[SPOILERS] Ceiliazul's First Dance: Louis of the Ottomen

[Commodore]

Egads that's a lush land. That many forests means any one wonder you want to chop out, you'll be able to. Although the capital's forests should probably be turned into settlers and workers post-haste. You have a whopping six grass hills for mining, slap a cheap forge down and you'll have the happy (with gold) to work them all +pigs and fish, at an amazing 32 hpt.

One thing to note, a flood plain counts as an improvement, so settling on a FP actually doesn't give a 3-food tile. The river-plains tile 2W of the gold looks really nice, though. Ideally there's some kind of food special in the fog, but farmed floodplains will do in a pinch. Looking nice, it's going to be cramped but also pretty good growth.

[Ceiliazul]

Egads that's a lush land. That many forests means any one wonder you want to chop out, you'll be able to.

That's true, and the flip side is that any other civ will also get a one-time wonder try in their capital too. You're right too, the capital will be a production monster, and soon. The food will be better used on slaving at least until Hammams come around, but check this out:



Egads? I'll see that and raise you one "Holy Mackeral!" A triple-happy city site, with food resource to boot? This land is MY land... I hope.

No contact yet.

[Commodore]

Egads? I'll see that and raise you one "Holy Mackeral!" A triple-happy city site, with food resource to boot? This land is MY land... I hope.

I like it, but keep pressing westward to see if any other resources show themselves. Remember, Optics is a very low priority tech on this map, so treat the whales as merely a nice Oasis tile for now. That gold is really nice though.

It also should be "your land" I think...everyone should have their first-ring N/E/S/W spots pretty securely barring pink dots, it'll be the extra sites that cause conflict. Although looking at it, I suppose that's more first-and-a-half ring.

[Ceiliazul]

Turn finally came around, and this is the first time I *didn't* find some kind of luxury cache or fertile valley.

Here's to hopes of faster future turns.

[Ceiliazul]

Well, with Cull missing turns and Pegasus out for the weekend it's been slow going thus far. 5 turns in 9 days doesn't leave much news to report.

Lets talk about Demos!

Everyone settled in place on t0, with 8 land tiles.

Cull is easiest to see, as he was the only one with a city at the time I played t0. He's working a 1/2 tile, researching something with 1 prerequisite. That's likely to be Animal Husbandry. He hasn't grown yet, as he's almost certainly building a Sury-powered worker, and will finish it on t7 (one turn faster than me thanks to EXP.

Catwalk grew, so not building worker. He went max food during that time, and had better be building a roman work boat. The turn he grew, max food went to 8. That can only be the fish and flood plains tiles. In my spilt-milk sims of the Roman start, it seemed best to grow to size 2 and work max-hammers to knock out the boat... so I'm not especially worried about this food total.

Pegasus has not grown yet, he's building a worker or going max-hammer on something. With his fishing start, I expect it's a work boat. His score increase saw a 2k power bump, which could be hunting or mining.

Someone built a warrior first, and process of elimination says that's Ad-Hoc. His starting techs were terrible, not really allowing a growth oriented first build. However, why didn't he grow?? If you can't build a worker first, at least it makes sense to go max food, right?

Summary:
Cull is on the same path as me, but 1t ahead based on his EXP leader.
Catwalk is off his optimal path, but still a couple turns ahead of my non-fishing start.
Pegasus is an enigma, but interesting that he hasn't pushed his fishing start to the max potential.
Ad-Hoc went warrior first, and thus bringing up the rear of the growth curve. However, his extra warrior is a threat and will be cutting short the scouting adventure of my own warrior. He's heading home on a zig-zag course.

I feel good about these observations. My ottomen will hopefully catch up to these fishing starts as time goes on, but we've got a long way to go.

[Commodore]

Summary:
Cull is on the same path as me, but 1t ahead based on his EXP leader.
Catwalk is off his optimal path, but still a couple turns ahead of my non-fishing start.
Pegasus is an enigma, but interesting that he hasn't pushed his fishing start to the max potential.
Ad-Hoc went warrior first, and thus bringing up the rear of the growth curve. However, his extra warrior is a threat and will be cutting short the scouting adventure of my own warrior. He's heading home on a zig-zag course.

I feel good about these observations. My ottomen will hopefully catch up to these fishing starts as time goes on, but we've got a long way to go.

Good observations. Cull's minor advantage on the leader field will only intensify as the early fast barracks and no monuments show their value. So, while frustrating, his missing turns might be a very good thing for you. "He's in the lead, dogpile early" gets less traction than "he's a threat to win, and he's slowing the game down". Likewise, you noticed and are pulling back your warrior from scouting, but I'm not sure if the others are paying as much attention to C&D. Early elimination of a neighbor can only be a good thing, unless it's capture and not a raze.

So far, so good.

[Ceiliazul]

As we continue to wait for t6, lets ponder the shape of the world.

We know a few things:
-30x30 and toroidal.
-SevenSpirits knows his math. (based on previous posts)
-Odd number of players, so all must be evenly spaced. (No pairs)

I used MS paint to create a 30x30 grid with 5 "stripes", that were only 6 tiles wide. Obviously the stripes could be horizontal or vertical but it makes no difference yet.



Wow that doesn't leave much room, does it? What if the cities were evenly spaced to take up the 30 vertical squares? This would make a diagonal that would be fair, but terribly cramped.



Yikes! Interestingly, this option has not yet been eliminated by the map we've explored so far. However, with this setup we would have undoubtedly met at least one opponent by now, and a warrior could have razed someones capital already. This simply won't do. What if we spaced the cities vertically to make two laps around the vertical world wrap?



Well that's much better. I have no idea how resources could be made fair, but at least we each have breathing room.

Lets try 3 laps, in similar fashion:



Well, that's the same thing, just oriented differently. 4 laps creates the same diagonal we started with, moving up instead of down, and 5 laps creates a straight line of cities.

I'm sure there are more possibilities than this, but I really like the 2 middle experiments. Why? Everyone borders everyone else! If I was a mapmaker I would consider this an elegant solution... but it would make resource distribution really tough.

Resources can be a puzzle for another time because...

[SIZE="3"]Hark! A TURN IS NEIGH![/SIZE]

[Ceiliazul]

After 3 days of suspense, I am able to reward my loyal readers with this:

A last place score!

Yes gentle readers, ad-hoc grew and researched (confirming his warrior start), while researching something with no power points. Gotta guess fishing on that one. Cull also grew, leave me the last one still standing on home plate.



As we talked about, the warrior is heading home, but first he'll check out the West side of that lake. Yummy deer, but probably outside the first ring.

Edit: Wait a minute, fishing is too cheap to take this long. Either its agriculture or he swapped techs.

[Commodore]

Dude, Canadian Teenybopper Sensation Justin Beiber is beating you. That's rough.

That deer/corn location is 100% worth rushing for, in my opinion. You're probably right about the map, which means the plains hill north of the deer is just within "your" sphere of influence (everything within 6 tiles of your capital).

[Thoth]

Dude, Canadian Teenybopper Sensation Justin Beiber is beating you. That's rough.

Beiber isn't Canadian. :mad: :mad: *












*The vile rumours that Allanis Morrisette and Celene Dion are Canadian are also lies. :mad: :mad: