[PLAYER THREAD] Brian's Awesome Thread of Awesomeness

[shallow_thought]

I'll probably move the scout to the sheep next turn, then work back towards the river valley as it looks greener. Shame it's so hilly - not going to get many early double moves. Warrior can check the coast and then work round a little to the east. Not sure how many warriors are needed to escort first settler - probably depends on site of first expansion.

[Brian Shanahan]

Scouting plan is good. In single player, I tend to look at two warriors per early settler, but that's a bit conservative in MP.

[shallow_thought]

Not a lot to see.

[shallow_thought]

Early turn today.

Pigs near the river - makes for a plausible first expansion down there. Warrior is getting a bit pushed around by mountains to the NE though.

[Jabah]

Could you put the (resources) icons on for the next pictures please

[shallow_thought]

Sure.

Lots of hills and mountains, but the EOT city border pop shows that there is gold in them (although nowhere near any known food). And the icy north at least has fish.

[Jabah]

Thanks, it makes reading the map and understanding/comparing much easier

[Brian Shanahan]

Sorry for the lack of input the last few days, didn't really recover until yesterday. Reading the map it looks like the best city sites atm are firstly by the sheep and copper and secondly two west of the gold.

The first site won't grow fast until it expands borders and hooks up pigs but it will be a good unit pump when both food sources are established. The second will need the wheat to grow, but once grown will be a good commerce site. Though a food further south would be nice.

Fish spot looks very weak at the moment, one whole row is useless mountains and the rest of the land is foodless tundra hills.

Oh, I forgot to go with my naming theme which is real Irish locations whose names I find interesting or funny. Shallow Thought, if you have any ideas go ahead and use them.

PS we seem to have a number of chokepoints from the scouting so far. It'd be best to firm this up as decent choke point city plants would really influence settling.

[shallow_thought]

I didn't post yesterday, but I revealed rice in the south and today moved the scout towards it to check it out.

Dot-mapping this is going to be ... interesting. That peak 1NE of the gold would mke me consider a ragequit in SP , blocking as it does a pigs/gold share. Your suggestion is the only way I can see to get both pre-pop food and post-pop gold at the moment. I might be able to do some more systematic dot-mapping (quality not guaranteed) at the weekend.

I would suggest moving the scout NE-NE from the rice next turn to clear the gold area, although that means it's going to be a long time before we can check out the chokepoints, and it puts both warrior and scout east of the capital, leaving the west unknown. Our warrior up on the north coast is just being funneled along by mountains at the moment - apologies, but I didn't try much fog-gazing let alone camera tricks to try to work out optimal scouting paths, so what you see is what you get.

I've prioritized getting the worker over to the pigs (started pasture this turn) and then horses rather than putting roads down in forest as they went. I can't believe that a 2t delay in getting pigs up would be worth saving one worker turn when we have to move back into the woods eventually.

As for a naming theme, right now I'm tempted simply by the names of mountain/hill ranges, real or fictional. There are so many peaks on this map ...

[Brian Shanahan]

Just thinking a small bit more, the pig sheep copper site (Ebbw Vale?) will need irrigation to be useful, food surplus is too low otherwise.

The rice as it stands is a bit of an oddity as there's nothing to pair it with and all the likely plants are lousy with mountains.

Dot mapping is interesting for sure.