[PB62] naufragar and Rusten earn their wage in rostygold

[naufragar]

Ah, so my "nothing for the worker to do" is your "spend a turn in transit and two turns semi-improving a tundra furs."

Here's another settle-in-place opening, going Worker->warrior to size 2->worker.

It's a turn faster with the settler and if the settler founds on the plains hill 1S of the furs, the deer camp is completed on the turn of founding. Downsides: the capital is a size smaller and only has one improved tile. I've also chopped 1 more forest. (2 more if you count giving up the forest the second city gets founded on.)

The settle-in-place worker is two turns slower and has to waste a turn before BW, so I think I can live with three turns spent on the furs. I think I like your plan better. Will think on it.

[Rusten]

Having slept on it I don't feel super strongly on SIP vs. move -- they should both be good. While I'm still inclined to move, I'm more used to the worker difference being 15 to 12 than 12 to 10.
As long as you're simming the start I trust you to make a decent call. But I will veto your size 1 settler idea, because you absolutely need a warrior for escort. Otherwise you're stuck keeping the scout nearby forever and you lose out on important information which will result in bad/uneducated decisions later on. If a barbarian warrior decides to move in the worst manner possible you could even be screwed, and you're planning to settle near the tundra with 2-move wolves.

Neither one of us mentioned it, but don't forget to look at commerce too. It's not the most important thing early on but it still matters. Having an extra citizen working an oasis for instance really adds up over time.

Today I instead focused on the intangibles (as they love to call it in hockey) and made some pros/cons:

SIP:
+ Good for GLH. Early WB is good for commerce. Settles more towards the center of the map.
- Only 2 food resources. Very inflexible dotmap.

Move: 
+ Grabs 3 food resources which results in a much more flexible dotmap (in particular 2nd city). 3 plains hills (and deer) is excellent for wonderbuilding early on with a limited happy cap.
- Moves towards tundra. Need to outsource GLH.

I feel like I've forgotten multiple points I had on each by the time I got to write these. Maybe it will come to me later.

You're not going to like it, but after mulling it over my wonder of choice for this opening/game is without a doubt the Pyramids. We're planning on bulbing Astro which means we're skipping bureaucracy (CS) and we don't have a cottage/commerce monster available with either location. Add in Phi and I'm pretty confident focusing on GPP/überspecialists is the way to go even in our capital. In that case having as much food as possible makes a bigger difference than usual. Having some GE points for a great engineer down the road is very nice too. 

This got very long and wordy.
TLDR: Build The Pyramids, stupid!

[naufragar]

TLDR: Build The Pyramids, stupid!

I know. I need to overcome my anti-Pyramids neurosis.

I'll log in later to move the settler. At the end of the day, the deer site just has better tiles. Settling in place depends on pretty much just the corn.

[Rusten]

Good!

I presume we move the scout to the other PH before settling next turn just in case there's double riverside gems or something there.

[naufragar]

Moved the settler and ended turn. Here's the demos screen. Edit: With all but Jowy/Superdeath having ended their turns.




Things to note: 1) Somebody's totally landlocked. 2) Someone's not on a plains hill.

[naufragar]

Moved the scout and settled the city.


Not shown, I started research on Hunting. I'm going to sleep, but in the morning I'll add Settings/Demos screens. Also forgot to rename the capital.

[naufragar]

Here are the demos.


I played after Superdeath. Looks like 1 player has yet to found their capital.

Here's the Land Area percentage.



I think this means there are ~120 land tiles per player. This is just the land tiles, so it doesn't count water in people's natural areas but it also doesn't count potential contested islands. Tight map is nice and tight.

And to comment on the earlier post: yuck. Those tiles are unappetizing.

[naufragar]

Our north looks miserable.



There's forests and maybe a hill to our southwest. That's where I plan to take the scout, but I worry that the water (with the fish in it) will mean we can't make a clockwise loop around the capital.

[Rusten]

Decent chance we can fill in that gap with our starting warrior. He has to go where our 2nd city goes, but that looks to be in that direction given how yucky the land is north/west.

[naufragar]

After PB59, I had forgotten what a turn pace could be. Second turn today.

He has to go where our 2nd city goes, but that looks to be in that direction given how yucky the land is north/west.

The low quality of land appears intentional. No guarantee the east is better, and a city on the wines grabs ivory. While I'm thinking out loud: we should expect a neighbor about 10 tiles in each direction. That oasis is 7 tiles from where our settler started and a desert band seems like a pretty stereotypical natural middle demarcation.

Still thinking out loud: next turn our borders expand for a little bit more vision plus our warrior can walk along forests to check the fish spot.

Barb animals spawn on turn 5, right?