in from pop. Culture I struggle with - I may be too relucant to build monuments. Getting even 2 extra a turn to push through to Code of Laws and start running cards is huge - if you can get a second or third city near Pantanal, it may be possible to cruise through the early game without too much specific culture building.

Shame the city site is so poor - would have made a good chariot target to capture. May still be worth it?  As a "free" city it may still be worth it - the only direct cost is it taking up a luxury. If there's enough production to get it a granary to make size 4 then it could be OK; looks very flat round there though. Perhaps depends how close you are to wanting an aqueduct for Military Engineering by the time you conquer it.

As for scouting, looking for water near the Natural Wonder seems sensible to me. I'm not sure about checking out the desert ahead of scouting E/N/S first. Depends what you think the priorities for scouting are, but I'd suggest leaving the gap until later.


Anyway, taking "the Pyramids are nice" as a temporary working assumption, what do you need to get it remotely efficiently?

1) Desert/Floodplains (yay Iteru!) tile - Yep.
2) Masonry.
3) 220 Production.

Masonry => Mining (no boost) + Quarry for the boost => a builder. All of that is easy enough in this start.

So, it's all about the production. Some rough thinking:


Corvee => State Workforce => Craftsmanship + a district for the boost
Craftsmanship => Code of Laws + three builder charges for the boost, one of which can be for the quarry
District => one of Astrology (hey, boosted now) or Writing (can probably boost); BW seems expensive and early Encampment dubious to me. YMMV.


Ideally you also want Monument to the Gods as a Pantheon, which requires 25t in God King ( ) after reaching CoL.
Also, you want to be chopping for the wonder, so you need a second builder, which you probably want to build in Ilkum, which you can't switch to until the Pantheon is in; an you then need another switch to get Corvee.

And it would be insane to build the Pyramids before at least one settler. It could well be pretty to build it before at least two, the second of which you probably want to be in Colonization to build, so you want EE - in an ideal world, boosted EE.
And, of course, you need scouts and barb-killers .

That's quite a lot of moving parts. Running through an Egypt SP game (only King difficulty, but turned out to be barb heavy) I couldn't really manage to make an "early" Pyramids make sense (by comparison to say, China in a couple of other PBEMs). Right now I'd suggest playing "normally" and seeing if a window opens to make a fast run as chop/harvest values increase (which I think is what you probably had in mind). It's possible that no-one else will even have a decent site for it. The first key decision point then becomes the Pantheon, and that's still a little way off.

Meh. Quite possible that you can do better. What other wonders do you think may be worth considering? It's not the Pyramids is a "must have", nice though it would be to deny the Aztecs...

[RFS-81]

I agree, Pyramids are probably not a good idea before I've lined up the whole set of bonuses, so not before Political Philosophy. I wanted to scout the desert to see if I can find a good city location near the copper tile, for getting the wheel boost. Then again, I also should be able to find iron somewhere later on.

Must have wonders...the Oracle would be cool, combined with high faith output. A desert city with Petra. That's another reason to scout the desert, but that can still be done later.

More immediately, what should be the first district? Holy site and campus would be the fastest to get. There's a mountain near my capital which gives an adjacency bonus to both. Encampment...adding one to trade routes is good, but apart from that, it's not too useful right now. There's no hurry to get a holy site, because I plan to get a prophet from Stonehenge. I'll still need a holy site to do anything useful with my religion.

[RFS-81]

Turn 7:

The tile picker does not change its mind and adds the gypsum to my city.



While moving my warrior around Pantanal, I find a second city state. One more to go before the PP boost!



Their quest is to train a galley. Well, I planned to do that anyway at some point, if only to get the ship building boost and exploit Maritime Industries chopping overflow. The suzerain bonus is not terribly relevant on this map, I think. It prevents pillaging of your traders at sea.

By the way, my empire score went up to 7 while the others are still at 6.

[RFS-81]

Two more turns!

Nothing much happend on turn 8. On turn 9, Beta Colony finished the scout and starts producing a settler, as planned.



I also encountered my first barbarian as a scout just walked into my warrior. Time to go work on the Bronze Working eureka!



I didn't really know where to send my scout, so I simply chose the direction where he could cover the most ground:



Also, one more turn to finish Mining and Code of Laws!

Scores show that rho21 and suboptimal also have 2 pop now. Rho21's combat strength jumped to 38...I'll need to check out how that is actually calculated to know what it means.

EDIT: CivFanatics says that it's the sum of your units' combat strength, but how did I have a score of 24, then?