[PB79] MirOh No, what am I doing?

[Mjmd]

The resource patterns and tiles resources are on that they shouldn't be (I believe the hill corn and plains dye, but also all the resources next ot each other outside the capital), shows a lot of love went into this map.

Ya growing to size 3 before settlers with these good of tiles makes a lot of sense. 

So I think you want one of the spots that gets you trade connection especially being protective for your first city. So your options

A1 - It clearly looks like the strongest spot. However, there is a lot of wasted movement here both for settler and more importantly the worker. I don't know what the rest of your micro looks like, but specifically the worker walking so long and being so far away will slow you down for other cities. 

There is city option not listed here that broadly has similar strengths and weaknesses as B and that is ON the cow. I tested in world builder for trade but would be worth testing again. The main thing would be a faster growing city for the early game. IE it has an extra floodplain and a +1 food. B is clearly the better long term site and plays better with great lighthouse. Also, people will make fun of you if you settle on cow, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention it. The main strength of either spot is they don't require your worker and they can build a 10 turn worker. I LOVE using my first city to build a worker. Its the most useful thing you can do with it. Usually I 1 pop whip it, but with the sugar to steal and not wanting to spend turns farming a FP just slow build it. Obviously that means your current worker can do things like put 1 chop into a settler for a 4>2 whip then go road to NW of E and settle E next giving you 3 cities and 2 workers super quick.

I would at least send scout to B to see what else is there before making a decision.

[Gavagai]

1) My instinct would be to send the second city to the floodplain region and grab Cow and as many floodplains as possible. So I recommend scouting the area. Mjmd's suggestion of settling on Cows is interesting but I fear long-term it would be a very awkward city (not being coastal hurts, for protective especially). From what I see 1E from B spot is a better long-term site and also gives immediate trade connection.

2) I think an island city 1E from Deer is mandatory because it's the only way to give away Rice and Fish from the capital and I think you will want to do this. It also shares Cow, making A-cities unnecessary. Also, I wonder, whether protective trait would bump trade income to 3.

3) Speaking of which, I don't think A/D region has enough food to support two cities: there are a lot of hills and food resources there are weak. I suggest putting one city between A1 and D. This city will be able to generate 24 hammers per turn at size 10 (unless I miscounted) with very low tech requirements (no need for Civil Service), so here you have your HE city. Put a forge there and the city produces a horse archer each turn, later - a knight every two turns. Don't know about you but it makes me a happy panda.

4) No early happiness resources except Ivory which makes me want to prioritize Monarchy. What is our tech situation?

[Mjmd]

1) 1E of B losses the plains hill / 3f center tile and ability to work sugar, which are the reasons to settle either B or on cow early.

2) & 3). I mean a city between A1 and D does look sweet, but would rather stay focused on the early game and just settle A1 as 3rd city. After settling E part of road network will already be there. Getting a galley out early means a whip not going to a settler or worker and a settler not going towards contested land. It would bumb all trade routes to 3, but Miro won't have money troubles and his traits weaknesses are early expansion speed. There is a wet corn and grassland pig along with 3 seafood resources that look SOOO juciy southwest and if civs are min distance away the pig or corn could be half. A city 1 west of cow and the another between pig and crab would give two extremely strong cities on hills. If an opponent is far away, a city SW of cow would be insane. Also, the land looks to be opening out to the east which means a long border with someone or multiple want to lock down. To the north the sea mountains look pretty, but also indicate a barrier to attack on the island, meaning someone is probably that way too.

4) I think monarchy before currency would be the normal play here assuming no more happy, but with protective routes and markets at currency think that is priority. The pro bonus to markets make them pretty easy to whip and at least have ivory to boost.

[Miro]

[B] has a lovely view of mountains across the sea!



We have Fishing, Agg, Mining, BW. 30% to AH. If not settling A1 or C, maybe I should have gone for Wheel before AH. Future tech plan was dependent on Horses. Without them, I may want Archery soon.

I'm not planning to beeline GLH. Wheel + Pottery seems more important than GLH here.

4) I think monarchy before currency would be the normal play here assuming no more happy, but with protective routes and markets at currency think that is priority. The pro bonus to markets make them pretty easy to whip and at least have ivory to boost.

Are you suggesting fast Markets mainly for the +Ivory happy bonus? I normally skip Markets, but running a Merchants for a Great Merchant is interesting. Ofc the +Wealth boost is nice, too, I just hadn't thought about early Markets.

FYI I'll be less active this weekend - I'm helping out at a festival but I should be able to play a quick turn once a day.

[Mjmd]

Do you mean A1 or B? I do really like B where scout is even though nothing new revealed. Just not having to dedicate a ton of worker turns to it plus it being able to fastly build a worker is pretty nice for the snowball.

Ya get all your basic techs. Wheel and pottery are huge techs. I wouldn't worry about great lighthouse until late 60s. I normally HATE archery. Archers are cheap, but they can't attack out, which is a big deal with both barbs on and in multiplayer in general.

