[SPOILERS-PBEM14] scooter's thread - Mansa Musa

[scooter]

Next turn is in!



Nice to see some food + green over here! I'm thinking city 2 may go in this area, although it's too early to say for sure. There's two possible routes we can take around this peak, red or yellow. What's the preference? I'm leaning towards red as seeing some of the coastline seems beneficial (also if we are in the north, the southern route could be quicker to find neighbors), but yellow could be nice to find out what exactly is near the pigs. You may vote.........now.

Agriculture finishes at the end of next turn. My next decision is if I go with Animal Husbandry next (cows) or if I go straight to Mining -> Bronze Working. I'm strongly leaning towards the latter, as Slavery + chopping + copper seems more important to me than pasturing a plains cow, but I'm happy to be talked out of that.

Here's the demos for the current turn, as it shows someone does have a few water tiles in their capital after all... My theory for Serdoa and Sandover, is that one of them moved for floodplains, and the other moved for coastline. Of course I guess it's possible that one of them did both... I think.

[SevenSpirits]

The pasture gets out more production quicker than chops and slavery, as slavery is fairly break-even until you have a granary. (And until granaries which make excess food twice as strong, that cow tile is almost as good as a 6f tile; i.e. really good.) The only thing that could tip the balance towards bronze working is wanting to get vision on copper as quickly as possible.

[scooter]

The pasture gets out more production quicker than chops and slavery, as slavery is fairly break-even until you have a granary. (And until granaries which make excess food twice as strong, that cow tile is almost as good as a 6f tile; i.e. really good.) The only thing that could tip the balance towards bronze working is wanting to get vision on copper as quickly as possible.

After thinking it through - yeah you're right - and I'm just about as interested in finding horses as I am copper, so AH will likely be next. On a lighter note, I just noticed this:

[pling]

Land area demos - I think they work out to 3 @ 21000 (we're 3rd, so I think that means there must be 3) plus 1 @ 19000 plus 1 @ 18000. Which would be someone has 2 water tiles, someone has 3? I can't make the earlier averages match up tho, I'm guessing I don't understand how it rounds the numbers. But anyway, that would mean (I think) that both Sandover & Serdoa moved to the coast; one of them getting water in their first ring, and one of them got floodplains. I think. (Did I get enough uncertainity in there? )

[pling]

And there really is nothing to go on with Lewwyn, is there? I looked through his pbem6 thread (from where it was his) on Sunday & discovered he's been in it about a month & inherited his diplo situation, so not much to get from that. The WW games suggest when he goes for something he goes for it come hell, high water or any rational reasons .... He's being ded-lurked by Luddite, who I don't have a feel for despite reading his pbem11 & pb4 threads. (That's odd, tbh, but PBEM11 is a game I would've lost interest in a while ago cept I liked the look of the map so I'm skimming the threads, and PB4 has other more interesting threads so presumably I'm skimming his more than most.)

And Gaspar is being lurked by Bruindane I think, who I'm sure I spotted being "voice of reason" somewhere in PB4.

[scooter]

Turn 5 was played, so I'm going to pretend like it was an interesting turn and write some stuff about it. I went ahead and took the southern scouting route with my warrior, resulting in some boring terrain:



Plains is boring, but rivers are nice, and if you look closely, I see what looks like jungle grassland SE of the peak, and flat grassland E of the peak, so maybe there's some more fertile terrain to the east. One can hope. After I hit enter, Agriculture came in, and I think I will be going AH next after all. There's one noteworthy item in this screenshot, and I'll make it a little more obvious to you:



Gaspar is going warrior first. It seems likely that Lewwyn is going worker first, as he settled on T0 and still has not grown. The jury is still out on Sandover and Serdoa, given the fact that they are both one turn behind. I figured I'd check the demos just to see what tiles Gaspar is working:



The 7 food is obviously Gaspar, but his MFG is no more than 2.. So I'm guessing the breakdown goes like this:

-2/1/1: city square
-3/0/1: food resource (corn/rice/etc) (possiby 3/0/0 if not on river)
-2/1/0: grassland forest, plains cow, etc

I'm guessing Gaspar's start is very similar to my own then.