So you have to be more picky about infrastructure in multiplayer. Specially cities for commerce vs military is VERY important. You don't want a lot of mixed cities. This was one of my many mistakes my first game was doing single player build all the buildings way too many places. Normally you don't build a lot of markets early (1 in capital or maybe 2 early). However, you are protective so they are cheap enough I'm fine relying on them for happy temporarily if need be.

[Miro]

T35 Update:



We found NA's city that they founded on T34. It's a copper foundry in our direction, this will have profound impacts on our future tensions. Confounding.

Our Warrior (north Gems) is 8 tiles from their Copper tile. As we were discussing earlier, we shouldn't send him over to loom over the tile and pressure NA, right? I think I'll just plant him at the "Barb Bust" tile next to Wheat. This works fine in single player, but let me know if you think he should be more active with scouting.

I highlighted a river Desert tile to ask if you guys sometimes include these when there are too many FP in one area.

We founded Dominion on T27, it's a great deckbuilding game that brought my friends together every Saturday for years, right before we'd raid Dairy Queen for free Blizzards when they'd "mess up" a few for my friend that worked there.

Do you mean A1 or B? I do really like B where scout is even though nothing new revealed. Just not having to dedicate a ton of worker turns to it plus it being able to fastly build a worker is pretty nice for the snowball.

(...) I normally HATE archery. (...)

So you have to be more picky about infrastructure in multiplayer. (...) You don't want a lot of mixed cities.

I did mean A1, but you convinced me about how quick this city starts up. I realize my play after that wasn't the cleanest - I'm always wary of building Farms on FP and I opted to build Warriors instead of a Worker because I had already chopped a 2nd Worker in the Capital.

I usually try to get Copper or Horses in one of my first 3 cities so I don't need Archery, but the current plan doesn't include any of those resources. That's when Archery can make an appearance. It sucks to waste research on it, especially when you don't start with Hunting, but I also know I'd hate to lose a city to barbs and I don't want to rack up military maintenance from building 10 Warriors. If we had more coastline nearby, I wouldn't think about Archery, but we'll see how the barb busting goes.

I build more infrastructure than most players in single player, too, so I try to stay mindful about it and dial it back.

Current plan: chop Settler out for city #3 which will go to [A1] from the T20 Post. A Warrior is already near [A1] to escort.

I haven't decided when I want to start a Settler for city #4, but want to build a scouting Work Boat in the near future. Should I ignore scouting and just barb bust for now?

[civac2]

The desert river is most likely a mistake.

[Tarkeel]

When I skimmed through the previous green PB (PB74?), I saw greenline named his cities after his favorite books. Love that! I haven't named my cities in over a decade. I hope other players have a theme to their city names, I'll be judging them hard for using default names.
I'm going to name my cities after some of my favorite board games, so our capital is named "Gloomhaven"! If unfamiliar, imagine it as a D&D campaign with a card system for actions and fatigue.

The last greens game was PB72; PB74 features not one but two boardgame empires! Gloomhaven is way better than D&D though.

The desert river is most likely a mistake.

Yeah, probably. Very easy to miss when mapmaking, and we have no easy way to fix that these days.

[Mjmd]

Something I taught Aetryn during that greens game was that when asking a bunch of questions / issues is to number them, that way we can answer specific questions a littler clearer.

1) I would be curious how far that city is from capital. Its probably safe to assume not too far indicating the plains pig and copper is PROBABLY on their side. There is also a double line of hills going N S covered in forest / jungle that looks like is maybe intended to be a mid point. I'm also suspicious of both lines of mountains going east west. There might be a player north of you and south of Coldrain.
2) I would not send the warrior to antagonize a neighbor even if barbs were turned off. A) it just sets you up for antagonism the whole game. B) he could have a warrior scout to then send at you. C) ya barbs are on, be safe
3) ya its just a map maker error. This map looks pretty heavily edited (in a good way), but things like this are pretty easy to happen in those scenarios.
4) I didn't realize you were planning to chop a worker out as I also hate farming flood plains early. Part of the appeal of that site was not spending worker turns on. Ah well, with a really good city site nearby not totally bad. I would still build a worker at size 3 here. Then you can put a chop into a settler and 4>2 whip a settler here for the barb bust site. Unless Gav thinks it should be 1N of that valuing gems over the horse.
5) I would try to avoid archery, that being said
6) I would settle the copper double food site next. You can use both current workers to road to it. Then road to A1 after improving the sheep & copper (I would probably split the workers and have one doing sheep go road or chop WB after). I assume chopping of current settler is already commencing, but I would have 4>2 whipped the current one, but you could do another settler afterwards (either 1T overflow depending then grow to 4 or just grow to 4) and settle A1 pretty fast after. I forgot to mention but most people revolt to slavery when 1st settler is in transit, assuming you did.
7) I would not build a scouting work boat yet (maybe in 15 turns). Its a huge waste of early hammers. Just grow on warriors for now both to help with barb busting and for cheap MP units.

[Mjmd]

Its been a while, whats up?

Questions?