[dazedroyalty]

That's a good catch on Gaspar. We'll need to watch Serdoa and Sandover closely. If they've both gone worker first, it means that we can push growth a little harder. Hopefully Gaspar isn't a very close neighbor, though. I'm not worried so much about him trying to march into our capital, though if he was close enough that is possible. Instead, the second warrior will give him additional scouting information and it'd be beneficial not to have to try to negotiate with someone who has more info than us!

[scooter]

Land area demos - I think they work out to 3 @ 21000 (we're 3rd, so I think that means there must be 3) plus 1 @ 19000 plus 1 @ 18000. Which would be someone has 2 water tiles, someone has 3? I can't make the earlier averages match up tho, I'm guessing I don't understand how it rounds the numbers. But anyway, that would mean (I think) that both Sandover & Serdoa moved to the coast; one of them getting water in their first ring, and one of them got floodplains. I think. (Did I get enough uncertainity in there? )

This is highly possible. The only thing that makes me hesitate to mark it down as a sure thing is the fact that I see a sizable freshwater lake near me, which makes me wonder if there are several more lakes like that throughout the map. Getting 2 lake tiles does seem a little iffy in terms of probability though, so yes, I think there's a good chance they both moved to the coast, and one of them had floodplains on the coast - probably a river that emptied out into the ocean. The floodplains person is also probably closer to the equator as a result, which hints at a round-ish mega continent, possibly Pangaea or a Big&Small type map. Hmm. Some food for thought.

And there really is nothing to go on with Lewwyn, is there? I looked through his pbem6 thread (from where it was his) on Sunday & discovered he's been in it about a month & inherited his diplo situation, so not much to get from that. The WW games suggest when he goes for something he goes for it come hell, high water or any rational reasons .... He's being ded-lurked by Luddite, who I don't have a feel for despite reading his pbem11 & pb4 threads. (That's odd, tbh, but PBEM11 is a game I would've lost interest in a while ago cept I liked the look of the map so I'm skimming the threads, and PB4 has other more interesting threads so presumably I'm skimming his more than most.)

And Gaspar is being lurked by Bruindane I think, who I'm sure I spotted being "voice of reason" somewhere in PB4.

Yeah I've been trying to figure out Lewwyn... He made some comment in his PBEM6 thread as being a bit aggressive, but that's literally all I can figure on him, as his entire situation there was pretty much just inherited from Athlete. (Perhaps SevenSpirits has some insight into him from his dealings with him in that game?) He has done a nice job in replacing him, so at worst he is a very capable player. At best, he joins the club of players in this game that might very well be a little bit better than me. I don't like using lessons from silly werewolf games in a Civ PBEM (totally different games), however I did notice in both games he's played in now that he's pretty... excitable. He can get stuck on something sometimes, and can be a bit emotional. Gaspar is somewhat similar too. Combine that with Serdoa (he's the same) and Sandover (will declare war if you look at him funny), and uh... This game has all the makings of plenty of drama and explosive situations... Which is exactly the kind of game I enjoy. Hopefully I can manipulate the diplo strings just right to benefit from these personalities.

[scooter]

That's a good catch on Gaspar. We'll need to watch Serdoa and Sandover closely. If they've both gone worker first, it means that we can push growth a little harder. Hopefully Gaspar isn't a very close neighbor, though. I'm not worried so much about him trying to march into our capital, though if he was close enough that is possible. Instead, the second warrior will give him additional scouting information and it'd be beneficial not to have to try to negotiate with someone who has more info than us!

The only thought that crossed my mind about Gaspar + warrior is his comment that I mentioned in my player intro post... He said if he started next to Byzantium (he said this in a different game, but it applies quite nicely), he'd definitely consider a choke/rush of some sort. Because of that, I am mildly antsy about seeing a Mayan warrior show up on my borders, but if I lose to an exploring warrior... so be it. With the commitment required for these kind of games, I'd rather play risky in the early game to put me in a strong position, rather than playing conservative, surviving, and putting myself in a bit of a hole.

[dazedroyalty]

Well, you could do an analysis of the map size. If I understand correctly, you use the % of domination land you have to determine the total size. Then we can guesstimate how far away we are from Gaspar or any other player.

EDIT: To make it clearer, that would let us guess if we have time to finish the worker. If not we could put the minimum turns into a warrior to get it complete before his warrior could enter our city.